THE BOY AT CHRIST ON THE TREE
BOY WITH A PEN
Children are a strange people, they dream and imagine. In front of the Christmas tree, and right before Christmas, on the street, on a certain corner, I always met a boy, no more than seven years old. In the bitter cold, he was dressed almost like a summer dress, but his neck was tied with some kind of old stuff, which means that someone had sent him out to equip him. He walked "with a pen"; it's a technical term, meaning begging. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something learned by heart; but this one did not howl, and spoke somehow innocently and unaccustomedly, and looked trustingly into my eyes—so he was just beginning his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister, she was unemployed, sick; maybe it’s true, but only later did I find out that these boys are dark and dark: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, stiff hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent people is drinking, one of those who, "having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work again no earlier than on Wednesday evening" .
There, in the cellars, their hungry and beaten wives drink with them, their hungry babies squeak right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected kopecks, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, they sometimes pour a pigtail into his mouth and laugh when he, with a short breath, falls almost unconscious on the floor,
And bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...
When he grows up, they quickly sell him somewhere to the factory, but everything that he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the caretakers, and they again drink it away. But even before the factory, these children become perfect criminals. They wander around the city and know such places in different basements that you can crawl into and where you can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with a janitor in a basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even in eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end, they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for one thing only, for freedom, and they run away from their negligent wanderers to wander away from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a god, whether there is a sovereign; even such convey things about them that are unbelievable to hear, and yet they are all facts.
II
THE BOY AT CHRIST ON THE TREE
But I am a novelist, and it seems that I composed one "story" myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself know for sure what I composed, but I keep imagining that it happened somewhere and sometime, it happened just on the eve of Christmas, in some huge city and in a terrible freezing. It seems to me that there was a boy in the basement, but still very small, about six years old or even less. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was trembling. His breath came out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on the chest, out of boredom, purposely let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself, watching how it flies out. But he really wanted to eat.
Several times in the morning he approached the bunks, where on a bedding as thin as a pancake and on some bundle under his head, instead of a pillow, lay his sick mother. How did she get here? She must have come with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The mistress of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants dispersed, it was a festive matter, and the remaining one dressing gown had been lying dead drunk for a whole day, not even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman was moaning from rheumatism, who had once lived somewhere in nannies, and now she was dying alone, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he already began to be afraid to come close to her corner.
He got a drink somewhere in the entryway, but he didn’t find a crust anywhere, and once in the tenth he already came up to wake his mother. He felt terrible, at last, in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but no fire was lit. Feeling his mother's face, he was surprised that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. "It's very cold here," he thought, stood a little, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman's shoulder, then breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, groping for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but he was always afraid upstairs, on the stairs, of a big dog that had been howling all day at the neighbor's door. But the dog was gone, and he suddenly went out into the street.
God, what a city! Never before had he seen anything like it. There, from where he came, at night such black darkness, one lamp on the whole street. Wooden low houses are locked with shutters; on the street, it gets a little dark - nobody, everyone shuts up at home, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But it was so warm there, and they gave him food, but here, God, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder here, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam pours from driven horses, from their hotly breathing snouts; horseshoes clinking against the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing like that, and, Lord, I so want to eat, at least a piece of some kind, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A law enforcement officer passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy. Here again the street - oh, what a wide! Here they will probably crush them like that; how they all shout, run and ride, but the light, the light! And what's that?
Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many golden bills and apples, and all around are dolls, little horses; and children running around the room, smart, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here is the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and already laughs, and his fingers and legs already hurt, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, began to cry and ran on, and here again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are pies, all sorts - almond, red, yellow, and they are sitting there four rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen enter them from the street.
A boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady came up quickly and thrust a kopeck into his hand, and she herself opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the kopeck immediately rolled out and rang on the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went quickly, quickly, but where he did not know. He wants to cry again, but he's afraid, and he runs, runs and blows on his hands. And longing takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying, and suddenly, Lord! So what is it again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very much like they are alive! Some old man is sitting and seems to be playing a big violin, two others are standing right there and playing small violins, and shaking their heads in time, and looking at each other, and their lips are moving, they are talking, they are completely talking, - only you can't hear it through the glass. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he completely guessed that they were pupae, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that there were such! And he wants to cry, but it's so funny, funny on pupae.
Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the dressing gown from behind: a big angry boy stood nearby and suddenly cracked him on the head, tore off his cap, and gave him a leg from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly ran he didn’t know where, into the doorway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down for firewood: “They won’t find it here, and it’s dark.” He sat down and writhed, but he himself could not catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on the stove; now he shuddered all over: oh, why, he was about to fall asleep! How good it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go again to look at the pupae,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like they are alive!” And suddenly he heard that his mother was singing a song over him. "Mom, I'm sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!"
-- Come to my tree, boy, --
a low voice suddenly whispered above him.
He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; Who called him, he does not see, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the darkness, and he held out his hand to him and ... and suddenly - oh, what a light! Oh what a tree! And this is not a Christmas tree, he has not yet seen such trees! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and all around are dolls - but no, they are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, Yes, and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother looks and laughs at him joyfully.
-- Mother! Mother! Oh, how good it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. - Who are you boys? Who are you girls? he asks, laughing and loving them.
-- This is the "Christ tree" they answer him. - Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who do not have their own Christmas tree there ... - And he found out that these boys and girls were all the same as he, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets in which they were thrown on the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated at the little chicks, from the orphanage to be fed, still others died at the withered breasts of their mothers during the Samara famine, fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and that’s all they are here now, they are all now like angels, all with Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers ... And the mothers of these children all stand right there, on the sidelines, and cry ; each recognizes her boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here ...
And below, in the morning, the janitors found a small corpse of a boy who had run in and froze behind firewood; they also found his mother ... She died even before him; both met with the Lord God in the sky.
And why did I write such a story, so not going into an ordinary reasonable diary, and even a writer? He also promised stories mainly about real events! But that's just the point, it always seems and imagines to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about Christ's Christmas tree - I don’t know how tell you if it could happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent.
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Children are a strange people, they dream and imagine. In front of the Christmas tree, and right before Christmas, on the street, on a certain corner, I always met a boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like a summer dress, but his neck was tied with some kind of junk, which means that someone still equipped him, sending him. He walked "with a pen"; this is a technical term, it means to beg. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something learned by heart; but this one did not howl, and spoke somehow innocently and unusually, and looked trustingly into my eyes, - therefore, he was just beginning his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister, she was unemployed, sick; maybe it’s true, but only later I found out that these boys are in darkness and darkness: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, stiff hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent people are drinking, from those who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work again no earlier than on Wednesday evening” . There, in the cellars, their hungry and beaten wives drink with them, their hungry babies squeak right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected kopecks, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, they sometimes pour a pigtail into his mouth and laugh when, with a choked breath, he falls almost unconscious on the floor.
... and bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...
When he grows up, they quickly sell him somewhere to the factory, but everything that he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the caretakers, and they again drink it away. But even before the factory, these children become perfect criminals. They wander around the city and know such places in different basements that you can crawl into and where you can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with a janitor in a basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even in eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end, they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and they run away from their negligent wanderers already from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a god, whether there is a sovereign; even such convey things about them that are unbelievable to hear, and yet they are all facts.
THE BOY AT CHRIST ON THE TREE
But I am a novelist, and it seems that I composed one "story" myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself know for sure what I composed, but I keep imagining that it happened somewhere and at some time, that’s exactly what happened just on the eve of Christmas, in some a huge city and in a terrible frost.
It seems to me that there was a boy in the basement, but still very small, about six years old or even less. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was trembling. His breath came out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on the chest, out of boredom, purposely let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself, watching how it flies out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunks, where on a bedding as thin as a pancake and on some bundle under his head, instead of a pillow, lay his sick mother. How did she get here? She must have come with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The mistress of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants dispersed, it was a festive matter, and the remaining one dressing gown had been lying dead drunk for a whole day, not even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman was moaning from rheumatism, who had once lived somewhere in nannies, and now she was dying alone, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he already began to be afraid to come close to her corner. He got a drink somewhere in the entryway, but he didn’t find a crust anywhere, and once in the tenth he already came up to wake his mother. He felt terrible, at last, in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but no fire was lit. Feeling his mother's face, he was surprised that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood a little, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, groping for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but he was always afraid upstairs, on the stairs, of a big dog that had been howling all day at the neighbor's door. But the dog was gone, and he suddenly went out into the street.
God, what a city! Never before had he seen anything like it. There, from where he came, at night such black darkness, one lamp on the whole street. Wooden low houses are locked with shutters; on the street, it gets a little dark - nobody, everyone shuts up at home, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But it was so warm there and they gave him food, but here, God, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder here, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam pours from driven horses, from their hotly breathing snouts; horseshoes clinking against the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing like that, and, Lord, I so want to eat, at least a piece of some kind, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A law enforcement officer passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.
Here again the street - oh, what a wide! Here they will probably crush them like that; how they all shout, run and ride, but the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many golden bills and apples, and all around are dolls, little horses; and children running around the room, smart, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here is the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and already laughs, and his fingers and legs already hurt, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, began to cry and ran on, and here again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are pies, all sorts - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there. rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen enter them from the street. A boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady came up quickly and thrust a kopeck into his hand, and she herself opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the kopeck immediately rolled out and rang on the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went quickly, quickly, but where he did not know. He wants to cry again, but he's afraid, and he runs, runs and blows on his hands. And longing takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying, and suddenly, Lord! So what is it again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very much like they are alive! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a big violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk, - only now because of the glass is not audible. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he completely guessed that they were pupae, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that there were such! And he wants to cry, but it's so funny, funny on pupae. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the dressing gown from behind: a big angry boy stood nearby and suddenly cracked him on the head, tore off his cap, and gave him a leg from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran he didn’t know where, into the doorway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down for firewood: “They won’t find it here, and it’s dark.”
Children are a strange people, they dream and imagine. In front of the Christmas tree, and right before Christmas, on the street, on a certain corner, I always met a boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost like a summer dress, but his neck was tied with some kind of junk, which means that someone still equipped him, sending him. He walked "with a pen"; this is a technical term, it means to beg. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something learned by heart; but this one did not howl, and spoke somehow innocently and unusually, and looked trustingly into my eyes, - therefore, he was just beginning his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister, she was unemployed, sick; maybe it’s true, but only later I found out that these boys are in darkness and darkness: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, stiff hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent people are drinking, from those who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work again no earlier than on Wednesday evening” . There, in the cellars, their hungry and beaten wives drink with them, their hungry babies squeak right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected kopecks, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, they sometimes pour a pigtail into his mouth and laugh when, with a choked breath, he falls almost unconscious on the floor.
... and bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...
When he grows up, they quickly sell him somewhere to the factory, but everything that he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the caretakers, and they again drink it away. But even before the factory, these children become perfect criminals. They wander around the city and know such places in different basements that you can crawl into and where you can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with a janitor in a basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even in eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end, they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and they run away from their negligent wanderers already from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a god, whether there is a sovereign; even such convey things about them that are unbelievable to hear, and yet they are all facts.
II
THE BOY AT CHRIST ON THE TREE
But I am a novelist, and it seems that I composed one "story" myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself know for sure what I composed, but I keep imagining that it happened somewhere and at some time, that’s exactly what happened just on the eve of Christmas, in some a huge city and in a terrible frost.
It seems to me that there was a boy in the basement, but still very small, about six years old or even less. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was trembling. His breath came out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on the chest, out of boredom, purposely let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself, watching how it flies out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunks, where on a bedding as thin as a pancake and on some bundle under his head, instead of a pillow, lay his sick mother. How did she get here? She must have come with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The mistress of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants dispersed, it was a festive matter, and the remaining one dressing gown had been lying dead drunk for a whole day, not even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman was moaning from rheumatism, who had once lived somewhere in nannies, and now she was dying alone, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he already began to be afraid to come close to her corner. He got a drink somewhere in the entryway, but he didn’t find a crust anywhere, and once in the tenth he already came up to wake his mother. He felt terrible, at last, in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but no fire was lit. Feeling his mother's face, he was surprised that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood a little, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, groping for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but he was always afraid upstairs, on the stairs, of a big dog that had been howling all day at the neighbor's door. But the dog was gone, and he suddenly went out into the street.
God, what a city! Never before had he seen anything like it. There, from where he came, at night such black darkness, one lamp on the whole street. Wooden low houses are locked with shutters; on the street, it gets a little dark - nobody, everyone shuts up at home, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But it was so warm there and they gave him food, but here, God, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder here, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam pours from driven horses, from their hotly breathing snouts; horseshoes clinking against the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing like that, and, Lord, I so want to eat, at least a piece of some kind, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A law enforcement officer passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.
Here again the street - oh, what a wide! Here they will probably crush them like that; how they all shout, run and ride, but the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many golden bills and apples, and all around are dolls, little horses; and children running around the room, smart, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here is the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and already laughs, and his fingers and legs already hurt, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, began to cry and ran on, and here again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are pies, all sorts - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there. rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen enter them from the street. A boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady came up quickly and thrust a kopeck into his hand, and she herself opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the kopeck immediately rolled out and rang on the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went quickly, quickly, but where he did not know. He wants to cry again, but he's afraid, and he runs, runs and blows on his hands. And longing takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying, and suddenly, Lord! So what is it again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very much like they are alive! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a big violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk, - only now because of the glass is not audible. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he completely guessed that they were pupae, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that there were such! And he wants to cry, but it's so funny, funny on pupae. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the dressing gown from behind: a big angry boy stood nearby and suddenly cracked him on the head, tore off his cap, and gave him a leg from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly he ran he didn’t know where, into the doorway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down for firewood: “They won’t find it here, and it’s dark.”
Current page: 1 (total book has 1 pages)
Fedor Dostoevsky
THE BOY AT CHRIST ON THE TREE
I
BOY WITH A PEN
Children are a strange people, they dream and imagine. In front of the Christmas tree, and right before Christmas, on the street, on a certain corner, I always met a boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost in summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some kind of old stuff, which means that someone was sending him out after all. He walked "with a pen"; it is a technical term, it means to beg. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something learned by heart; but this one did not howl, and spoke somehow innocently and unaccustomedly, and looked trustingly into my eyes—so, he was just beginning his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister, she was unemployed, sick; maybe it’s true, but only later I found out that these boys are in darkness and darkness: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, stiff hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent people are drinking, from those who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work again no earlier than on Wednesday evening” . There, in the cellars, their hungry and beaten wives drink with them, their hungry babies squeak right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected kopecks, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, they sometimes pour a pigtail into his mouth and laugh when, with a choked breath, he falls almost unconscious on the floor.
... and bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...
When he grows up, they quickly sell him somewhere to the factory, but everything that he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the caretakers, and they again drink it away. But even before the factory, these children become perfect criminals. They wander around the city and know such places in different basements that you can crawl into and where you can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with a janitor in a basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even in eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end, they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and they run away from their negligent wanderers already from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a god, whether there is a sovereign; even such convey things about them that are unbelievable to hear, and yet they are all facts.
II
THE BOY AT CHRIST ON THE TREE
But I am a novelist, and it seems that I composed one "story" myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself know for sure what I composed, but I keep imagining that it happened somewhere and at some time, that’s exactly what happened just on the eve of Christmas, in some a huge city and in a terrible frost.
It seems to me that there was a boy in the basement, but still very small, about six years old or even less. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was trembling. His breath came out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on the chest, out of boredom, purposely let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself, watching how it flies out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunks, where on a bedding as thin as a pancake and on some bundle under his head, instead of a pillow, lay his sick mother. How did she get here? She must have come with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The mistress of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants dispersed, it was a festive matter, and the remaining one dressing gown had been lying dead drunk for a whole day, not even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman was moaning from rheumatism, who had once lived somewhere in nannies, and now she was dying alone, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he already began to be afraid to come close to her corner. He got a drink somewhere in the entryway, but he didn’t find a crust anywhere, and once in the tenth he already came up to wake his mother. He felt terrible, at last, in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but no fire was lit. Feeling his mother's face, he was surprised that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood a little, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, groping for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but he was always afraid upstairs, on the stairs, of a big dog that had been howling all day at the neighbor's door. But the dog was gone, and he suddenly went out into the street.
God, what a city! Never before had he seen anything like it. There, from where he came, at night such black darkness, one lamp on the whole street. Wooden low houses are locked with shutters; on the street, it gets a little dark - nobody, everyone shuts up at home, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But it was so warm there and they gave him food, but here, God, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder here, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam pours from driven horses, from their hotly breathing snouts; horseshoes clinking against the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing like that, and, Lord, I so want to eat, at least a piece of some kind, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A law enforcement officer passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.
Here again the street - oh, what a wide! Here they will probably crush them like that; how they all shout, run and ride, but the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many golden bills and apples, and all around are dolls, little horses; and children running around the room, smart, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here is the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, marvels, and already laughs, and his fingers and legs already hurt, and his hands have become completely red, they no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, wept and ran on, and here again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are pies, all sorts - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there. rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen enter them from the street. A boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady came up quickly and thrust a kopeck into his hand, and she herself opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the kopeck immediately rolled out and rang on the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went quickly, quickly, but where he did not know. He wants to cry again, but he's afraid, and he runs, runs and blows on his hands. And longing takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying, and suddenly, Lord! So what is it again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very much like they are alive! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a big violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk, - only because of the glass is not audible. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he completely guessed that they were pupae, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that there were such! And he wants to cry, but it's so funny, funny on pupae. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the dressing gown from behind: a big angry boy stood nearby and suddenly cracked him on the head, tore off his cap, and gave him a leg from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly ran he didn’t know where, into the doorway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down for firewood: “They won’t find it here, and it’s dark.”
He sat down and writhed, but he himself could not catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on the stove; now he shuddered all over: oh, why, he was about to fall asleep! How good it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go again to look at the pupae,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like they are alive! ..” And suddenly he heard that his mother sang a song over him. "Mom, I'm sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!"
“Come to my Christmas tree, boy,” a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.
He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; Who called him, he does not see, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the dark, and he held out his hand to him and ... and suddenly, - oh, what a light! Oh what a tree! And this is not a Christmas tree, he has not yet seen such trees! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and all around are dolls - but no, they are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother looks and laughs at him joyfully.
- Mother! Mother! Oh, how good it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. - Who are you boys? Who are you girls? he asks, laughing and loving them.
“This is the Christ Tree,” they answer him. “Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own Christmas tree there ...” And he found out that these boys and girls were all the same as him, children, but some were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown on the stairs to the doors of St. Petersburg officials, others suffocated at the little chuffs, from the educational home for feeding, the third died at the withered breasts of their mothers during the Samara famine, the fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and yet they are now here, they are all now like angels, all with Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers ... And the mothers of these children all stand right there, on the sidelines, and cry; each recognizes her boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here ...
And below, in the morning, the janitors found a small corpse of a boy who had run in and froze behind firewood; they also found his mother ... She died even before him; both met with the Lord God in the sky.
And why did I write such a story, so not going into an ordinary reasonable diary, and even a writer? He also promised stories mainly about real events! But that's the thing, it always seems and imagines to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about Christ's Christmas tree - I don’t know how to tell you could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent.
Children are a strange people, they dream and imagine. In front of the Christmas tree and in the very Christmas tree before Christmas, I kept meeting on the street, on a certain corner, one boy, no more than seven years old. In the terrible frost, he was dressed almost in summer clothes, but his neck was tied with some kind of junk, which means that someone was still equipping him, sending him. He walked "with a pen"; it is a technical term, it means to beg. The term was invented by these boys themselves. There are many like him, they spin on your road and howl something learned by heart; but this one did not howl, and spoke somehow innocently and unaccustomedly, and looked trustingly into my eyes—so, he was just beginning his profession. In response to my questions, he said that he had a sister, she was unemployed, sick; maybe it’s true, but only later I found out that these boys are in darkness and darkness: they are sent out “with a pen” even in the most terrible frost, and if they don’t get anything, then they will probably be beaten. Having collected kopecks, the boy returns with red, stiff hands to some basement, where some gang of negligent people is drinking, one of those who, “having gone on strike at the factory on Sunday on Saturday, return to work again no earlier than on Wednesday evening” . There, in the cellars, their hungry and beaten wives drink with them, their hungry babies squeak right there. Vodka, and dirt, and debauchery, and most importantly, vodka. With the collected kopecks, the boy is immediately sent to the tavern, and he brings more wine. For fun, they sometimes pour a pigtail into his mouth and laugh when he, with a short breath, falls almost unconscious on the floor,
... and bad vodka in my mouth
Ruthlessly poured...
When he grows up, they quickly sell him somewhere to the factory, but everything that he earns, he is again obliged to bring to the caretakers, and they again drink it away. But even before the factory, these children become perfect criminals. They wander around the city and know such places in different basements that you can crawl into and where you can spend the night unnoticed. One of them spent several nights in a row with a janitor in a basket, and he never noticed him. Of course, they become thieves. Theft turns into a passion even in eight-year-old children, sometimes even without any consciousness of the criminality of the action. In the end, they endure everything - hunger, cold, beatings - for only one thing, for freedom, and run away from their negligent wanderers already from themselves. This wild creature sometimes does not understand anything, neither where he lives, nor what nation he is, whether there is a God, whether there is a sovereign; even such convey things about them that are unbelievable to hear, and yet they are all facts.
Dostoevsky. The boy at Christ on the Christmas tree. video film
II. The boy at Christ on the Christmas tree
But I am a novelist, and it seems that I composed one "story" myself. Why do I write: “it seems”, because I myself know for sure what I composed, but I keep imagining that it happened somewhere and sometime, it happened just on the eve of Christmas, in some huge city and in a terrible freezing.
It seems to me that there was a boy in the basement, but still very small, about six years old or even less. This boy woke up in the morning in a damp and cold basement. He was dressed in some kind of robe and was trembling. His breath came out in white steam, and he, sitting in the corner on the chest, out of boredom, purposely let this steam out of his mouth and amused himself, watching how it flies out. But he really wanted to eat. Several times in the morning he approached the bunks, where on a bedding as thin as a pancake and on some bundle under his head, instead of a pillow, lay his sick mother. How did she get here? She must have come with her boy from a foreign city and suddenly fell ill. The mistress of the corners was captured by the police two days ago; the tenants dispersed, it was a festive matter, and the remaining one dressing gown had been lying dead drunk for a whole day, not even waiting for the holiday. In another corner of the room, some eighty-year-old old woman was moaning from rheumatism, who once lived somewhere in nannies, and now she was dying alone, groaning, grumbling and grumbling at the boy, so that he already began to be afraid to come close to her corner. He got a drink somewhere in the entryway, but he didn’t find a crust anywhere, and once in the tenth he already came up to wake his mother. He felt dreadful at last in the darkness: evening had already begun long ago, but no fire had been lit. Feeling his mother's face, he was surprised that she did not move at all and became as cold as a wall. “It’s very cold here,” he thought, stood a little, unconsciously forgetting his hand on the dead woman’s shoulder, then breathed on his fingers to warm them, and suddenly, groping for his cap on the bunk, slowly, gropingly, went to the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but he was still afraid upstairs, on the stairs, of a big dog that had been howling all day at the neighbor's door. But the dog was gone, and he suddenly went out into the street.
God, what a city! Never before had he seen anything like it. There, from where he came, at night such black darkness, one lamp on the whole street. Wooden low houses are locked with shutters; on the street, it gets a little dark - nobody, everyone shuts up at home, and only whole packs of dogs howl, hundreds and thousands of them, howl and bark all night. But it was so warm there and they gave him food, but here - Lord, if only he could eat! And what a knock and thunder here, what light and people, horses and carriages, and frost, frost! Frozen steam pours from driven horses, from their hotly breathing snouts; horseshoes clinking against the stones through the loose snow, and everyone is pushing like that, and, Lord, I so want to eat, at least a piece of some kind, and my fingers suddenly hurt so much. A law enforcement officer passed by and turned away so as not to notice the boy.
Here again the street - oh, what a wide! Here they will probably crush them like that; how they all shout, run and ride, but the light, the light! And what's that? Wow, what a big glass, and behind the glass is a room, and in the room there is a tree up to the ceiling; this is a Christmas tree, and there are so many lights on the Christmas tree, how many gold pieces of paper and apples, and around there are dolls, little horses; and children running around the room, smart, clean, laughing and playing, and eating, and drinking something. This girl started dancing with the boy, what a pretty girl! Here is the music, you can hear it through the glass. The boy looks, wonders, and already laughs, and his fingers and legs already hurt, and on his hands they have become completely red, they no longer bend and move painfully. And suddenly the boy remembered that his fingers hurt so much, wept and ran on, and here again he sees through another glass a room, again there are trees, but on the tables there are pies, all sorts - almond, red, yellow, and four people are sitting there. rich ladies, and whoever comes, they give him pies, and the door opens every minute, many gentlemen enter them from the street. A boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. Wow, how they shouted and waved at him! One lady came up quickly and thrust a kopeck into his hand, and she herself opened the door to the street for him. How scared he was! And the kopeck immediately rolled out and rang on the steps: he could not bend his red fingers and hold it. The boy ran out and went quickly, quickly, but where he did not know. He wants to cry again, but he's afraid, and he runs, runs and blows on his hands. And longing takes him, because he suddenly felt so lonely and terrifying, and suddenly, Lord! So what is it again? People are standing in a crowd and marveling: on the window behind the glass are three dolls, small, dressed in red and green dresses and very, very much like they are alive! Some old man sits and seems to be playing a big violin, two others stand right there and play small violins, and shake their heads to the beat, and look at each other, and their lips move, they talk, they really talk, - only because of the glass is not audible. And at first the boy thought that they were alive, but when he completely guessed that they were pupae, he suddenly laughed. He had never seen such dolls and did not know that there were such! And he wants to cry, but it's so funny, funny on pupae. Suddenly it seemed to him that someone grabbed him by the dressing gown from behind: a big angry boy stood nearby and suddenly cracked him on the head, tore off his cap, and gave him a leg from below. The boy rolled to the ground, then they screamed, he was stupefied, he jumped up and ran and ran, and suddenly ran he didn’t know where, into the doorway, into someone else’s yard, and sat down for firewood: “They won’t find it here, and it’s dark.”
He sat down and writhed, but he himself could not catch his breath from fear, and suddenly, quite suddenly, he felt so good: his arms and legs suddenly stopped hurting and it became so warm, so warm, like on the stove; now he shuddered all over: oh, why, he was about to fall asleep! How good it is to fall asleep here: “I’ll sit here and go again to look at the pupae,” the boy thought and grinned, remembering them, “just like they are alive! ..” And suddenly he heard that his mother sang a song over him. "Mom, I'm sleeping, oh, how good it is to sleep here!"
“Come to my Christmas tree, boy,” a quiet voice suddenly whispered above him.
He thought it was all his mother, but no, not her; Who called him, he does not see, but someone bent over him and hugged him in the dark, and he held out his hand to him and ... and suddenly, - oh, what a light! Oh what a tree! Yes, and this is not a Christmas tree, he has not yet seen such trees! Where is he now: everything glitters, everything shines and all around are dolls - but no, they are all boys and girls, only so bright, they all circle around him, fly, they all kiss him, take him, carry him with them, yes and he himself flies, and he sees: his mother looks and laughs at him joyfully.
- Mother! Mother! Oh, how good it is here, mom! - the boy shouts to her, and again kisses the children, and he wants to tell them as soon as possible about those dolls behind the glass. - Who are you boys? Who are you girls? he asks, laughing and loving them.
- This is the "Christ tree", - they answer him. “Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day for little children who don’t have their own Christmas tree there ...” And he found out that these boys and girls were all the same as him, children, but some of them were still frozen in their baskets, in which they were thrown on the stairs to the doors of Petersburg officials; others suffocated at the little chicks, from the foster home to be fed, still others died at the withered breasts of their mothers (during the Samara famine), the fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench, and yet they are here now, they are all now like angels, everyone Christ, and he himself is in the midst of them, and stretches out his hands to them, and blesses them and their sinful mothers ... And the mothers of these children all stand right there, on the sidelines, and cry; each recognizes her boy or girl, and they fly up to them and kiss them, wipe their tears with their hands and beg them not to cry, because they feel so good here ...
And downstairs, in the morning, the janitors found a small corpse of a boy who had run in and froze for firewood; they also found his mother ... She died even before him; both met with the Lord God in the sky.
And why did I write such a story, so not going into an ordinary reasonable diary, and even a writer? He also promised stories mainly about real events! But that's the thing, it always seems and imagines to me that all this could really happen - that is, what happened in the basement and behind the firewood, and there about Christ's Christmas tree - I don’t know how to tell you could it happen or not? That's why I'm a novelist, to invent.
... and nasty vodka into my mouth // Ruthlessly poured ...– An inaccurate quote from N. A. Nekrasov’s poem “Childhood” (1855), which is the second edition of the poem “Fragment” (“I was born in the province ...”, 1844). During the lifetime of Nekrasov and Dostoevsky, "Childhood" was not published, but went on the lists. When and how Dostoevsky met him is not clear; nevertheless, the whole scene of the drunkenness of a young boy echoes the following passage from "Childhood":
Stealthily from mother
He planted me
And nasty vodka in my mouth
Drop by drop poured:
"Well, refuel from a young age,
Fool, grow up -
You won't die of hunger.
Don't drink your shirt!" -
So he said - and furiously
Laughed with friends
When I'm crazy
And fell and screamed ...
(Nekrasov N. A. Complete collection of works and letters: V 15 t. L., 1981. T. 1. S. 558).
... others suffocated at the little chicks, from the foster home to feed ...- Orphanages were orphanages for foundlings and homeless babies. Dostoevsky's attention was drawn to the St. Petersburg Orphanage as early as 1873 by a note in Golos (March 9, 1873), which contained a letter from the priest John Nikolsky about the high mortality among the pupils of this institution, distributed to the peasant women of his parish in Tsarskoye Selo district. The letter stated that peasant women take children in order to get linen and money for them, but they do not take care of babies; in turn, doctors who issue documents for the right to take a child show complete indifference and indifference to whose hands the children fall into. In the May issue of The Writer's Diary, when talking about his visit to the Orphanage, Dostoevsky mentions his intention to "go to the villages, to the chukhonkas, to whom the babies are given out" (see p. 176).
Chukhonets- Finn.
... during the Samara famine ...- In 1871 - 1873. The Samara province suffered catastrophic crop failures, which caused severe famine.
... the fourth suffocated in third-class carriages from the stench ...- "Moskovskie Vedomosti" (1876. January 6) cited an entry from the complaint book at st. Voronezh that on the train, in the third-class carriage, a boy and a girl died and that the state of the latter is hopeless. “The reason is the stench in the car, from which even adult passengers fled.”
