Lady macbeth genre of works. Analysis of the work "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (NS Leskov). Theater performances

Katerina Lvovna, “a very pleasant woman in appearance,” lives in the well-to-do house of the merchant Izmailov with her widow-in-law Boris Timofeevich and her middle-aged husband Zinovy ​​Borisovich. Katerina Lvovna has no children, and “with all the contentment” her life “for an unkind husband” is the most boring one. In the sixth year of marriage

Zinovy ​​Borisovich leaves for the mill dam, leaving Katerina Lvovna “alone”. In the courtyard of her house, she competes with the impudent worker Sergei, and from the cook Aksinya learns that this fellow has been serving with the Izmailovs for a month already, and from the former house he was expelled for "love" with the mistress. In the evening, Sergei comes to Katerina Lvovna, complains of boredom, says that he loves, and stays until morning. But one night Boris Timofeevich notices Sergei's red shirt coming down from his daughter-in-law's window. The father-in-law threatens that he will tell everything to Katerina Lvovna's husband, and send Sergey to prison. On the same night, Katerina Lvovna poisons her father-in-law with the white powder reserved for the rats and continues the "aligoria" with Sergei.

Meanwhile, Sergei becomes dry with Katerina Lvovna, is jealous of her husband and talks about his insignificant state, confessing that he would like to be her husband “before the saint before the eternal temple”. In response, Katerina Lvovna promises to make him a merchant. Zinovy ​​Borisovich returns home and accuses Katerina Lvovna of "cupids". Katerina Lvovna takes Sergey out and boldly kisses him in front of her husband. The lovers kill Zinovy ​​Borisovich, and the corpse is buried in the cellar. They are looking for Zinovy ​​Borisovich uselessly, and Katerina Lvovna "lives on with Sergei, due to his widow's position at large."

Soon, the young nephew of Zinovy ​​Borisovich, Fyodor Lyapin, comes to live with Izmailova, whose money was in circulation with the deceased merchant. Instigated by Sergei, Katerina Lvovna conceives the limelight of the God-fearing boy. On the night of Vigil on the eve of the Feast of the Introduction, the boy remains in the house alone with his lovers and reads the Life of Saint Theodore Stratilates. Sergei grabs Fedya, and Katerina Lvovna strangles him with a down pillow. But as soon as the boy dies, the house begins to shake from the blows, Sergei panics, sees the late Zinovy ​​Borisovich, and only Katerina Lvovna realizes that it is with a crash that the people are bursting, seeing what is going on in the “sinful house”.

Sergei is taken to the unit, and at the first words of the priest about the Last Judgment, he confesses to the murder of Zinovy ​​Borisovich and calls Katerina Lvovna an accomplice. Katerina Lvovna denies everything, but at the confrontation confesses that she killed "for Sergei." The murderers are punished with lashes and sentenced to hard labor. Sergei arouses sympathy, and Katerina Lvovna behaves steadfastly and even refuses to look at the child when she is born. He, the only heir of the merchant, is given to education. Katerina Lvovna thinks only about how to get to the stage as soon as possible and see Sergei. But at the stage, Sergei is uncomfortable and secret dates do not please him. At Nizhniy Novgorod, a Moscow party joins the prisoners, with which a soldier Fiona of a free disposition and a seventeen-year-old Sonetka, about whom they say: "it twists around the hands, but is not given," go.

Katerina Lvovna arranges another date with her lover, but finds the trouble-free Fiona in his arms and quarrels with Sergei. Still not reconciling with Katerina Lvovna, Sergei begins to "cheat" and flirt with Sonetka, who seems to "play". Katerina Lvovna decides to leave her pride and put up with Sergei, and during a date Sergei complains of pain in his legs, and Katerina Lvovna gives him thick woolen stockings. The next day, she notices these stockings on Sonetka and spits in Sergei's eyes. At night, Sergei, together with a friend, beats Katerina Lvovna while Sonetka giggles. Katerina Lvovna weeps grief on Fiona's chest, the whole party, led by Sergei, mocks her, but Katerina Lvovna behaves with "wooden calm". And when the party is transported by ferry to the other side of the river, Katerina Lvovna grabs Sonetka by the legs, throws herself overboard with her, and both drown.

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Feature article

"Sing the first song blushing."

Proverb

Chapter first

Sometimes in our places such characters are set that, no matter how many years have passed since meeting them, you will never remember some of them without emotional trepidation. Among such characters is the merchant's wife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, who played a once terrible drama, after which our nobles, with someone's easy word, began to call her Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district.

Katerina Lvovna was not born a beauty, but she was a very pleasant woman in appearance. She was only twenty-four years old; She was not tall, but slender, her neck was as if carved from marble, her shoulders were round, her chest was strong, her nose was straight, thin, her eyes were black, lively, her high white forehead and black, as much as blue black hair. They gave her in marriage to our merchant Izmailov from Tuskari from the Kursk province, not out of love or any attraction, but because Izmailov took hold of her, and she was a poor girl, and she did not have to go through with suitors. The Izmailovs' house in our city was not the last: they traded in grain, kept a large mill on lease in the district, had a profitable garden near the city and a good house in the city. In general, the merchants were well-to-do. Their family, moreover, was quite small: father-in-law Boris Timofeich Izmailov, a man of about eighty years old, has long been a widow; his son Zinovy ​​Borisych, Katerina Lvovna's husband, a man in his fifties too, and Katerina Lvovna herself, and that's all. Katerina Lvovna had no children for the fifth year since she married Zinovy ​​Borisych. Zinovy ​​Borisych did not have children from his first wife, with whom he lived for twenty years, before he became a widow and married Katerina Lvovna. He thought and hoped that God would give him, even from his second marriage, an heir to a merchant's name and capital; but again he was not lucky in this and with Katerina Lvovna.

This childlessness grieved Zinovy ​​Borisych very much, and not only Zinovy ​​Borisych alone, but old Boris Timofeich, and even Katerina Lvovna herself was very saddened. Once, that exorbitant boredom in a locked merchant's mansion with a high fence and lowered chain dogs more than once made the young merchant's lady sad, reaching into a stupor, and she would be glad, God knows how glad she would be to babysit the child; and she was tired of the other and reproaches: “Why did you go and why did you get married; why did she tie fate to a person, not a mother, ”as if she really did commit a crime before her husband, and before her father-in-law, and before all their honest merchant family.

For all the contentment and kindness of Katerina Lvovna's life in her mother-in-law's house was the most boring one. She did not go to visit a lot, and even if she and her husband went to her merchants, it would also not be for joy. The people are all strict: they watch how she sits down, but how she passes, how she gets up; but Katerina Lvovna had an ardent character, and, living as a girl in poverty, she was accustomed to simplicity and freedom: she could run with buckets to the river and swim in a shirt under the pier or sprinkle sunflower husks through the gate of a young fellow; but here everything is different. The father-in-law and her husband would get up early, drink tea at six o'clock in the morning, and for their own business, and she alone mumbles the elephants from room to room. Everywhere it is clean, everywhere it is quiet and empty, the lamps shine before the images, and nowhere in the house there is not a sound of a living, not a human voice.

It looks like Katerina Lvovna is walking about empty rooms, she will start yawning with boredom and climb the stairs to her spousal bedchamber, arranged on a high little mezzanine. Here, too, she will sit, gaze, how they hang hemp at the barns or pour out grains of grain, - she yawns again, and she is glad: she will take a nap for an hour or two, and wake up - again the same Russian boredom, the boredom of a merchant's house, from which, they say, it’s fun to even strangle ... Katerina Lvovna was not a hunter to read, and besides, there were no books in the house except for the Kiev patericon.

Katerina Lvovna lived a boring life in a rich mother-in-law's house for the whole five years of her life with her unkind husband; but no one, as usual, paid the slightest attention to this boredom of her.

Chapter two

On the sixth spring of Katerina Lvovnin's marriage, the Izmailovs' mill dam burst. At that time, as if on purpose, a lot of work was brought to the mill, but a huge gap was made: the water went under the lower bed of the blank hide, and it was not possible to grab it with a quick hand. Zinovy ​​Borisych drove the people to the mill from the whole neighborhood, and he himself sat there forever; the old man alone ruled the affairs of the city, and Katerina Lvovna toiled at home all day alone. At first, she was even more bored without her husband, but then it seemed even better: she became freer alone. Her heart never really lay for him, and without him at least one commander over her became less.

Once Katerina Lvovna was sitting on her watchtower under the window, yawning, yawning, not thinking about anything definite, and, at last, she was ashamed to yawn. And the weather outside is so wonderful: warm, light, cheerful, and through the green wooden lattice of the garden, you can see how different birds flutter up and down the trees from knot to knot.

“What am I really yawning for? Thought Katerina Lvovna. - Well, at least I'll get up in the yard for a walk or walk into the garden.

Katerina Lvovna threw on her old damask coat and left.

It is so light and breathing in the courtyard, but in the gallery near the barns there is such a merry laugh.

- Why are you so happy? Katerina Lvovna asked her father-in-law clerks.

“But, mother Katerina Ilvovna, they hanged a live pig,” the old clerk answered her.

- What pig?

“But the pig Aksinya, who gave birth to her son Vasily, but didn’t invite us to the christening,” boldly and cheerfully told the young man with a daring handsome face framed by jet-black curls and a barely piercing beard.

At that moment the thick face of the ruddy cook Aksinya peeped out of the flour cadi, which was hung on the weighing beam.

- Devils, devils are smooth, - the cook cursed, trying to grab the iron rocker and get out of the swinging cadi.

- He pulls eight poods before dinner, and he will eat a fir of hay, and there will not be enough weights, - the handsome fellow explained again and, turning the pot, threw the cook on a sack folded in the coal.

Baba, cursing playfully, began to recover.

- Well, how much will it be in me? - Katerina Lvovna joked and, grasping the ropes, stood on the board.

- Three pounds seven pounds, - answered the same handsome fellow Sergei, throwing the kettlebell on the weight sky. - Curiosity!

- What are you wondering about?

- Yes, that three pounds in you pulled, Katerina Ilvovna. You, I think so, have to be carried in your arms all day - and then you will not starve yourself, but only for the pleasure you will feel it for yourself.

- Well, I'm not a man, or what? Probably you will get tired too, '' answered Katerina Lvovna, slightly blushing, unaccustomed from such speeches, feeling a sudden rush of desire to blabber out and utter cheerful and playful words.

- Oh my God! I would bring a happy one to Arabia, - Sergey answered her to her remark.

- Not so you, well done, reasoning, - said the peasant who was pissed off. - What is heaviness in us? Does our body pull? our body, dear man, does not mean anything by weight: our strength, our strength pulls - not the body!

“Yes, I was passionate in girls,” said Katerina Lvovna, again unable to bear it. - Even a man did not overcome me.

- Well, let me have a pen, if it's true, - asked the handsome fellow.

Katerina Lvovna was embarrassed, but held out her hand.

- Oh, let the ring go: it hurts! Cried Katerina Lvovna when Sergei squeezed her hand in his hand, and with her free hand pushed him into the chest.

The good fellow let go of the mistress's hand and flew two steps to the side from her push.

- Y-yes, so you and argue that a woman, - the little man was surprised.

- No, and you allow me to take it that way, on-set, - said Serega, throwing his curls out.

“Well, take it,” Katerina Lvovna replied, amused, and raised her elbows up.

Sergei hugged the young hostess and pressed her firm chest against his red shirt. Katerina Lvovna just started to move her shoulders, and Sergei lifted her from the floor, held her in his arms, squeezed her and set her quietly on an overturned measure.

Katerina Lvovna did not even have time to dispose of her vaunted strength. Red-colored, she straightened, sitting on a yardstick, a fur coat that had fallen from her shoulder and quietly walked out of the barn, while Sergei coughed valiantly and shouted:

- Well, you fools of the king of heaven! Rash, do not yawn, do not cover rowing; there will be tops, our surplus.

As if he had not paid attention to what was now.

- Devichur this damned Earring! - told the cook Aksinya, trudging after Katerina Lvovna. - The thief took everyone - either in height, or in face, or in beauty, and will seduce and lead to sin. And what a fickle, scoundrel, precarious, fickle!

- And you, Aksinya ... of that, - said, walking in front of her, the young mistress, - is your boy alive?

- Alive, mother, alive - what is he! Where they are not needed by someone, they live with those.

- And where did you get it from?

- And-and! so, a gulevoy - you live among the people - a gulevoy.

- How long has he been with us, this fellow?

- Who is this? Sergei, or what?

- It will be about a month. He served with the Kopchonovs, so the owner drove him away. - Aksinya lowered her voice and said: - They say that he was in love with the mistress herself ... After all, his soul, Treanafem, is so brave!

Chapter three

A warm milky twilight hung over the city. Zinovy ​​Borisych has not yet returned from the pond. Boris Timofeich's father-in-law was not at home either: he went to his old friend for his name day, even ordered himself not to wait for dinner. Katerina Lvovna, out of nothing to do, had her supper early, opened a window on her watchtower and, leaning against the jamb, peeled sunflower seeds. The people in the kitchen had supper and went to sleep in the courtyard: some under the sheds, some to the barns, some to the tall, fragrant haylings. Sergey was the last to leave the kitchen. He walked around the courtyard, let down the chain dogs, whistled and, passing by Katerina Lvovna's window, looked at her and bowed deeply to her.

“Hello,” Katerina Lvovna said quietly to him from her tower, and the courtyard was silent, like a desert.

- Madam! - said someone two minutes later at the locked door of Katerina Lvovna.

- Who is this? - Frightened, asked Katerina Lvovna.

“Do not be so frightened: it’s me, Sergei,” answered the bailiff.

- What do you want, Sergei?

- I have a little business for you, Katerina Ilvovna: I want to ask your mercy for one little thing; let me come up for a minute.

Katerina Lvovna turned the key and let Sergei in.

- What do you want? She asked, walking away to the window herself.

- I came to you, Katerina Ilvovna, to ask if you have any little book to read. Boredom is overwhelming.

“Sergei, I don’t have any books: I don’t read them,” answered Katerina Lvovna.

- Such a boredom, - Sergey complained.

- What do you miss!

- For goodness sake, how not to get bored: I am a young man, we live as if we live in some monastery, and you only see ahead that, perhaps, to the grave, should disappear in such loneliness. Even despair sometimes comes.

- Why aren't you getting married?

- It is easy to say, madam, to marry! Who is there to marry? I am an insignificant person; the master's daughter will not marry me, and because of poverty, we all have, Katerina Ilvovna, you yourself will know, ignorance. Can they really understand about love properly! Here, if you please, see what concept is more theirs and the rich have. Here you, one might say, to every other person who feels, would only be consolation for him, and they keep you like a canary in a cage.

“Yes, I'm bored,” said Katerina Lvovna.

- How not to be bored, madam, in such a life! Khosh would even be an object that you had from the outside, just as others do, so it’s even impossible for you to see him.

- Well, it's you ... not that at all. To me, when I would give birth to myself, it would seem that it would be fun with him.

- Why, let me tell you, madam, because a child also happens from something, and not the same way. Why now, having lived for so many years by the owners and looking at such a woman's life as a merchant, do we not understand either? The song is sung: “without a sweet friend, sadness-melancholy has overwhelmed”, and this melancholy, I can tell you, Katerina Ilvovna, to my own heart, I can say, is so sensitive that I would take it out of my chest with a damask knife and throw it to yours legs. And it would be easier, a hundred times easier for me then ...

- What are you telling me here about your heart? I don't need it. Go yourself ...

“No, excuse me, madam,” said Sergei, trembling all over and taking a step towards Katerina Lvovna. - I know, I see and very much even feel and understand that you are no easier than mine in the world; well, only now, ”he said with one breath,“ now all this is at this moment in your hands and in your power.

- What are you doing? what? Why did you come to me? I’ll throw myself out the window, ”said Katerina Lvovna, feeling herself under the intolerable power of indescribable fear, and grabbed the window sill with her hand.

- You are my incomparable life! what do you throw yourself at? - Sergei whispered cheekily and, tearing the young mistress away from the window, hugged her tightly.

- Ox! ox! Let me go, '' Katerina Lvovna moaned softly, weakening under Sergey's hot kisses, while she herself clung to his mighty figure with a fleeting expression.

Sergei lifted the hostess into his arms like a child and carried her away to a dark corner.

Silence fell in the room, broken only by the measured ticking of her husband's pocket watch hanging over the head of Katerina Lvovna's bed; but this did not interfere with anything.

“Go,” said Katerina Lvovna half an hour later, not looking at Sergei and straightening her scattered hair in front of a small mirror.

- Why should I go from here, - Sergei answered her in a happy voice.

- Father-in-law door ban.

- Eh, soul, soul! But what kind of people did you know that they only have a door to a woman and the road? Me that to you, that from you - there are doors everywhere, - answered the fellow, pointing to the pillars supporting the gallery.

Chapter four

Zinovy ​​Borisych hadn’t been home for another week, and all that week his wife, that night, had been walking with Sergei until broad daylight.

There was a lot on those nights in Zinovy ​​Borisych's bedroom and wine from the mother-in-law's cellar was drunk, and sweet sweets were eaten, and they kissed the mouth of the sugar mistress, and played with black curls on the soft headboard. But not all the way goes like a tablecloth, there are also interruptions.

Boris Timofeich could not sleep: an old man in a motley chintz shirt wandered around a quiet house, walked to one window, walked to another, looked, and the red shirt of a young man Sergei was quietly descending down the pillar from under his daughter-in-law's window. Here's the news for you! Boris Timofeich jumped out and grabbed the young man by the legs. He turned around to ride the owner with all his heart over the ear, and he stopped, judging that the noise would come out.

- Tell me, - says Boris Timofeich, - where have you been, are you a kind of thief?

“And where I was,” he says, “there I’m not, Boris Timofeich, sir,” replied Sergei.

- Have you spent the night with your daughter-in-law?

- About that, master, again I know where I spent the night; and you, Boris Timofeich, listen to my words: what happened, father, you can't turn that back; Do not put shame on your merchant's house at the extreme. Tell me, what do you want from me now? What kind of satisfaction do you want?

“I wish you, an asp, to roll five hundred lashes,” answered Boris Timofeich.

“My fault is your will,” the fellow agreed. - Tell me where to go after you, and hang on, drink my blood.

Boris Timofeich took Sergei to his stone pantry, and he whipped him with a whip until he was exhausted himself. Sergei did not moan, but he chewed half the sleeve of his shirt with his teeth.

Boris Timofeich threw Sergei in the pantry until his back whipped into cast iron heals; he thrust him an earthen jug of water, locked it with a large padlock, and sent for his son.

But even now they do not travel a hundred miles in Russia along country roads, and Katerina Lvovna could not survive even an extra hour without Sergei. She turned suddenly to the full breadth of her awakened nature and became so resolute that it was impossible to calm her down. She saw where Sergei was, talked to him through the iron door and rushed to look for the keys. “Let go, darling, Sergei,” she came to her father-in-law.

The old man turned green. He had never expected such impudent impudence from a sinful but always still obedient daughter-in-law.

“What are you, such and such,” he began to disgrace Katerina Lvovna.

- Let me go, - he says, - I will enlist your conscience that there was nothing even worse between us.

- Thin, - he says, - was not! - and he creaks his teeth. - And what did you do there with him at night? Did you interrupt your husband's pillows?

And she keeps sticking with hers: let him go and let him go.

“If that's the case,” says Boris Timofeich, “here’s the same for you: your husband will come, we, honest wife, will rip you out in the stable with our own hands, and I’ll send him, the scoundrel, to prison tomorrow.

That was what Boris Timofeich decided to do; but only this decision did not take place.

Chapter five

Boris Timofeich ate mushrooms and gruel for the night, and he began to have heartburn; suddenly grabbed him in the spoon; Terrible vomiting arose, and by morning he died, and just as rats died in his barns, for which Katerina Lvovna always prepared a special dish with her own hands with a dangerous white powder entrusted to her storage.

Katerina Lvovna rescued her Sergei from the old man's stone pantry and, without any gap from human eyes, put him to rest from his mother-in-law on her husband's bed; and the father-in-law, Boris Timofeich, without hesitation, was buried according to the Christian law. Nothing has become a wondrous affair to anyone: Boris Timofeich died, and he died, having eaten fungi, as many, having eaten them, die. They buried Boris Timofeich hastily, without even waiting for his son, because the time was warm outside, and the messenger did not find Zinovy ​​Borisych at the mill. Tom, by chance, somehow cheaply got another hundred miles away: he went to look at it and did not explain to anyone where he went.

Having coped with this matter, Katerina Lvovna completely dispersed. That she was a woman of an awkward ten, and then it was impossible to guess what she was up to; he walks as a trump card, orders everything around the house, and does not let Sergei go away from himself. The yard was startled at this, but Katerina Lvovna managed to find everyone with her generous hand, and all this divanism suddenly passed away at once. “I went in,” they dared, “at the hostess with Sergei Aligoria, and that's all. - Her, they say, this is the case, and her answer will be.

In the meantime, Sergei recovered, straightened up and again a fine fellow, a living gyrfalcon came near Katerina Lvovna, and again their dear life went on. But time rolled by not for them alone: ​​the offended husband Zinovy ​​Borisych was in a hurry home from a long absence.

Illustration for N. Leskov's essay "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". Artist N. Kuzmin

Chapter six

After dinner it was scorching heat in the yard, and the agile fly annoyed me unbearably. Katerina Lvova closed the window in the bedroom with shutters and covered it from the inside with a woolen shawl, and she went to rest with Sergei on a high merchant's bed. Katerina Lvovna sleeps and does not sleep, but only in this way she waxes her face, so her face is drenched in sweat, and she breathes so hotly and painfully. Katerina Lvovna senses that it is time for her to wake up; it's time to go to the garden to drink tea, but can't get up. Finally the cook came up and knocked on the door: "The samovar," he says, "is stalling under the apple tree." Katerina Lvovna threw herself violently and fondle the cat. And the cat between her and Sergei rubs, so nice, gray, tall and overweight, fat ... and a mustache like a quitrent steward. Katerina Lvovna twisted in his fluffy fur, and he climbs up to her with a snout: he pokes his dull muzzle into an elastic chest, and he sings such a quiet song, as if telling her about love. “And what else did this cat come here? - thinks Katerina Lvovna. - Here I put the cream on the window: by all means he, vile, will pop them out from me. Drive him out, ”she decided, and wanted to grab the cat and throw him away, but he, like a fog, just passes by her fingers. “However, where did this cat come from? - says Katerina Lvovna in a nightmare. "We've never had any cat in our bedroom, but here you see what it is!" She wanted to take the cat with her hand again, but again he was gone. “Oh, what is this? Is it enough, is it a cat? ”Thought Katerina Lvovna. She suddenly took her sleep and doze away from her altogether. Katerina Lvovna looked around the room - there was no cat, only handsome Sergei was lying and with his mighty hand presses her chest to his hot face.

Katerina Lvovna got up, sat down on the bed, kissed and kissed Sergei, pardoned, pardoned him, straightened the crumpled feather bed and went into the garden to drink tea; and the sun has already completely fallen, and a wonderful, magical evening descends on the hotly warmed earth.

- I fell asleep, - said Aksinya Katerina Lvovna and sat down on the carpet under a blossoming apple tree to drink tea. - And what is it, Aksinyushka, then? - she tortured the cook, wiping the saucer herself with a tea towel.

- What, mother?

- Not that in a dream, but in reality, the cat kept climbing to me.

- And what are you?

- Really, the cat was climbing.

Katerina Lvovna told how the cat climbed to her.

- And why did you caress him?

- Well, come on! I don't know why I caressed him.

- Wonderful, really! The cook exclaimed.

- I myself cannot wonder.

- It certainly seems like someone will hit you, or something else, something like that will come out.

- But what exactly is it?

- Well, exactly what - no one can explain this to you, dear friend, what exactly, but only something will happen.

“I saw everything in my dream for a month, and then this cat,” Katerina Lvovna continued.

- A month is a baby. Katerina Lvovna blushed.

- Shouldn't I send Sergey here to your grace? - Aksinya, who was asking for confidantes, tried to her.

“Well, then,” answered Katerina Lvovna, “and that's true, go send him: I'll give him tea here.

“That's it, I’m saying I’m going to send him,” Aksinya decided and rocked like a duck to the garden gate.

Katerina Lvovna also told Sergey about the cat.

- One dream, - Sergey answered.

- Why, this dream, before, Seryozha, never happened?

- Few things have never happened before! it used to be, I just look at you with an eye and dry, but now, get out! I own all your white body.

Sergei hugged Katerina Lvovna, twisted her in the air and, jokingly, threw her onto the fluffy carpet.

“Wow, my head is spinning,” said Katerina Lvovna. - Seryozha! come here; sit here near, - she called, basking and stretching in a luxurious pose.

The good fellow, bending over, entered under a low apple tree, flooded with white flowers, and sat down on the carpet at Katerina Lvovna's feet.

- And you pissed on me, Seryozha?

- Why not dry.

- How are you dry? Tell me about it.

- How can you tell about it? How can you explain how you dry? Yearned.

- Why didn't I, Seryozha, feel that you were killing me? They say they feel it. Sergei said nothing.

- And why did you sing the songs if you were bored of me? what? I suppose I heard - how you sang in the galdarei, - continued to ask, caressing, Katerina Lvovna.

- Why did you sing songs? The mosquito is out there and has been singing all its life, but it’s not with joy, ”Sergei answered dryly.

There was a pause. Katerina Lvovna was full of the highest delight from these confessions of Sergei.

She wanted to talk, but Sergei fumbled and was silent.

- Look, Seryozha, paradise, what a paradise! - exclaimed Katerina Lvovna, looking through the thick branches of a blossoming apple tree covering her at the clear blue sky, on which stood a full fine month.

Moonlight, making its way through the leaves and flowers of the apple tree, in the most bizarre, bright specks scattered over the face and the whole figure of Katerina Lvovna, who was lying supine; the air was quiet; only a light warm breeze slightly stirred the sleepy leaves and carried the delicate scent of flowering herbs and trees. There was a breath of something languishing, conducive to laziness, to bliss and to dark desires.

Katerina Lvovna, receiving no answer, fell silent again and kept looking through the pale pink flowers of the apple tree at the sky. Sergei was also silent; only he was not interested in the sky. With both hands wrapped around your knees. he gazed intently at his boots,

Golden night! Silence, light, aroma and wholesome, revitalizing warmth. Far beyond the ravine, behind the garden, someone started a resounding song; under a fence in a dense bird cherry tree a nightingale snapped and loudly pounded; a sleepy quail wandered in a cage on a high pole, and the fat horse sighed languidly outside the stable wall, and a cheerful pack of dogs swept along the pasture behind the garden fence without any noise and disappeared into the hideous black shadow of dilapidated old salt shops.

Katerina Lvovna raised herself on one elbow and looked at the tall garden grass; and the grass plays with the moonlight, crushing against the flowers and leaves of trees. All of it was gilded by these whimsical, light specks and so they flicker on it, and tremble, like living fire butterflies, or as if all the grass under the trees was taken up by a moon net and walks from side to side.

- Ah, Seryozhechka, what a charm! - exclaimed, looking around, Katerina Lvovna. Sergei turned his eyes indifferently.

- What are you, Seryozha, so unhappy? Or have you and my love bored you too?

- What a waste to say! - Sergey answered dryly and, bending down, lazily kissed Katerina Lvovna.

- You are a traitor, Seryozha, - Katerina Lvovna was jealous, - unnecessary.

“I don’t even take these words personally,” replied Sergei in a calm tone.

- Why are you kissing me like that? Sergei said nothing at all.

“These are only husbands and wives,” Katerina Lvovna continued, playing with his curls, “so dust is thrown from each other's lips. You kiss me so that from this apple tree that is above us, the young blossom falls to the ground. So, so, - Katerina Lvovna whispered, curling around her lover and kissing him with passion.

“Listen, Seryozha, what am I going to tell you,” Katerina Lvovna began after a short time, “why does it all say in one word about you that you are a traitor?

- Who is it about me to breach hunting?

- Well, people say.

- Maybe when he changed those who are completely unstable.

- And what, you fool, contacted the unworthy? one does not need to have love with an unworthy one.

- Talk to you! How is this business done by reasoning? One temptation works. You are with her quite simply, without any of these intentions you have transgressed your commandment, and she is already hanging on your neck. Here comes love!

- Listen, Seryozha! I am there, like the others were, I don’t know any of this, and I don’t want to know about it; Well, as soon as you coaxed me with this present love of ours, and you yourself know that how much I went to her with my desire, how much with your cunning, so if you, Seryozha, cheat on me, if I and for someone else, For whatever else you exchange, I am with you, my dear friend, forgive me - I will not part with you alive.

Sergei perked up.

- Why, Katerina Ilvovna! you are my clear light! He said. - You yourself see what our business is with you. You see how now you notice that I am pensive now, and you will not judge how I should not be pensive either. Maybe my whole heart sank in baked blood!

- Speak, speak, Seryozha, your grief.

- What is there to say! Right now, here's the first thing, God bless, your husband will run over, and you, Sergei Filipych, and go away, go to the backyard to the musicians and look from under the shed as Katerina Ilvovna's candle is burning in her bedroom, and how she is downy he interrupts the bed, but with his lawful Zinovy ​​and Borisych he fits into bed.

- It will not happen! Katerina Lvovna said cheerfully and waved her hand.

- How so it will not be! And as far as I understand, even without this it’s impossible for you. And I, too, Katerina Ilvovna, have my heart and can see my torment.

- Oh, well, you are full of everything about this.

Katerina Lvovna was pleased with this expression of Sergeyev's jealousy, and she, laughing, again took up her kisses.

- And repeatingly, - Sergey continued, quietly releasing his head from Katerina Lvovna's bare shoulders, - I must repeat it that my most insignificant state also makes me, maybe more than once and more than ten times, judge this and that. If I were, I will say, an equal to you, if I were some kind of gentleman or a merchant, I would be with you, Katerina Ilvovna, and never parted in my life. Well, you judge for yourself, what kind of person am I with you? Seeing now how they will take you by the white hands and lead you to the bedchamber, I must endure all this in my heart and, perhaps, even for myself, through this, for a whole century, become a despicable person. Katerina Ilvovna! I’m not like the others, for whom it’s all the same, if only he could get joy from a woman. I feel what love is and how it sucks my heart like a black snake ...

- What are you talking about all this to me? Katerina Lvovna interrupted him. She felt sorry for Sergei.

- Katerina Ilvovna! How not to interpret this? How not to interpret something? When, perhaps, everything has already been explained and written to them, when, perhaps, not only in some long distance, but even on the very next day, Sergei will not remain here in this courtyard?

- No, no, and don't talk about it, Seryozha! This will never happen, so that I will be left without you, - Katerina Lvovna reassured him with the same affection. - If only it will go to what business ... either he or I will not live, and you will be with me.

“There’s no way, Katerina Ilvovna, to follow,” replied Sergei, sadly and sadly shaking his head. - I'm not happy with my life myself for this love. I would love what is no more worth than myself, so I would be pleased. Should I have you with me in constant love? What honor is it for you to be a lover? I would like to be your husband in front of the holy eternal temple: so then, even though I always consider myself younger than you before you, I could nevertheless publicly denounce everyone at the extreme how much I deserve from my wife with my reverence for her ...

Katerina Lvovna was bewildered by these words of Sergei, this jealousy of his, this desire to marry her - a desire that is always pleasant to a woman, in spite of her shortest relationship with a man before marriage. Katerina Lvovna was now ready for Sergei into fire, into water, into dungeon and on the cross. ”He made her fall in love with him to the point that there was no measure of her devotion to him. She was distraught with her happiness; her blood boiled, and she could no longer listen to anything. She quickly pressed her hand over Sergeev's lips and, pressing his head to her chest, spoke:

- Well, I already know how I will make you a merchant and I will live with you quite properly. You just do not grieve me in vain, while our business has not yet come to us.

And again there were kisses and caresses.

The old clerk, who was sleeping in the barn, through a deep sleep, began to hear in the silence of the night now a whisper with a quiet laugh, as if where the playful children were advising how to laugh more angrily over frail old age; then the laughter is clear and cheerful, as if someone is tickled by lake mermaids. All this, splashing in the moonlight and rolling on the soft carpet, Katerina Lvovna frolicked and played with her young husband's clerk. A young white color from a curly apple tree fell, fell on them, and even stopped falling. In the meantime, the short summer night passed, the moon hid behind the steep roof of the tall barns and looked askance at the ground, dimmer and dimmer; a shrill feline duet came from the kitchen roof; then there was spitting, an angry snort, and after that two or three cats, breaking off, rolled noisily along the bunch of tesa put to the roof.

`` Let's go to bed, '' said Katerina Lvovna, slowly, as if broken, getting up from the carpet, and as she lay in only a shirt and white skirts, she walked through the quiet, deathly quiet merchant's courtyard, and Sergei followed her with a rug and a blouse, which she, being naughty, threw it off.

Chapter Seven

Only Katerina Lvovna blew out the candle and lay down completely undressed on a soft down jacket, sleep enveloped her head. Katerina Lvovna fell asleep, having played enough and had fun, so soundly that her leg was asleep and her arm was asleep; but again she hears through her sleep, as if the door had opened again and the old cat had fallen on the bed with a heavy scum.

- But what is this really punishment with this cat? - says tired Katerina Lvovna. - The door is now on purpose I myself, with my own hands on the key, the window is closed, and he is here again. I’ll throw him out now, ”Katerina Lvovna was about to get up, but her sleepy hands and feet do not serve her; and the cat walks all over it and snares in such a strange way, again as if he were pronouncing human words. Katerina Lvovna even began to shiver all over the place.

“No,” she thinks, “nothing more than by all means tomorrow we must take the Epiphany water on the bed, because some wise cat has got into the habit of me.”

And the cat of the kurna-murna is over her ear, buried its face and says: “What,” he says, “I’m a cat! Why on earth! You are very clever, Katerina Lvovna, you argue that I am not a cat at all, but I am an eminent merchant Boris Timofeich. I only became so bad now that all my intestines inside me were cracked from my daughter-in-law's treats. From that, - purrs, - I have diminished all over and now I appear as a cat to someone who knows little about me that I really am. Well, how can you live with us anyway, can you, Katerina Lvovna? How do you keep your law faithfully? I came from the cemetery on purpose to watch you and Sergei Filipych warm your husband's bed. Kurny-murny, I don't see anything. Don't be afraid of me: you see, from your treat, my eyes are popping out. Look into my eyes, my friend, do not be afraid! "

Katerina Lvovna glanced at her and shouted in good language. Between her and Sergey again lies the cat, and the head of that cat Boris Timofeich is in full size, as the deceased had, and instead of eyes, it turns and turns in different directions in a circle of fire!

Sergei woke up, calmed Katerina Lvovna and fell asleep again; but her whole dream has passed - and by the way.

She lies with open eyes and suddenly hears that it was as if someone climbed into the courtyard through the gate. So the dogs darted about, and even quieted down - they must have begun to caress. So another minute passed, and the iron tongue below clicked, and the door opened. “Either I can hear all this, or it is my Zinovy ​​Borisych who returned, because the door was unlocked with a spare key,” thought Katerina Lvovna and hastily pushed Sergei.

“Listen, Seryozha,” she said, and she raised herself on one elbow and put her ear on alert.

Along the stairs, quietly, stepping carefully from foot to foot, someone was really approaching the locked bedroom door.

Katerina Lvovna quickly jumped out of bed in one shirt and opened the window. At the same moment Sergei jumped barefoot onto the gallery and wrapped his legs around the pillar, along which it was not the first time he had descended from the mistress's bedroom.

- No, don't, don't! You lie down here ... don't go far, '' Katerina Lvovna whispered and threw Sergei out of the window his shoes and clothes, and she herself again ducked under the covers and waited.

Sergei obeyed Katerina Lvovna: he did not dart down the post, but took shelter under the splint on the gallery.

Katerina Lvovna, meanwhile, hears her husband come to the door and, holding his breath, listens. She can even hear his jealous heart beating faster; but it is not pity, but an evil laugh that makes Katerina Lvovna understand.

Look for yesterday, she thinks to herself, smiling and breathing a virgin baby.

This went on for about ten minutes; but, finally, Zinovy ​​Borisych got tired of standing outside the door and listening to his wife sleeping: he knocked.

Who's there? - not very soon, and as if in a sleepy voice called Katerina Lvovna.

- Ours, - Zinovy ​​Borisych responded.

- Is that you, Zinovy ​​Borisych?

- Well, I! As if you can't hear!

Katerina Lvovna jumped up as she lay in her shirt, let her husband into the room and dived into the warm bed again.

“It’s getting cold before dawn,” she said, wrapping herself up in a blanket.

Zinovy ​​Borisych went up looking around, prayed, lit a candle and looked around again.

- How do you live, can you? He asked his wife.

“Nothing,” answered Katerina Lvovna, and, getting up, began to put on a swing-open chintz blouse.

- I suppose to put the samovar? She asked.

- - Nothing, scream Aksinya, let him put it.

Katerina Lvovna grabbed her shoes on her bare foot and ran out. She was gone half an hour ago. At this time, she herself inflated the samovar and quietly fluttered to Sergei on the gallery.

“Stay here,” she whispered.

- How long to sit? - also asked Seryozha in a whisper.

- Oh, how stupid you are! Sit while I tell you.

And Katerina Lvovna herself put him in his old place.

And Sergei from here from the gallery hears everything that is happening in the bedroom. He hears again how the door knocked and Katerina Lvovna went up to her husband again. Everything from word to word is heard.

- What did you do there for a long time? - Zinovy ​​Borisych asks his wife.

- I put the samovar on, - she replies calmly. There was a pause. Sergei hears Zinovy ​​Borisych hanging his coat on a hanger. So he washes himself, snorts and splashes water in all directions; here he asked for a towel; speeches begin again.

- Well, how did you bury the darling? - the husband asks.

“So,” the wife says, “they died, and they buried them.

- And what kind of awesomeness is this!

“God knows him,” answered Katerina Lvovna, and rattled her cups.

Zinovy ​​Borisych walked sadly up and down the room.

- Well, how did you spend your time here? - Zinovy ​​Borisych asks his wife again.

- Our joys, tea, are known to everyone: we don’t go to balls and visit tiatrists so much.

“And it’s as if you’ve had a little joy for your husband,” Zinovy ​​Borisych cheered up with a sidelong glance.

- Not young, too, we are with you, so that we are so crazy without reason to meet. How else to rejoice? I’m bothering, running for your pleasure.

Katerina Lvovna again ran out to take the samovar and again dropped in to Sergei, tugged at him and said:

"Don't yawn, Seryozha!"

Sergei did not know what all this would be for, but, nevertheless, he became ready.

Katerina Lvovna has returned, and Zinovy ​​Borisych kneels on the bed and hangs his silver watch with a beaded string on the wall above the headboard.

- Why are you, Katerina Lvovna, in a lonely position spread the bed in two? - somehow surprisingly he suddenly asked his wife.

“And everyone was waiting for you,” Katerina Lvovna replied, looking calmly at him.

- And for that we humbly thank you ... But now where did this object come from on your feather bed?

Zinovy ​​Borisych lifted Sergei's little woolen belt from the sheet and held it by the tip in front of his wife's eyes.

Katerina Lvovna did not hesitate in the least.

“In the garden,” she says, “I found it and tied up my skirt.

- Yes! - said Zinovy ​​Borisych with special emphasis - we also heard something about your skirts.

Why did you hear that?

- Yes, everything about your good deeds.

- There are no such cases of mine.

“Well, we’ll sort it out, we’ll sort it out,” Zinovy ​​Borisych replied, moving his wife's cup of tea.

Katerina Lvovna said nothing.

“We’ll do these things of yours, Katerina Lvovna,” Zinovy ​​Borisych said after a long pause, pointing his eyebrows at his wife.

- It doesn't hurt, your Katerina Lvovna is fluffy. She's not so scared of it, - she answered.

- Nothing - drove, - his wife answered.

- Well, you look at me! Something you have become very talkative here!

- And why shouldn't I be fluent? - responded Katerina Lvovna.

- I would look after myself more.

“I don’t have to watch myself. Few people will tell you something with a long tongue, and I have to endure all sorts of abuse! Here's more news too!

- Not long tongues, but here it is true about your cupids something is known.

- About some of my cupids? - Katerina Lvovna shouted, unfeignedly flushing.

- I know which ones.

- And you know, so well: you speak more clearly! Zinovy ​​Borisych was silent and again pushed the empty cup to his wife.

“Apparently, there’s nothing to talk about,” Katerina Lvovna responded with contempt, recklessly throwing a teaspoon on her husband's saucer. - Well, tell me, who did you report to? who is my lover in front of you?

- You know, don't be in a hurry.

- What do you think about Sergei, is there anything in the way?

- We'll find out, we'll find out, Katerina Lvovna. No one has removed our power over you, and no one can remove it ... Talk yourself ...

- And them! I can’t stand this, ”Katerina Lvovna cried out, gritting her teeth, and, turning pale as a sheet, suddenly jumped out the door.

- Well, here he is, - she said after a few seconds, leading into the room by the sleeve of Sergei, - Ask him and me, what you know. Maybe something else and more than that you find out what you want?

Zinovy ​​Borisych was even taken aback. He looked first at Sergei, who was standing by the lintel, then at his wife, who calmly sat down with crossed arms on the edge of the bed, and did not understand what it was getting to.

- What are you doing, snake? - forcibly he was going to utter, without getting up from the chair.

“Ask what you know so well about,” answered Katerina Lvovna boldly. - You planned to scare me with a boil, - she continued, blinking her eyes significantly, - so this will never happen; and that I, perhaps, even before your promises, knew what to do with you, so I will do it.

- What is it? out! - Zinovy ​​Borisych shouted at Sergei.

- How! - Katerina Lvovna mimicked. She nimbly closed the door, thrust the key into her pocket, and again lay down on the bed in her little vest.

“Come on, Seryozhechka, come on, come on, dear,” she beckoned to her clerk.

Sergei shook his curls and boldly sat down beside the hostess.

- God! Oh my God! What is it? What are you doing, barbarians ?! Cried Zinovy ​​Borisych, all crimson and getting up from his chair.

- What? Do you not like it? Look, look, my jasper falcon, what a wonderful thing!

Katerina Lvovna laughed and kissed Sergei passionately in front of her husband.

At the same instant, a deafening slap in the face flared on her cheek, and Zinovy ​​Borisych rushed to the open window.

Chapter Eight

- Ah ... ah, that's it! .. well, dear friend, thank you. I was just waiting for this! Cried Katerina Lvovna. - Well, now it’s obvious ... be it my way, not your way ...

With one movement, she threw Sergei away from her, quickly rushed at her husband and, before Zinovy ​​Borisych could reach the window, grabbed him from behind with her thin fingers by the throat and, like a raw sheaf of hemp, threw him on the floor.

Rumbling heavily and banging the back of his head on the floor with all his might, Zinovy ​​Borisych was completely distraught. He had never expected such a quick denouement. The first violence used against him by his wife showed him that she was determined to do anything just to get rid of him, and that his current position is extremely dangerous. Zinovy ​​Borisych realized all this in an instant at the moment of his fall and did not cry out, knowing that his voice would not reach anyone's ear, but would only hasten things even further. He silently rolled his eyes and stopped them with an expression of anger, reproach and suffering on his wife, whose thin fingers tightly squeezed his throat.

Zinovy ​​Borisych did not defend himself; his hands, with tightly clenched fists, lay outstretched and twitched convulsively. One of them was completely free, the other Katerina Lvovna pressed to the floor with her knee.

“Hold him,” she whispered indifferently to Sergei, herself turning to her husband.

Sergei sat down on the owner, pressed both his hands with his knees and wanted to grab Katerina Lvovna by the throat under Katerina Lvovna's arms, but at the same instant he himself cried out desperately. At the sight of his offender, bloody revenge raised all his last strength in Zinovia Borisych: he dashed terribly, pulled out his crushed hands from under Sergey's knees and, clutching Sergei's black curls, like an animal bit his throat with his teeth. But that was not for long: Zinovy ​​Borisych immediately groaned heavily and dropped his head.

Katerina Lvovna, pale, hardly breathing at all, stood over her husband and lover; in her right hand there was a heavy cast candlestick, which she held by the upper end, the heavy part downward. Scarlet blood ran down the temple and cheek of Zinovy ​​Borisych like a thin string.

“Priest,” Zinovy ​​Borisych moaned stupidly, throwing his head back with disgust as far as possible from Sergei sitting on him. “Confess,” he said even more indistinctly, trembling and glancing sideways at the warm blood thickening under his hair.

“You’ll be good,” whispered Katerina Lvovna.

- Well, it's enough to dig with him, - she said to Sergei, - grab his throat well.

Zinovy ​​Borisych wheezed.

Katerina Lvovna bent down, squeezed Sergeev's hands, which lay on her husband's throat, with her own hands, and laid her ear to his chest. After five quiet minutes, she got up and said: "Enough, it will be with him."

Sergei also got up and relaxed. Zinovy ​​Borisych lay dead, with a squeezed throat and a split temple. There was a small speck of blood under the head on the left side, which, however, no longer poured from the caked and hairy wound.

Sergei took Zinovy ​​Borisych to the cellar, set up underground in the same stone pantry, where the late Boris Timofeich had locked him himself, Sergei, and returned to the watchtower. At this time, Katerina Lvovna, rolling up the sleeves of her undershirt and tucking her hem high, carefully washed away the bloody stain left by Zinovy ​​Borisych on the floor of her bedchamber with a washcloth and soap. The water was still hot in the samovar, from which Zinovy ​​Borisych steamed his master's darling with poisoned tea, and the stain was washed away without a trace.

Katerina Lvovna took a copper rinse cup and a soapy washcloth.

“Come on, shine,” she said to Sergei, walking toward the door. “Below, below, shine,” she said, carefully examining all the floorboards along which Sergei was supposed to drag Zinovy ​​Borisych to the very pit.

There were only two spots on the painted floor that had two tiny specks the size of a cherry. Katerina Lvovna rubbed them with a washcloth, and they disappeared.

“Here you are, don’t go to your wife as a thief, don’t look for you,” said Katerina Lvovna, straightening up and looking in the direction of the pantry.

“Now the Sabbath,” Sergei said, and shuddered at the sound of his own voice.

When they returned to the bedroom, a thin ruddy streak of dawn cut through in the east and, gilding the lightly dressed apple-trees, peeped through the green sticks of the garden lattice into Katerina Lvovna's room.

Through the courtyard, in a sheepskin coat thrown over his shoulders, crossing himself and yawning, the old clerk trudged from the barn into the kitchen.

Katerina Lvovna carefully tugged at the shutter that walked on a string and looked at Sergei attentively, as if wishing to see his soul.

“Well, now you are a merchant,” she said, putting her white hands on Sergei’s shoulders.

Sergei did not answer her.

Sergei's lips trembled, and he himself had a fever. Katerina Lvovna's only lips were cold.

Two days later, Sergei had large calluses on his hands from a crowbar and a heavy spade; but Zinovy ​​Borisych was already so well tidied up in his cellar that without the help of his widow or her lover no one would have found him until the general resurrection.

Chapter nine

Sergei walked around, wrapping his throat with a punch handkerchief, and complained that his throat was blocked. Meanwhile, before Sergei healed the marks laid by Zinovy ​​Borisych's teeth, Katerina Lvovna's husband was missed. Sergei himself began to talk about him even more often than others. In the evening he will sit down with the fellows on a bench near the gate and start: "Why, however, fix, guys, our master is not yet present?"

Well done, too, are amazed.

And then the news came from the mill that the owner had hired horses and drove off to the yard long ago. The driver who drove him said that Zinovy ​​Borisych was as if in disorder and let him go somehow miraculously: before reaching the city about three versts, he got up from the cart under the monastery, took the kitty and went. Hearing such a story, everyone was even more excited.

Zinovy ​​Borisych disappeared, and that's all.

Searches went, but nothing was revealed: the merchant seemed to have sunk into the water. According to the testimony of the arrested coachman, they only learned that over the river under the monastery the merchant got up and walked. The matter was not clarified, and in the meantime Katerina Lvovna was getting along with Sergei, due to her widowhood, at large. They wrote at random that Zinovy ​​Borisych was here and there, but Zinovy ​​Borisych still did not return, and Katerina Lvovna knew better than anyone else that it was in no way possible for him to return.

A month passed like this, and another, and a third, and Katerina Lvovna felt herself in a burden.

“Our capital will be, Seryozhechka: I have an heir,” she said and went to complain to the Duma that this way and that, she feels that she’s pregnant, and business has begun to stagnate: let her be allowed to everything.

Commercial business should not be lost. Katerina Lvovna is a legal wife to her husband; there are no debts in mind, well, and should, therefore, allow it. And they did.

Katerina Lvovna lives, reigns, and Seryoga was already called Sergei Filipych after her; and then bang, neither from there nor from here, a new attack. They write to the mayor from Lieven that Boris Timofeich did not trade for all of his capital, that more than his own money, he had in circulation the money of his young nephew, Fyodor Zakharov Lyamin, and that this matter should be sorted out and not left in the hands of one Katerina Lvovna. This news came, the head of Katerina Lvovna spoke about it, and then a week later bam - an old woman with a little boy comes from Lieven.

- I, - he says, - to the late Boris Timofeich's cousin, and this is my nephew Fyodor Lyamin.

Katerina Lvovna received them.

Sergei, observing this arrival from the courtyard and the reception given by Katerina Lvovna to the newcomers, turned as pale as a motherfucker.

- What are you? - asked his mistress, noticing his dead pallor, when he entered after the newcomers and, looking at them, stopped in the hall.

“Nothing,” the clerk replied, turning from the hall into the vestibule. “I think how wonderful these Livny are,” he finished with a sigh, closing the front door behind him.

- Well, what about now? Sergei Filipych asked Katerina Lvovna, sitting with her at night at a samovar. - Now, Katerina Ilvovna, all our business is going to dust.

- Why is it so dust, Seryozha?

- Because all this will now go to the section. What will be the boss here over an empty business?

- Isn't it enough for you, Seryozha?

- Yes, not about what happened to me; and I am only thinking that we will not be happy.

- How so? Why won't we, Seryozha, be happy?

“Because, because of my love for you, I would like, Katerina Ilvovna, to see you as a real lady, and not just as you lived before,” replied Sergei Filipych. - And now, on the contrary, it turns out that with a decrease in capital, we, and even against the previous one, should still occur much lower.

- Yes, do not give it to me, Seryozhechka, do you need it?

- It is certain, Katerina Ilvovna, that perhaps this is not at all of interest to you, well, only for me, as I respect you, and again opposite to human eyes, mean and envious, it will be terribly painful. You will be there as you please, of course, but I dispose of my own considerations so that I can never be happy through these circumstances.

And Sergei went and went to play Katerina Lvovna on this note, that through Fedya Lyamin he became the most unfortunate person, being deprived of the opportunity to exalt and distinguish her, Katerina Lvovna, in front of all his merchants. Sergey reduced this every time to the fact that if it weren't for this Fedya, she, Katerina Lvovna, would give birth to a child up to nine months after her husband disappeared, she would get all the capital and then there would be no end to their happiness.

Chapter ten

And then suddenly Sergei stopped completely talking about the heir. As soon as the speech about him in the lips of the Sergeevs ceased, Fedya Lyamin sat down in the mind and heart of Katerina Lvovna. Even thoughtful and unkind to Sergei himself, she became. Is she asleep, will she do the housework, or will she start praying to God, and all she has on her mind is: “How is this? For what, in fact, should I lose my capital through it? I suffered so much, took so much sin on my soul, - thinks Katerina Lvovna, - and he came without any trouble and takes it away from me ... And good would be a man, otherwise a child, a boy ... "

Early frosts began in the yard. Of course, no rumors came from anywhere about Zinovia Borisych. Katerina Lvovna grew fat and went about brooding; they were drumming around the city at her expense, getting on, how and why young Izmailova was still not a native, she was losing weight and growing thin, and suddenly she went swelling in front. And the adolescent co-heir Fedya Lyamin, in a light squirrel sheepskin coat, was walking around the yard and breaking ice through the potholes.

- Well, Feodor Ignatyevich! well, the merchant's son! The cook Aksinya used to shout at him, running around the yard. “Is it for you, the merchant’s son, to dig in puddles?”

And the co-heir, who embarrassed Katerina Lvovna with her subject, kicked himself with a serene goat and slept even more serenely opposite the grandmother who nursed him, not thinking or thinking that he had crossed the road to someone or had diminished his happiness.

Finally Fedya ran into chicken pox, and a cold pain in his chest became attached to it, and the boy took to his bed. They treated him first with herbs and ants, and then sent for a doctor.

The doctor began to visit, began to prescribe medications, they began to give them to the boy by the hour, then the grandmother herself, otherwise she would ask for Katerina Lvovna.

- Work hard, - she will say, - Katerinushka, - you, mother, you are a heavy man, you yourself are waiting for God's judgment; work hard.

Katerina Lvovna did not refuse the old woman. Whether that goes to the all-night vigil to pray for "the adolescent Theodore lying on the sickbed" or to take out a piece for him at early mass, Katerina Lvovna sits with the patient and gives him a drink, and will give him the medicine on time.

So the old woman went to Vespers and to the All-Night Vigil on the Feast of the Introduction, and asked Katerinushka to look after Fedyushka. The boy was already getting smothered at that time.

Katerina Lvovna went up to Fedya, and he sits on the bed in his squirrel sheepskin coat and reads the patericon.

- What are you reading this, Fedya? Katerina Lvovna asked him, sitting down in a chair.

- Life, auntie, I'm reading.

- Amusing?

- Very, aunty, amusing.

Katerina Lvovna propped up her hand and began to look at Fyodor, who was moving her lips, and suddenly, like demons, she broke loose, and at once her former thoughts about how much harm this boy was causing her and how good it would be if he were not there.

“But what,” thought Katerina Lvovna, “after all, he is sick; they give him medicine ... you never know what is in the disease ... I’ll just say that the doctor didn’t take such a medicine ”.

- Is it time for you, Fedya, medicine?

“Well, read it,” Katerina Lvovna uttered, and, looking around the room with a cold glance, stopped him at the windows painted with frost.

“We must tell the windows to close,” she said, and went out into the living room, and from there into the hall, and from there to her upstairs and sat down.

Five minutes later, Sergei silently entered the same room upstairs in a Romanov sheepskin coat trimmed with a fluffy cat.

- Have you closed the windows? Katerina Lvovna asked him.

- They closed it, - Sergey answered abruptly, took off the candle with tongs and stood by the stove. There was a silence.

- Will the all-night vigil be over soon? - asked Katerina Lvovna.

- The holiday is big tomorrow: they will serve for a long time, - answered Sergey. There was a pause again.

- Go to Fedya: he is there alone, - said Katerina Lvovna, getting up.

- One? - asked her, glancing from under his brows, Sergei.

- One, - she answered him in a whisper, - and what? And from eye to eye they flashed like some kind of lightning network; but no one said another word to each other.

Katerina Lvovna went downstairs, walked through the empty rooms: everything was quiet everywhere; the lamps are quietly burning; her own shadow scatters the walls; the shuttered windows began to thaw and wept. Fedya sits and reads. Seeing Katerina Lvovna, he only said:

- Auntie, put this book down, please, and here's the one from the model book, please.

Katerina Lvovna fulfilled her nephew's request and handed him the book.

- Wouldn't you fall asleep, Fedya?

- No, auntie, I'll wait for my grandmother.

- Why should you wait for her?

“She promised me a blessed loaf of bread from the all-night vigil.

Katerina Lvovna suddenly turned pale, her own child turned under her heart for the first time, and a chill felt in her chest. She stood in the middle of the room and went out, rubbing her cold hands.

- Well! - she whispered, quietly ascending into her bedroom and again finding Sergei in the same position by the stove.

- What? - Sergei asked barely audibly and choked.

- He's alone.

Sergei raised his eyebrows and began to breathe heavily.

“Let's go,” Katerina Lvovna said, turning impulsively to the door.

Sergei quickly took off his boots and asked:

- What can I take?

“Nothing,” Katerina Lvovna answered with one breath, and quietly led him by the hand.

Chapter eleven

The sick boy shuddered and dropped the book to his knees when Katerina Lvovna came up to him for the third time.

- What are you, Fedya?

“Oh, I, auntie, was frightened of something,” he answered, smiling anxiously and snuggling into the corner of the bed.

- Why are you scared?

- Who was that with you, auntie?

- Where? Nobody came with me, dear.

The boy reached over to the foot of the bed and, squinting his eyes, looked towards the door through which his aunt entered, and calmed down.

“It must have seemed to me so,” he said.

Katerina Lvovna stopped, leaning her elbows on the head wall of her nephew's bed.

Fedya looked at his aunt and noticed to her that for some reason she was quite pale.

In response to this remark, Katerina Lvovna coughed arbitrarily and looked expectantly at the drawing-room door. There only one floorboard cracked quietly.

- The life of my angel, Saint Theodore Stratilates, aunt, I am reading. Here he pleased God. Katerina Lvovna stood in silence.

“Do you want to sit down, aunty, and I’ll read it to you again?” - caressing her nephew.

“Wait, I'll just fix the lamp in the hall,” answered Katerina Lvovna, and went out with a hurried gait.

The quietest whisper was heard in the drawing-room; but in the midst of the general silence he reached the sensitive ear of the child.

- Auntie! but what is it? Who are you whispering with? - cried out, with tears in his voice, the boy. “Come here, auntie: I'm afraid,” he called even more tearfully after a second, and he heard that Katerina Lvovna said “well,” in the living room, which the boy took to him.

“I don’t want to, auntie.

- No, you, Fedya, listen to me, lie down, it's time; lie down, '' repeated Katerina Lvovna.

- What are you, auntie! yes I do not want at all.

“No, you lie down, lie down,” Katerina Lvovna said in a changed, unsteady voice, and, seizing the boy under her arms, laid him on the headboard.

At that moment Fedya screamed furiously: he saw entering pale, barefoot Sergei.

Katerina Lvovna took hold of the frightened child's mouth, opened in horror, with her palm and shouted:

- Well, rather; keep it straight so you don't fight!

Sergei took Fedya by the legs and arms, and Katerina Lvovna, in one movement, covered the sufferer's childish face with a large downy pillow and herself leaned on her with her strong, elastic breast.

For about four minutes there was a grave silence in the room.

“It's over,” Katerina Lvovna whispered and had just got up to put everything in order, as the walls of a quiet house, which had concealed so many crimes, shook from deafening blows: the windows rattled, the floors swayed, the chains of hanging lamps trembled and wandered along the walls in fantastic shadows.

Sergei trembled and ran as fast as he could.

Katerina Lvovna rushed after him, and the noise and din behind them. It seemed that some unearthly forces shook the sinful house to its foundations.

Katerina Lvovna was afraid that, driven by fear, Sergei would run out into the yard and betray himself with his fright; but he rushed straight to the tower.

- Running up the stairs, Sergei in the dark cracked his forehead against the half-closed door and flew down with a groan, completely mad with superstitious fear.

- Zinovy ​​Borisych, Zinovy ​​Borisych! He muttered, flying headlong down the stairs and dragging the knocked down Katerina Lvovna with him.

- Where? She asked.

- Here it flew over us with an iron sheet. Here, here it is again! ah, ah! - Sergei shouted, - thunders, thunders again.

Now it was very clear that many hands were knocking on all the windows from the street, and someone was banging on the doors.

- Fool! get up, you fool! - Katerina Lvovna shouted, and with these words she herself fluttered to Fedya, laid his dead head in the most natural sleeping position on the pillows and with a firm hand unlocked the doors, into which a lot of people bursting.

It was a terrible sight. Katerina Lvovna glanced above the crowd besieging the porch, while strangers climb into the courtyard in whole rows over the high fence, and on the street there is a groan of people talking.

Before Katerina Lvovna had time to figure out anything, the people surrounding the porch crumpled her and threw her into their chambers.

Chapter twelve

And all this anxiety happened in the following way: for the people at the all-night vigil on the twelveth feast day in all the churches, albeit a county, but rather large and industrial city where Katerina Lvovna lived, it happens apparently invisibly, and even in the church where tomorrow is the throne, even and in the fence there is nowhere for an apple to fall. Singers usually sing here, assembled from merchant fellows and guided by a special choir, also from lovers of vocal art.

Our people are devout, zealous towards the Church of God, and for all this people are artistic in their measure: the splendor of the church and harmonious "organist" singing constitute for him one of his highest and purest pleasures. Where the singers sing, almost half of the city gathers there, especially the commercial youth: clerks, fellows, artisans from factories, factories and the owners themselves with their halves — all will be gathered into one church; everyone wants to stand at least on the porch, at least under the window in the scorching heat or in the bitter frost to listen to the octave organ, and the arrogant tenor casts out the most capricious Varshlaks (In the Oryol province, singers are so called forships (ed.).).

In the parish church of the Izmailovsky house there was an altar in honor of the introduction of the Most Holy Theotokos into the temple, and therefore in the evening on the day of this holiday, at the very time of the described incident with Fedya, the youth of the whole city was in this church and, dispersing in a noisy crowd, talked about the merits of the famous tenor and the occasional awkwardness of an equally famous bass.

But not everyone was interested in these vocal questions: there were people in the crowd who were interested in other questions as well.

- But, guys, they also say wonderful about young Izmailikha, - a young machinist, brought by a merchant from St. Petersburg to his steam mill, spoke up, approaching the Izmailovs' house, - they say, - he said, cupids go every minute ...

“Everyone knows that,” answered the sheepskin coat covered with blue nanki. “She wasn’t even in the church anymore.”

- What church? Such a wicked woman has become depleted that she is not afraid of God, or conscience, or human eyes.

- Oh, look, they have a light here, - said the driver, pointing to a light strip between the shutters.

- Look in the crack, what are they doing there? - several voices pounded.

The machinist leaned on two comradely shoulders and had just put his eyes to the set alignment, as he shouted in good obscenities:

- My brothers, darlings! strangle someone here, strangle!

And the driver desperately nailed the shutter with his hands. About ten people followed his example and, jumping to the windows, also began to work with their fists.

The crowd grew every moment, and the known to us siege of the Izmailovsky house took place.

- I saw it myself, I saw it with my own eyes, - the machinist testified over the dead Fedya, - the baby was thrown on the bed, and the two of them strangled him.

Sergei was taken to the unit that evening, and Katerina Lvovna was taken to her upper room and two sentries were assigned to her.

The Izmailovs' house was unbearably cold: the stoves were not heated, the door did not stand on the span: one dense crowd of curious people replaced another. Everyone went to look at Fedya lying in the coffin and at another large coffin, tightly covered on the roof with a wide shroud. On Fedya's forehead was a white satin rim, which covered the red scar left after opening the skull. A forensic autopsy revealed that Fedya had died of suffocation, and Sergei, brought to his corpse, at the very first words of the priest about the Last Judgment and the punishment of the unrepentant, burst into tears and sincerely confessed not only to Fedya's murder, but also asked to dig out what he had buried without burial Zinovy ​​Borisych. The corpse of Katerina Lvovna's husband, buried in dry sand, had not yet completely decomposed: it was taken out and placed in a large coffin. To everyone's horror, Sergei named the young mistress his participant in both of these crimes. Katerina Lvovna answered all the questions only: “I don’t know anything of this and I don’t know”. Sergei was forced to incriminate her at a confrontation. Having heard his confessions, Katerina Lvovna looked at him with mute amazement, but without anger, and then said indifferently:

- If he wanted to say this, then I have nothing to lock myself in: I killed.

- For what? They asked her.

“For him,” she answered, pointing at Sergei who had hung his head.

The criminals were seated in prison, and the terrible case, which attracted everyone's attention and indignation, was resolved very soon. At the end of February, Sergei and the third merchant guild, the widow Katerina Lvovna, were announced in the criminal chamber that it had been decided to punish them with whips on the trading square of their city and then send both of them to hard labor. In early March, on a cold frosty morning, the executioner counted out the prescribed number of blue-purple scars on Katerina Lvovna's bare white back, and then beat off a portion on Sergei's shoulders and stamped his handsome face with three convict marks.

During all this time Sergei, for some reason, aroused much more general sympathy than Katerina Lvovna. Smeared and bloody, he fell, descending from the black scaffold, and Katerina Lvovna got down quietly, trying only so that the thick shirt and the coarse prisoner retinue did not adhere to her torn back.

Even in the prison hospital, when her child was given to her there, she only said: "Well, him at all!" and, turning against the wall, without any groan, without any complaint, she collapsed with her chest on the hard bunk.

Chapter thirteen

The party, which Sergei and Katerina Lvovna got into, played when spring was listed only according to the calendar, and the sun, according to the popular proverb, "shone brightly, but not warmly."

The child of Katerina Lvovna was given to the upbringing of an old woman, the sister of Boris Timofeich, since, being considered the legitimate son of the murdered husband of the criminal, the baby remained the only heir to the entire Izmailovsky state. Katerina Lvovna was very pleased with this and gave the child away very indifferently. Her love for her father, like the love of many overly passionate women, did not pass in any part of it onto the child.

However, for her there was no light, no darkness, no thinness, no good, no boredom, no joys; she did not understand anything, did not love anyone, and did not love herself. She was looking forward only to the performance of the party on the road, where she again hoped to see her Seryozhechka, and forgot to think about the child.

Katerina Lvovna's hopes did not deceive her: heavily bound in chains, the branded Sergei went out in one group with her outside the prison gates.

A man gets used to every disgusting position as much as possible, and in every position he retains as much as possible the ability to pursue his meager joys; but Katerina Lvovna had nothing to adapt to: she sees Sergei again, and with him her hard labor is blooming with happiness.

Katerina Lvovna carried little with her in a pestryadin sack of valuables, and even less cash. But even this, still far from reaching Nizhny Novgorod, she handed out to the milestones for the opportunity to walk along the road with Sergei and stand with him hugging for an hour dark night in a cold corner of a narrow staging corridor.

Only Katerina Lvovna's stamped friend became something very unkind to her: whatever he says to her, how he rips her off, secret meetings with her, for which she does not eat or drink, gives her the necessary quarter from her skinny wallet, does not value very much and does not even I used to say:

- Instead of wiping the corners in the corridor with me, you would give me this money, which you gave to the Under.

- I gave everything to a quarter-wheel, Seryozhenka, - Katerina Lvovna justified herself.

- A quarter is not money? You lifted a lot of them on the road, these quarters, and you already packed tea, a lot.

- But, Seryozha, we saw each other.

- Well, is it easy, what a joy to see after such agony! I would have cursed my life, not that my date.

- And to me, Seryozha, it doesn't matter: I just want to see you.

“All this is nonsense,” replied Sergei.

Katerina Lvovna sometimes bit her lips to the point of blood at such answers, and sometimes tears of anger and vexation welled up on her non-weeping eyes in the darkness of night meetings; but she endured everything, kept silent and wanted to deceive herself.

Thus, in these new relations with each other, they reached Nizhny Novgorod. Here their party merged with the party on its way to Siberia from the Moscow highway.

In this large party, among the multitude of all the people in the women's department, there were two very interesting faces: one was a soldier Fiona from Yaroslavl, such a wonderful, gorgeous woman, tall, with a thick black braid and languid brown eyes, like a mysterious veil with thick eyelashes; and the other - a seventeen-year-old, young-faced blonde with pale pink skin, a tiny mouth, dimples on fresh cheeks and golden-blond curls, capriciously running out onto her forehead from under the prison's motley bandage. This girl was called Sonetka in the party.

The beauty Fiona had a soft and lazy disposition. Everyone in her party knew her, and none of the men was particularly happy about achieving success with her, and no one was upset when they saw how she presented another seeker with the same success.

“Aunt Fiona is a kind woman, no one is offended by her,” the prisoners said jokingly in one voice.

But Sonetka was of a completely different kind.

They talked about this:

- Loach: curls around the hands, but does not fit into the hands. Sonetka had a taste, a choice, and even, perhaps, a very strict choice; she wanted passion to be brought to her not in the form of a russula, but under a piquant, spicy seasoning, with suffering and with sacrifices; and Fiona had a Russian simplicity, which is even too lazy to tell someone: "go away" and who knows only one thing, that she is a woman. Such women are highly valued in robber bands, prison parties and St. Petersburg social democratic communes.

The appearance of these two women in the same connecting party with Sergei and Katerina Lvovna was tragic for the latter.

Chapter fourteen

From the very first days of the joint movement of the united party from Nizhny to Kazan, Sergei began to visibly curry favor with the soldier's Fiona and did not suffer unsuccessfully. The languid beauty Fiona did not weary Sergei, just as she did not torment anyone due to her kindness. At the third or fourth stage, from early twilight, Katerina Lvovna arranged for herself, through bribery, a date with Seryozhechka and lay awake: everyone was waiting for the underdeck on duty to come up, gently push her and whisper: "Run quickly." The door opened once, and a woman darted into the corridor; the door opened again, and soon jumped up from the bunk and another prisoner also disappeared behind the escort; at last they pulled at the retinue with which Katerina Lvovna was covered. The young woman quickly got up from the bunks draped by the prisoner's sides, threw her retinue over her shoulders and pushed the escort standing in front of her.

When Katerina Lvovna walked along the corridor, only in one place, dimly lit by a blind dish, she came across two or three pairs, who did not allow anything to be noticed from afar. As Katerina Lvovna passed the male prisoner's room, through the window cut in the door, she heard restrained laughter.

“Look, they’re fattening,” muttered Katerina Lvovna's guide and, holding her by the shoulders, poked her into a corner and left.

Katerina Lvovna felt her retinue and beard with her hand; her other hand touched a hot woman's face.

- What are you doing here? who are you with?

Katerina Lvovna pulled the bandage off her rival in the dark. She slid to the side, rushed and, stumbling on someone in the corridor, flew.

From the male cell came a friendly laugh.

- The villain! - whispered Katerina Lvovna and hit Sergei in the face with the ends of the kerchief torn from the head of his new girlfriend.

Sergei was about to raise his hand; but Katerina Lvovna flashed lightly down the corridor and grabbed her door. The laughter from the men's room after her was repeated so loudly that the sentry, who stood apathetically against the bowl and spat into his boot, raised his head and roared:

Katerina Lvovna lay down in silence and lay there until morning. She wanted to say to herself: “I don’t love him,” and felt that she loved him even more ardently, even more. And now in her eyes everything is drawn, everything is drawn, how his palm trembled under her head, how his other hand hugged her hot shoulders.

The poor woman began to cry and silently called the same palm so that it would be under her head at that moment and that his other hand would embrace her hysterically trembling shoulders.

- Well, one day, give me my bandage, - the soldier Fiona prompted her in the morning.

- Oh, is that you? ..

- Give it back, please!

- Why are you separating?

- Why am I separating you? What kind of love or interest is it really to get angry?

Katerina Lvovna thought for a second, then took out the bandage that had been torn off at night from under the pillow and, throwing it to Fiona, turned to the wall.

She felt better.

“Ugh,” she said to herself, “can I really be jealous of this dyed pelvis! Get lost! It’s bad for me to apply myself to her.

`` And you, Katerina Ilvovna, that's what, '' he said, walking the road the next day, Sergei, `` please understand that one time I am not Zinovy ​​Borisych for you, but another that you are no longer a great merchant's wife: so don’t look , do mercy. Goat's horns will not be used in bargaining.

Katerina Lvovna did not answer this, and for a week she walked without exchanging a word or a glance with Sergei. As offended, she still maintained her character and did not want to take the first step towards reconciliation in this first quarrel with Sergei.

Meanwhile, at times, as Katerina Lvovna was angry with Sergei, Sergei began to cheat and flirt with Little White Sonetka. Now he bows to her "with our special", then smiles, then, as he meets, strives to hug and press her. Katerina Lvovna sees all this, and only her heart boils more.

"Should I make peace with him, or what?" - says Katerina Lvovna, stumbling and not seeing the ground beneath her.

But to come up first to make up now more than ever, pride does not allow. In the meantime, Sergei is more and more relentlessly tied to Sonetka and, it seems to everyone that the inaccessible Sonetka, which was still curled like a loach, but did not give in to his hands, suddenly seemed to become a ruffian.

“You were crying at me,” Fiona once said to Katerina Lvovna, “and what have I done to you? My case was, and it passed, but you looked at Sonetka b.

“Damn it, this pride of mine: I’ll certainly make it up now,” decided Katerina Lvovna, thinking of only one thing, how to tackle this reconciliation as if it were clever.

Sergey himself brought her out of this predicament.

- Ilvovna! - he called her at a halt. - Come out now to me for a minute at night: there is business. Katerina Lvovna said nothing.

- Well, maybe you're still angry - you won't come out? Katerina Lvovna again did not answer. But Sergei, and everyone who watched Katerina Lvovna, saw that, approaching the stage house, she kept huddling up to the senior underder and gave him seventeen kopecks collected from worldly alms.

“As soon as I collect it, I’ll give you a hryvnia,” Katerina Lvovna begged.

Under hid the money behind the cuff and said:

Sergei, when these negotiations ended, grunted and winked at Sonetka.

- Oh you, Katerina Ilvovna! - he said, embracing her at the entrance to the steps of the convoy house. - Contrary to this woman, guys, in the whole world there is no other woman like that.

Katerina Lvovna blushed and gasped with happiness.

A little at night, the door quietly opened a little, as she jumped out: she was trembling and looking for Sergei with her hands along the dark corridor.

- My Katya! - said, embracing her, Sergei.

- Oh you, you are my villain! - Katerina Lvovna answered through tears and pressed her lips to him.

The sentry walked along the corridor, and, stopping, spat on his boots, and walked again, tired prisoners snored outside the doors, a mouse gnawed at a feather, under the stove, crickets poured in front of each other, and Katerina Lvovna was still blissful.

But the raptures are tired, and the inevitable prose is heard.

- Death hurts: from the very ankle to the knee, the bones are humming, - complained Sergei, sitting with Katerina Lvovna on the floor in the corner

- What to do then, Seryozhechka? She asked, huddling under the floor of his retinue.

- Is it just the infirmary in Kazan I will ask for?

- Oh, what are you doing, Seryozha?

- Well, when my death hurts.

- How will you stay and they will chase me?

- And what to do? Rubs, so, I tell you, rubs, that the whole chain does not eat into the bone. Perhaps, perhaps, woolen stockings, perhaps, pry off some more, ”Sergei said after a minute.

- Stockings? I still have, Seryozha, new stockings.

- Well, what for! - answered Sergey.

Katerina Lvovna, without saying another word, darted into the cell, stirred her purse on the bunk and again hurriedly jumped out to Sergei with a pair of blue Bolkhov woolen stockings with bright arrows on the side.

“Now, nothing will happen,” said Sergei, saying goodbye to Katerina Lvovna and taking her last stockings.

Katerina Lvovna, happy, returned to her bunk and fell fast asleep.

She did not hear how Sonetka went out into the corridor after her arrival, and how quietly she returned from there just before the very morning.

It happened just two transitions to Kazan.

Chapter fifteen

A cold, rainy day, with a gusty wind and rain mixed with snow, greeted the party unfriendly as it marched through the gates of the stuffy stage. Katerina Lvovna came out quite briskly, but as soon as she stood in a row, everyone shook and turned green. It went dark in her eyes; all her joints ached and relaxed. In front of Katerina Lvovna stood Sonetka in her well-known blue woolen stockings with bright arrows.

Katerina Lvovna set off on her journey completely inanimate; only her eyes looked terribly at Sergei and did not blink at him.

At the first halt, she calmly approached Sergei, whispered "scoundrel" and suddenly spat right in his eyes.

Sergei wanted to throw himself at her; but he was held back.

- Wait, you! - he said and wiped himself off.

“Nothing, however, she's doing courageously with you,” the prisoners mocked at Sergei, and Sonetka burst into a particularly merry laugh.

This affair, to which Sonetka had surrendered, went completely to her taste.

“Well, it won’t work for you,” Sergei threatened Katerina Lvovna.

Wearied by the bad weather and the transition, Katerina Lvovna, with a broken soul, anxiously slept at night on a bunk in the next convoy house and did not hear how two people entered the women's barracks.

When they arrived, Sonetka rose from the bunk, silently pointed to Katerina Lvovna, who had entered with her hand, again lay down and wrapped herself up in her retinue.

At the same moment, Katerina Lvovna's retinue flew up on her head, and down her back, covered with one stern shirt, a thick end, a twisted rope, sped as much as a man's.

Katerina Lvovna unraveled her head and jumped up: no one was there; only not far away someone giggled maliciously under the retinue. Katerina Lvovna recognized Sonetka's laughter.

This offense was no longer a measure; there was no measure and the feeling of anger that boiled at that moment in Katerina Lvovna's soul. She rushed forward without memory and fell without memory on the chest of Fiona, who grabbed her.

On this full breast, which had so recently soothed the sweetness of the debauchery of Katerina Lvovna's unfaithful lover, she now wept out her unbearable grief, and, like a child to her mother, clung to her stupid and loose rival. They were now equal: they were both compared in price and both were abandoned.

They are equal! .. subject to the first occasion Fiona and performing a love drama Katerina Lvovna!

Katerina Lvovna, however, was no longer offended by anything. Having wept her tears, she turned to stone and with a wooden calm was going to go to the roll call.

The drum beats: takh-tararakh-takh; Shackled and unrestrained prisoners, Sergei, and Fiona, and Sonetka, and Katerina Lvovna, and a schismatic, shackled to the railway house, and a Pole on the same chain with a Tatar, are thrown into the courtyard.

All crowded together, then aligned in some order and went.

The most dismal picture: a handful of people, cut off from the light and deprived of any shadow of hopes for a better future, are drowning in the cold black mud of a dirt road. Everything around is horribly ugly: endless dirt, gray sky, de-leaved, wet rakitas and a crumpled crow in their spread-out branches. The wind is moaning, then angry, then howling and roaring.

In these hellish, soul-tearing sounds, which complete the entire horror of the picture, the advice of the biblical Job's wife is heard: "Curse your birthday and die."

Whoever does not want to listen to these words, who does not flatter the thought of death even in this sad situation, but frightens, should try to drown out these howling voices with something even more ugly. The simple man understands this perfectly well: he then lets loose all his bestial simplicity, begins to be silly, to scoff at himself, at people, at feelings. Not particularly gentle, and without that, he becomes especially angry.

- What, merchant's wife? Is your degree all in good health? - Sergei insolently asked Katerina Lvovna, as soon as the party lost the village behind the wet hillock, where they spent the night.

With these words, he immediately turned to Sonetka, covered it with his own hem and sang in a high falsetto:

Outside the window, a fair-haired head flickers in the shade.
You are not sleeping, my torment, you are not sleeping, you cheat.
I'll cover you with a hollow, so they won't notice.

At these words, Sergei hugged Sonetka and kissed her loudly in front of the whole party ...

Katerina Lvovna saw all this and did not see it: she was walking like a completely lifeless person. They began to push her and show her how Sergei was acting out of his way with Sonetka. She became the subject of ridicule.

“Don't touch her,” Fiona interceded when someone from the party tried to laugh at the stumbling Katerina Lvovna. - Do not you see, devils, that the woman is completely ill?

“She must have wet her legs,” the young prisoner joked.

- It is known, of a merchant family: a tender upbringing, - Sergei responded.

“Of course, if only their stockings were warm: it would be nothing else,” he continued.

Katerina Lvovna seemed to wake up.

- The snake is mean! - she said, unable to endure, - mock, scoundrel, mock!

“No, I’m not at all, merchant, not in a mockery, but that Sonetka sells stockings painfully good, I thought so; whether our merchant's wife will buy, they say.

Many laughed. Katerina Lvovna walked like a running machine.

The weather was playing out. From the gray clouds that covered the sky, snow began to fall in wet flakes, which, barely touching the ground, melted and increased the stubborn dirt. Finally, a dark lead band is shown; you can't see it on the other side. This strip is the Volga. A strong wind blows over the Volga and drives back and forth slowly rising wide-toed dark waves.

A party of soaked and chilled prisoners slowly approached the ferry and stopped, waiting for the ferry.

All the wet, dark steam came up; the team began to place the prisoners.

- On this ferry, they say, someone is holding vodka, - noticed some prisoner, when the ferry, showered with flakes of wet snow, sailed away from the coast and swayed on the shafts of the diverging river.

“Yes, now it’s just a trifle to miss anything,” Sergei responded and, pursuing Katerina Lvovna's amusement for Sonetkina, said: “Merchant's wife, well, out of old friendship, treat her to vodka. Don't be stingy. Remember, my dear, our former love, how you and I, my joy, walked, sat through the autumn nights, escorted your relatives without priests and clerks to eternal calmness.

Katerina Lvovna was trembling all over from the cold. In addition to the cold penetrating her under her soaked dress to the very bones, something else was happening in Katerina Lvovna's body. Her head was on fire; the pupils of the eyes were dilated, enlivened by a whooping sharp brilliance, and fixed motionlessly into the walking waves.

- Well, I would have drunk vodka too: no urine is cold, - Sonetka rang out.

- Merchant's wife, give me something to eat! - Sergey begged.

- Oh, you conscience! - said Fiona, shaking her head reproachfully.

“It’s not to your credit at all,” the prisoner Gordyushka supported the soldier.

- Hush if you didn’t mind her herself, you’ll be ashamed of others for her.

“And everyone used to call the officers,” Sonetka rang out.

- Yes, how! .. and I would have got it for stockings, - Sergey supported.

Katerina Lvovna did not stand up for herself: she looked more and more intently into the waves and moved her lips. Between Sergei's vile speeches, a hum and a groan could be heard from the opening and clapping shafts. And then suddenly from one broken shaft the blue head of Boris Timofeich appears to her, from another peeped out and swayed her husband, embracing Fedya with his drooping head. Katerina Lvovna wants to remember the prayer and moves her lips, and her lips whisper: "As you and I walked, we sat through the autumn debts at night, with a cruel death from the broad world we sent people away."

Katerina Lvovna was trembling. Her wandering gaze focused and became wild. Hands once or twice, who knows where, reached into space and fell again. Another minute - and she suddenly swayed all over, not taking her eyes off the dark wave, bent down, grabbed Sonetka by the legs and in one fell swoop threw herself overboard with her.

Everyone was petrified with amazement.

Katerina Lvovna appeared at the top of the wave and dived again; another wave carried Sonetka out.

- Hook! drop the hook! - shouted on the ferry.

A heavy hook on a long rope flew up and fell into the water. The sonnet was not visible again. Two seconds later, being quickly carried away by the current from the ferry, she again threw up her arms; but at the same time, from another wave, Katerina Lvovna rose almost to her waist above the water, threw herself on Sonetka, like a strong pike on a soft-feathery flesh, and both no longer appeared.

Leskov began writing "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" in the fall of 1864, defining the genre of the work as an essay. The story was first published in January 1865 in the magazine "Epoch" under the title "Lady Macbeth of our county" female characters our (Oka and part of the Volga) area ". The final name appeared when it was published in 1867 in the collection "Stories, Essays and Stories by M. Stebnitsky" after a significant stylistic revision of the magazine version. Leskov himself called his story a dark story, in strict tones a sustained sketch of a strong and passionate female character. The story was supposed to be the beginning of a cycle about the characters of Russian women. Lady Macbeth was to be followed by Graziella (noblewoman), Mayorsha Polivodova (old-world landowner), Fevronya Rokhovna (peasant schismatic) and Granny Bloshka (midwife). However, the cycle was never written, apparently partly due to the fact that the Epoch magazine, where it was supposed to be published, was soon closed.

The title contains an allusion to the story of IS Turgenev "Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky district" (1849).

Name accent

Despite the fact that the accent Macbeth is correct in the name of the Shakespearean character, in the title of Leskov's story the emphasis traditionally falls on the first syllable for a number of reasons. Firstly, in the time of Leskov, Shakespeare's translations emphasized the first syllable:

Secondly, with the stress of Macbeth, the rhythm of the title gets lost, which is impossible for Leskov with his commitment to the language game and syllabo-tonic metrization in his texts. The title in the first publication "Lady Macbeth of Our County" with the same rhythm also speaks in favor of the stress on the first syllable.

Plot

The main character is a young merchant's wife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova. Her husband is constantly at work, away from home. She is bored and lonely in the four walls of a large rich house. The spouse is sterile, but together with his father he reproaches his wife. Katerina falls in love with a handsome young clerk Sergei, gradually her hobby turns into passion, the lovers spend the night together. She is ready for anything for her lover. A series of murders begins: first, Katerina Lvovna poisons her father-in-law to save Sergei, whom the father-in-law locked in the cellar, then, together with Sergei, kills her husband, and then strangles her young nephew Fedya with a pillow, who could challenge her inheritance rights. However, at this moment, a crowd of idle men rushes in from the yard, one of whom looked through the window and saw the scene of the murder. An autopsy proves that Fedya died of suffocation. Sergei confesses everything after the priest's words about the Last Judgment. Investigators find the body of Zinovy ​​Borisovich buried in the basement. The murderers are brought to trial and, after being lashed, go to hard labor. Sergei instantly loses interest in Katerina as soon as she ceases to be a rich merchant's wife. He is carried away by another prisoner, courting her in front of Katerina and laughing at her love. In the finale, Katerina grabs her rival Sonetka and drowns with her in the cold waters of the river.

Critics about the story

The heroine of the story, Katerina Izmailova, is compared by critics (P.P. Gromov, B.M.

The heroine of Leskov's story is clearly opposed by the author to Katerina Kabanova from Ostrovsky's The Thunderstorm. The heroine of Ostrovsky's genius drama does not merge with everyday life, her character is in sharp contrast to the prevailing everyday habits ... According to the description of Katerina Izmailova's behavior, no one under any circumstances would determine which young merchant woman is being told about. The drawing of her image is a household template, but a template drawn with such thick paint that it turns into a kind of tragic splint.

Both young merchant wives are weighed down by the "bondage", the frozen, predetermined way of life of the merchant family, both are passionate natures, going to the limit in their feelings. In both works, the love drama begins at the moment when the heroines are seized by a fatal, illegal passion. But if Katerina Ostrovsky perceives her love as a terrible sin, then something pagan, primitive, “decisive” wakes up in Katerina Leskova (it is no coincidence that her physical strength is mentioned: “in girls, passion was strong ... not even a man prevailed over every man”). For Katerina Izmailova, there can be no opposition, she is not even afraid of hard labor: "with him (with Sergei), her hard labor path blooms with happiness." Finally, the death of Katerina Izmailova in the Volga in the finale of the story brings to mind the suicide of Katerina Kabanova. Critics also rethink the characterization of the island heroine "a ray of light in the dark kingdom" given by Dobrolyubov:

“It could be said about Katerina Izmailova that she is not a ray of the sun falling into the darkness, but lightning, generated by the darkness itself, and only brighter emphasizing the impenetrable darkness of merchant life” (V. Gebel).

Dramatizations

• plays:
  • - staged by Lazar Petreiko
  • 1970s - staged by A. Wiener
• - Opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (in a later version - "Katerina Izmailova") by D. D. Shostakovich
• 1970s - musical drama "My Light, Katerina" by G. Bodykin
• 2001 - staged by Oleg Bogaev

Theater performances

• - Studio Dikiy, Moscow, director Alexey Dikiy
• 1970s - Reading performance by A. Vernova and A. Fedorinov (Mosconcert)
• - Prague Youth Theater "Rubin", director Zdenek Potuzhil
• - Moscow Academic Theater. Vl. Mayakovsky, in the role of Katerina - Natalia Gundareva
• - Yekaterinburg State Academic Drama Theater, staged by O. Bogaev, director Valery Pashnin, in the role of Katerina - Irina Ermolova
• - Theater "MEL" Makhonina Elena, director and performer of the role of Katerina - Elena Makhonina
• -, directed by Anna Babanova, in the role of Katerina - Yulia Poshelyuzhnaya
• - Moscow theater under the direction of O. Tabakov, director A. Mokhov
• - MTYUZ, Moscow, director Kama Ginkas, in the role of Katerina - Elizaveta Boyarskaya
• 2014 - Transnistrian State Drama and Comedy Theater named after I. Aronetskaya, director Dmitry Akhmadiev
• 2016 (October 21) - Moscow Musical Theater GELIKON-OPERA under the direction of Dmitry Bertman

Screen adaptations

• - "Katerina the gas chamber", director A. Arkatov (the film has not survived)
• - "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", director Cheslav Sabinsky, starring Elena Egorova (Katerina), Nikolai Simonov (Sergei)
• - Siberian Lady Macbeth, directed by Andrzej Wajda, starring Oliver Markovich (Katerina), Lyuba Tadic, Miodrag Lazarevich
• - Katerina Izmailova, director Mikhail Shapiro, starring Galina Vishnevskaya, Artem Inozemtsev, Nikolai Boyarsky, Alexander Sokolov, Tatiana Gavrilova, Roman Tkachuk, Vera Titova, Lyubov Malinovskaya, Konstantin Adashevsky
• - Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district, director Roman Balayan, starring Natalya Andreichenko (Katerina Izmailova), Alexander Abdulov (Sergei), Nikolai Pastukhov (Zinovy ​​Borisovich).
• - Moscow evenings, director Valery Todorovsky

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Literature

• Anninsky L.A. World celebrity from the Mtsensk district // Anninsky L.A. Leskovskoe necklace. M., 1986
• Guminsky V. Organic interaction (from "Lady Macbeth ..." to "Cathedrals") // In Leskov's world. Digest of articles. M., 1983

Notes (edit)

Links

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An excerpt characterizing Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district

- C "est un roturier, vous aurez beau dire, [This is a rogue, whatever you say,] - said Prince Hippolytus.
Monsieur Pierre did not know to whom to answer, looked around and smiled. His smile was not the same as that of other people, merging with a unsmiling. On the contrary, when a smile came, his serious and even somewhat sullen face suddenly disappeared, and another appeared - childish, kind, even stupid and as if asking for forgiveness.
The Viscount, who saw him for the first time, realized that this Jacobin was not at all as terrible as his words. Everyone fell silent.
- How do you want him to answer everyone suddenly? - said Prince Andrey. - Moreover, it is necessary in the actions of a statesman to distinguish between the actions of a private person, a commander or an emperor. It seems to me.
- Yes, yes, of course, - put in Pierre, delighted with the help that came to him.
“It’s impossible not to admit,” Prince Andrei continued, “Napoleon is great as a man on the Arkolsky bridge, in a hospital in Jaffa, where he shakes hands with the plague, but ... but there are other actions that are difficult to justify.
Prince Andrew, apparently wishing to soften the awkwardness of Pierre's speech, got up, getting ready to go and giving a sign to his wife.

Suddenly, Prince Hippolyte got up and, with signs of his hands, stopping everyone and asking them to sit down, spoke up:
- Ah! aujourd "hui on m" a raconte une anecdote moscovite, charmante: il faut que je vous en regale. Vous m "excusez, vicomte, il faut que je raconte en russe. Autrement on ne sentira pas le sel de l" histoire. [Today they told me a lovely Moscow anecdote; they need to help you. Excuse me, Viscount, I will speak in Russian, otherwise all the salt of the anecdote will disappear.]
And Prince Ippolit began to speak Russian with the same reprimand as the French, who had spent a year in Russia. Everyone paused: so lively, Prince Hippolytus insistently demanded attention to his history.
- There is one lady in Moscou, une dame. And she is very stingy. She needed two valets de pied per carriage. And very tall. It was to her liking. And she had une femme de chambre [maid], even more stature. She said…
Here Prince Hippolyte became thoughtful, apparently with difficulty thinking.
“She said ... yes, she said: 'girl (a la femme de chambre), put on the livree [livery] and come with me, behind the carriage, faire des visites.' [make visits.]
Here Prince Hippolyte snorted and laughed much before his listeners, which made an impression unfavorable for the narrator. However, many, including the elderly lady and Anna Pavlovna, smiled.
- She went. Suddenly there was a strong wind. The girl lost her hat, and her long hair was combed ...
Then he could no longer hold on and began to laugh abruptly, and through this laugh he said:
- And the whole world learned ...
That was the end of the anecdote. Although it was not clear why he was telling it and why it was necessary to tell it without fail in Russian, Anna Pavlovna and others appreciated the secular courtesy of Prince Hippolytus, who so pleasantly ended Monsieur Pierre's unpleasant and unfriendly trick. The conversation after the anecdote disintegrated into small, insignificant rumors about the future and the past ball, the performance, about when and where who would see each other.

After thanking Anna Pavlovna for her charmante soiree, [a charming evening] the guests began to disperse.
Pierre was awkward. Fat, taller than usual, wide, with huge red hands, he, as they say, did not know how to enter the salon and was even less able to get out of it, that is, to say something especially pleasant before going out. Moreover, he was absent-minded. Rising, instead of his hat, he grabbed a three-cornered hat with a general's plume and held it, tugging at the sultan, until the general asked to return it. But all his absent-mindedness and inability to enter the salon and speak in it were redeemed by an expression of good nature, simplicity and modesty. Anna Pavlovna turned to him and, with Christian meekness expressing forgiveness for his trick, nodded to him and said:
“I hope to see you again, but I also hope that you will change your minds, my dear Monsieur Pierre,” she said.
When she said this to him, he didn’t answer, he just bent down and showed everyone again his smile, which didn’t say anything, except this: "Opinions are opinions, and you see what a kind and nice guy I am." And everyone, and Anna Pavlovna, involuntarily felt this.
Prince Andrew went out into the hall and, putting his shoulders to the footman who was putting on his cloak, listened indifferently to the chatter of his wife with Prince Hippolytus, who also went out into the hall. Prince Hippolytus stood beside a pretty pregnant princess and stubbornly looked straight at her through his lorgnette.
“Go, Annette, you’ll catch a cold,” said the little princess, saying goodbye to Anna Pavlovna. - C "est arrete, [Resolved,]" she added quietly.
Anna Pavlovna had already managed to talk with Liza about the matchmaking, which she started between Anatole and the sister-in-law of the little princess.
“I hope for you, dear friend,” said Anna Pavlovna, also quietly, “you will write to her and tell me, comment le pere envisagera la chose. Au revoir, [How the father looks at the case. Goodbye,] - and she left the hall.
Prince Ippolit went up to the little princess and, bending his face close to her, began to say something to her in a half whisper.
Two footmen, one a princess, the other for him, waiting for them to finish speaking, stood with a shawl and a redingot and listened to them, incomprehensible to them, French talk with such faces, as if they understood what was being said, but did not want to show it. The princess, as always, spoke smiling and listened laughing.
“I’m very glad that I didn’t go to the messenger,” said Prince Ippolit: “boredom… It's a wonderful evening, isn't it, wonderful?
“They say that the ball will be very good,” answered the princess, pulling up her lip with a mustache. “All the beautiful women of society will be there.
- Not all, because you will not be there; not all, ”said Prince Ippolit, laughing joyfully, and, seizing the footman’s shawl, even pushed it and began to put it on the princess.
From embarrassment or deliberately (no one could make out this), he did not give up for a long time when the shawl was already put on, and seemed to embrace a young woman.
She gracefully, but still smiling, pulled away, turned and looked at her husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed: so he seemed tired and sleepy.
- You are ready? He asked his wife, looking around her.
Prince Hippolytus hastily put on his coat, which, according to the new, was longer than his heels, and, getting confused in it, ran to the porch after the princess, whom the footman was putting into the carriage.
- Princesse, au revoir, [Princess, good-bye,] - he shouted, confused by his tongue as well as his legs.
The princess, picking up her dress, sat down in the darkness of the carriage; her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince Ippolit, under the pretext of serving, interfered with everyone.
- Pa, sir, sir, - prince Andrei turned dryly and unpleasantly in Russian to Prince Ippolit, who was preventing him from passing.
“I’m waiting for you, Pierre,” said the same voice of Prince Andrey affectionately and tenderly.
The postilion started, and the carriage rattled its wheels. Prince Hippolytus laughed abruptly, standing on the porch and waiting for the Viscount, whom he promised to take home.

“Eh bien, mon cher, votre petite princesse est tres bien, tres bien,” said the Viscount, sitting in the carriage with Hippolytus. - Mais tres bien. He kissed the tips of his fingers. - Et tout a fait francaise. [Well, my dear, your little princess is very sweet! Very sweet and perfect French.]
Hippolyte laughed with a snort.
“Et savez vous que vous etes terrible avec votre petit air innocent,” continued the Viscount. - Je plains le pauvre Mariei, ce petit officier, qui se donne des airs de prince regnant .. [Do you know, you are a terrible person, despite your innocent appearance. I feel sorry for the poor husband, this officer who poses as a sovereign person.]
Hippolytus snorted again and said through his laughter:
- Et vous disiez, que les dames russes ne valaient pas les dames francaises. Il faut savoir s "y prendre. [And you said that Russian ladies are worse than French ones. You have to be able to take it.]
Pierre, having arrived ahead, like a man at home, went into Prince Andrew's study and immediately, out of habit, lay down on the sofa, took the first book he found from the shelf (these were Caesar's Notes) and began, leaning back, to read it from the middle.
- What have you done with m lle Scherer? She’s going to be completely ill now, ”said Prince Andrei, entering the study, and rubbing his small, white hands.
Pierre turned his whole body, so that the sofa creaked, turned his lively face to Prince Andrey, smiled and waved his hand.
- No, this abbot is very interesting, but he doesn’t understand the matter that way ... In my opinion, eternal peace is possible, but I don’t know how to say it ... But only not with political balance ...
Prince Andrew was apparently not interested in these abstract conversations.
- You can't, mon cher, [my dear,] everywhere say whatever you think. Well, well, have you finally decided on something? Will you be a cavalier or a diplomat? - asked Prince Andrey after a moment's silence.
Pierre sat down on the sofa, tucking his legs under him.
“You can imagine, I still don’t know. I don't like either one or the other.
- But you have to decide on something? Your father is waiting.
From the age of ten, Pierre was sent abroad with the tutor by the abbot, where he stayed until the age of twenty. When he returned to Moscow, his father dismissed the abbot and said to the young man: “Now you go to Petersburg, look around and choose. I agree to everything. Here's a letter to Prince Vasily for you, and here's your money. Write about everything, I will help you in everything. " Pierre had been choosing a career for three months and did nothing. Prince Andrew spoke to him about this choice. Pierre rubbed his forehead.
“But he must be a Mason,” he said, meaning the abbot he had seen at the party.
- All this is nonsense, - Prince Andrey stopped him again, - let's talk better about the case. Have you been in the Horse Guards? ...
- No, I wasn’t, but this is what came to my mind, and I wanted to tell you. Now the war is against Napoleon. If it was a war for freedom, I would understand, I would be the first to enter military service; but help England and Austria against greatest man in the world ... it's not good ...

"Ledi Macbeth of the Mtsensk district"- the story of Nikolai Leskov, written in 1864 (in the collection of 1867, the writer made a note: "November 26, 1864 Kiev").

History of creation and publication

Leskov began writing "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" in the fall of 1864, defining the genre of the work as an essay. The story was first published in January 1865 in the Epoch magazine under the title "Lady Macbeth of Our District" as "the 1st issue of a series of sketches exclusively of some typical female characters of our (Oka and part of the Volga) area." The final name appeared when it was published in 1867 in the collection "Stories, Essays and Stories by M. Stebnitsky" after a significant stylistic revision of the magazine version. Leskov himself called his story a dark story, in strict tones a sustained sketch of a strong and passionate female character. The story was supposed to be the beginning of a cycle about the characters of Russian women. Lady Macbeth was to be followed by Graziella (noblewoman), Mayorsha Polivodova (old-world landowner), Fevronya Rokhovna (peasant schismatic) and Granny Bloshka (midwife). However, the cycle was never written, apparently partly due to the fact that the Epoch magazine, where it was supposed to be published, was soon closed.

Plot

The main character is a young merchant's wife, Katerina Lvovna Izmailova. Her husband is constantly at work, away from home. She is bored and lonely in the four walls of a large rich house. The spouse is sterile, but together with his father he reproaches his wife. Katerina falls in love with a handsome young clerk Sergei, gradually her hobby turns into passion, the lovers spend their nights together. She is ready for anything for the sake of her sinful, criminal love, for the sake of her beloved. And a series of murders begins: first, Katerina Lvovna poisons her father-in-law to save Sergei, whom his father-in-law locked in the cellar, then, together with Sergei, kills her husband, and then strangles her young nephew Fedya with a pillow, who could challenge her inheritance rights. However, at this moment, a crowd of idle men rushes in from the yard, one of whom looked through the window and saw the scene of the murder. An autopsy proves that Fedya died of suffocation, Sergei confesses everything after the priest's words about the Last Judgment. Investigators find the walled-up corpse of Zinovy ​​Borisovich. The murderers are brought to trial and, after being lashed, go to hard labor. Sergei instantly loses interest in Katerina as soon as she ceases to be a rich merchant's wife. He is carried away by another prisoner, looks after her in front of Katerina and laughs at her love. In the finale, Katerina grabs her rival Sonetka and drowns with her in the cold waters of the river.

Critics about the story

The heroine of the story, Katerina Izmailova, is compared by critics (P.P. Gromov, B.M.

The heroine of Leskov's story is clearly opposed by the author to Katerina Kabanova from Ostrovsky's The Thunderstorm. The heroine of Ostrovsky's genius drama does not merge with everyday life, her character is in sharp contrast to the prevailing everyday habits ... According to the description of Katerina Izmailova's behavior, no one under any circumstances would have determined which young merchant woman is being told about. The drawing of her image is a household template, but a template drawn with such thick paint that it turns into a kind of tragic splint.

Both young merchant wives are weighed down by the "bondage", the frozen, predetermined way of life of the merchant family, both are passionate natures, going to the limit in their feelings. In both works, the love drama begins at the moment when the heroines are seized by a fatal, illegal passion. But if Katerina Ostrovsky perceives her love as a terrible sin, then something pagan, primitive, “decisive” wakes up in Katerina Leskova (it is no coincidence that her physical strength is mentioned: “in girls, passion was strong ... not even a man prevailed over every man”). For Katerina Izmailova, there can be no opposition, she is not even afraid of hard labor: "with him (with Sergei), her hard labor path blooms with happiness." Finally, the death of Katerina Izmailova in the Volga in the finale of the story brings to mind the suicide of Katerina Kabanova. Critics also rethink the characterization of the island heroine "a ray of light in the dark kingdom" given by Dobrolyubov:

“It could be said about Katerina Izmailova that she is not a ray of the sun falling into the darkness, but lightning, generated by the darkness itself, and only brighter emphasizing the impenetrable darkness of merchant life” (V. Gebel).

Dramatizations

• plays:
• • 1956 - staged by Lazar Petreiko
  • 1970s - staged by A. Wiener
• 1930 - opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (in a later version - "Katerina Izmailova") by D. D. Shostakovich
• 1970s - musical drama "My Light, Katerina" by G. Bodykin

Theater performances

• 1935 - Studio Dikiy, Moscow, director Alexey Dikiy
• 1970s - reading performance by A. Vernova and A. Fedorinov (Mosconcert)
• 1978 - Prague Youth Theater Rubin, director Zdenek Potuzhil
• 1979 - Moscow Academic Theater. Vl. Mayakovsky, in the role of Katerina -

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Why does this myth still exist?

Maybe because we are "lazy and incurious" (AS Pushkin)?

Every year, articles about the atrocious murders committed by Katerina Izmailova from the Leskov story, in the house at 10 Lenin Street, in the police building (GROVD), appear on the Internet and in the media.

Photo from autotravel.org.ru.

1. What Leskov himself wrote about the story "Lady Macbeth".

December 7, 1864 Leskov sent the manuscript of the recently written novel "Lady Macbeth of Our District" from Kiev to the editorial office of the "Epoch" magazine with a letter addressed to N. N. Strakhov, which said: “I am sending ... in a special package to the editorial office, but in your own name, and I ask you for your attention to this little work. "Lady Macbeth of Our County" is the 1st issue of a series of essays exclusively some typical female characters of our (Oka and part of the Volga) area ... All such essays, I propose to write twelve, each in the volume of one to two sheets, eight from the folk and merchant life and four from the nobility. "

So, Leskov himself talks about typification - creating a collective image that embodies certain qualities on which the writer focuses attention. In short, Katerina Izmailova is in the same rank as Chichikov, Plyushkin, the Karamazov brothers and other characters in Russian literature.

Illustration for "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" by NS Leskov. Artist B. Kustodiev

Perhaps the story reflected one of Leskov's early Oryol impressions, which later came to his memory: "Once to an old neighbor who" healed "for seventy years and went to rest under a black currant bush on a summer day, an impatient daughter-in-law poured boiling wax into his ear ... I remember how he was buried ... His ear fell off ... Then the executioner tormented her on Ilyinka (in the square). She was young, and everyone wondered how white she was ... "("How I learned to celebrate. From childhood memories of a writer." Manuscript at TsGALI).

Leskov, as you know, for a long time served as an assessor of the Oryol Chamber of the Criminal Court, besides, he traveled a lot around the country, so of course he knew many similar cases. It was not at all necessary for the murder described in the essay to take place in Mtsensk.
In a letter to D.A.Linev dated March 5, 1888, Leskov wrote : "The world that you describe<т. е. жизнь каторжников>, I do not know, although I touched it slightly in the story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". I wrote, as they say, " out of my head ",not observing this environment in nature, but the late Dostoevsky found that I had reproduced reality quite correctly "("Zvezda", 1931, No. 2, p. 225).

2. Merchants Izmailovs - were there any such in Mtsensk before 1917?

But maybe Leskov took as a basis artwork real names, surnames and biographies of Mtsensk merchants?

I was not too lazy and looked through all the memorable books I have on the Oryol province for the "presence" of the Izmailov merchants in Mtsensk, namely for: 1860, 1880, 1897, 1909, 1910, 1916. The result surpassed all expectations: during all this time, only one merchant, Vasily Matveyevich Izmailov (in 1909 and 1910) was mentioned, and he lived in Yamskaya Sloboda, i.e. very far from Lenin's houses 8-10 - on the other side of town.

Address-calendar and memorable book of the Oryol province for 1910, p. 257.

Merchants Ershov, Inozemtsevs, Pavlovs, Smirnovs, Polovnev and only one Izmailov(and that one is "not that one"). In the "Oryol Diocesan Gazette" of the beginning of the century, almost the same merchants are mentioned as the elders of the Mtsensk churches - and again not a single Izmailov.

Mtsensk merchants, the beginning XX century.

Of course, on the basis of this, it cannot be argued that they were no longer in Mtsensk at all. But in historical documents there is no no confirmation the fact that in reality Zinovy ​​Izmailov and his wife Ekaterina Lvovna existed.

3. Who is spreading the myths?

Why am I talking about this obvious nonsense in such detail? Then, the myth about the house at 8-10 Lenin Street is already so “fat” that there are, it turns out, “relatives” of Zinovy ​​Borisovich. For example, Boris Novoselov, a resident of Mtsensk, states in the newspaper “ Moscow's comsomolets"(07.11.-14.11.2001), that he is a cousin in the fourth generation of that same Zinovy ​​Borisovich Izmailov (evaluate the degree of" kinship "). He talks about the ghosts that roam the house and claims that after the death of Izmailov, the house was confiscated by the city authorities. There is also the Panov family ("great-great-grandchildren"), whom Katerina Lvovna "jinxed" and "from her all the misfortunes." And the local police in general constantly heard noise and "voices". It seems to me that the author of the article, Irina Bobrova, did not even leave her office, and the “relatives” described by her were from the same fictional range as the “ancestors”.

Houses 8-10 in 2009. Photo by Alexander Dvorkin (photogoroda.com).

It says: "Home where presumably there was a tragedy described by Leskov ... "

One can understand why non-local journalists compose fairy tales, but they were given a reason by our local historians. We open the famous book "In the center of Russia" by A.I. Makashov and in Chapter 5 we read:

“One of the two GROVD buildings belonged to the famous merchants Izmailovs. It was here that the tragedy of love and blood took place, which gave the great Russian writer NS Lesnoy a plot for his famous "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". Excursions often come here to get acquainted with a building that is peculiar in its architectural plan, to listen to a story about the Izmailovs and that era. After all, Katerina Izmay-lova, the heroine of a terrible drama, is a real face. "

Even Moskovsky Komsomolets made a reservation in that article: “Historically, the plot of the work of Nikolai Leskov not confirmed anywhere”, And Makashov confidently repeats the urban legend.

V.F. Anikanov, unlike him, does not invent hypotheses:
« 1782 year. The house of the merchants Pchelkin - Inozemtsev was built. During the repair, a brick with an imprint of the year of manufacture was found. Now this building belongs to the city district department of internal affairs. " "During the renovation of the building in 1960, a brick with an imprint of the year of manufacture - 1782 - and a large archive of merchants Inozemtsev-Pchelkin were discovered in the wall."

So - and Anikanov does not have any mention of Lady Macbeth, but why, if this is a literary character?

Part of the composition around the monument to Leskov in Oryol - Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk district.

In the list of objects cultural heritage Mtsenska ( cultural passport on the administration website, but there are also other sites) Lenin's house, 8 is recorded as “the house of the merchant Izmailov”, however, with the proviso: “From the stories of the old-timers it follows that the merchants Izmailovs lived in this house, a tragedy took place here, which gave the writer N. S. Leskov a plot for his famous story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District". But this is not confirmed no historical documents. This can only be talked about at the level folk legend. »

Lenin, 8. 1945 to 1981 the city executive committee was located in this building. Since then and to this day - the police (police).

Nearby house number 10 is included in this list as "House of the merchant Svechkin". Both buildings are architectural monuments of the regional level.

Lenin building, 10, built in 1782. Also - one of the police corps.

4. Who actually owned the Lady Macbeth house before 1917?
Houses 8, 10 on Lenin Street (Staromoskovskaya) really belonged to the merchants Inozemtsevs - they are mentioned in pre-revolutionary sources. Before the revolution, two brothers lived there - Panteleimon Nikolaevich and Mitrofan Nikolaevich Inozemtsevs, this is their archive and was found during the renovation of the GROVD building in 1960.
The information is one hundred percent, from their descendant.
Nabout this - some other time ...

Post Scriptum.

The 1989 film Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was filmed in the Moscow region: “We worked in Pushchino, 110 km from Moscow. The scenery was built on the banks of the Oka. " (interview with director R. Balayan).

Sources.

1) N. S. Leskov. Collected works in 11 volumes. Moscow: State Publishing House of Fiction, 1957.
2) N. S. Leskov. Collected works in three volumes, Fiction, 1988.