Bunin gave a summary of the chapters. Brief summary of Natalie Ivan Bunin. Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

At first glance, the story “Natalie” seems psychological, although this only seems so at first and very superficial glance. What is going on there, how does “Natalie” differ from Bunin’s other erotomaniac works? Meshchersky is a young man, at the beginning of the story he is eighteen years old, he has just put on his student cap. At the same time, Bunin did not say a word at which university his hero studies, at which faculty. The fact that this is a university is clear from the fact that the cap has a blue band. True, a cap is a cap without a band, but we will forgive Bunin such a small thing, especially since students at Kyiv or Novorossiysk universities, and Meshchersky most likely studied there, could have their own jargon. But not to give a single detail that would help to understand whether the student ball is taking place in Kyiv or in Odessa, this should have been an effort.

However, let's return to the story. The hero of the story was brought up in a strict family. The severity, as one can understand, was that he was engaged in rather severe forms of peting with his cousin Sonya, who was three years older than him. Strictness is good, the uncle could look after his daughter and nephew, it’s not for nothing that they say: “cousinage est dangeureux voisinage” (but I won’t translate, let it be like Bunin, without translation!). These games have been going on for several years now, so Bunin’s hero is lying when he says that he blushed when he heard the frivolous conversations of his classmates. All the thoughts of the young dunce are aimed at “looking for love without romance.” Yes, this is possible in youth, which is why I said that at first glance the story seems psychological. An interesting detail: in my uncle’s office there hangs a darkened painting depicting a bather. At the same time, the young student pays attention to the powerful butt and hands, one of which covers the lower abdomen, and the second the nipple. Sexual arousal at the sight of paintings and sculptures is typical for prepubescent boys; by the age of fifteen this usually passes, and the young man finds other objects of passion.

Meanwhile, Sonina’s friend Natalie arrives at the estate, and Meshchersky immediately falls in love with her. Here again an innovation is announced: Bunin does not describe either full knees or heavy breasts. He can’t live without breasts at all, but the dots of breasts showing through his blouse are not serious. But irrepressible delight repeatedly turns to Natalie’s amazing elbows. Has Bunin really found a new “inflaming element” to describe an attractive woman? (for those who don’t know: the phrase “inflaming element” belongs to Leskov; he uses it, remembering Agafya Pshenitsyna’s elbows from Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov”). But maybe Bunin independently reached the point of sexual attractiveness of elbows, and Goncharov had nothing to do with it? Yeah, that's what we believed. While Sonya is having her period, Meshchersky reads aloud to Natalie Goncharova.

Here it is worth noting an interesting point regarding psychology, but not the psychology of the characters, but the author himself. After the articles of Dobrolyubov and Lenin, Goncharov’s novel “Oblomov” was cursed by representatives of the first wave of Russian emigration. But “The Cliff,” directed against nihilism, was acceptable and welcomed. That’s why Natalie Meshchersky reads “The Precipice,” although Sonya calls it “unbearable.” During the reading, Meshchersky confesses his tender passion to Natalie, but does not receive a clear answer. And in the evening, visiting Sonya, Natalie sees her boyfriend in the arms of her friend. Let us be chaste and not claim that it was a “decisive meeting” (the term belongs to Goncharov and was taken this time from “The Cliff”). Natalie immediately leaves the guests and suddenly marries the unlucky student's cousin. Meshchersky also leaves, and we won’t hear another word about Sonya, her dad, or the village estate. They have served their purpose, they are no longer needed, so let them be glad that the author did not kill anyone.

What follows is a most charming scene: a student ball, at which the lyrical hero sees Natalie dancing with her young husband. Just like Pushkin: “Who’s there in the crimson beret?” But Bunin would not have been himself if he had not completed the matter with sexual intercourse. Oh, she was “given to someone else and will be faithful to him forever”? What about the author? And now a young, black-haired man, not even thirty years old, dies for no reason. If I’m not mistaken, this is the seventh corpse on the author’s conscience, which we see in the collection “Dark Alleys.” What to do, a graphomaniac does not know how to resolve situations other than through someone else's corpse.

The lyrical hero did not dare to demand copulation at an open grave. He worries for another whole half page, having managed to seduce the maid and have a child with her. A bad deed is not tricky, Bunin has it easy. Then he appears to the inconsolable Natalie, and sexual intercourse takes place.

By and large, the current situation is not so simple. In addition to Natalie and her newly found lover, Natalie’s son, the maid Gasha and her son from Meshchersky are involved in the case. The knot is not easy to tie, but Bunin doesn’t care about it. Coitum has happened, the story can end. For this, there is a graphomaniac technique used seven times. I hope the reader himself will guess who the loving Ivan Bunin killed this time.

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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Natalie

I

That summer I put on my student cap for the first time and was happy with that special happiness of the beginning of a young, free life that only happens at that time. I grew up in a strict noble family, in the village, and as a young man, ardently dreaming of love, I was still pure in soul and body, I blushed at the free conversations of my schoolmates, and they frowned: “You should become a monk, Meshchersky!” That summer I would no longer blush. Arriving home for the holidays, I decided that the time had come for me to be like everyone else, to break my purity, to look for love without romance, and, due to this decision, and the desire to show off my blue band, I began to travel in search of love encounters in neighboring estates, relatives and friends. This is how I ended up on the estate of my maternal uncle, the retired and long-widowed Ulan Cherkasov, the father of my only daughter, and my cousin Sonya...

I arrived late, and only Sonya met me at the house. When I jumped out of the carriage and ran into the dark hallway, she came out there in a flannel night robe, holding a candle high in her left hand, offered me her cheek for a kiss and said, shaking her head with her usual mockery:

- Ah, the young man who is always late everywhere!

“Well, this time it’s not my fault,” I answered. “It was not the young man who was late, but the train.”

- Quiet, everyone is sleeping. They spent the whole evening dying of impatience, waiting, and finally gave up on you. Dad went to bed angry, cursing you as a helipad, and Ephraim, who apparently remained at the station until the morning train, as an old fool, Natalie left offended, the servants also left, I was the only one who was patient and faithful to you... Well, undress, and let's go to dinner.

I answered, admiring her blue eyes and her raised hand, open to the shoulder:

- Thank you, dear friend. Now I am especially pleased to be convinced of your loyalty - you have become a perfect beauty, and I have the most serious plans for you. What an arm, what a neck, and how seductive this soft robe, under which there is probably nothing!

She laughed:

- Almost nothing. But you have also become much more mature. A lively look and a vulgar black mustache... Just what is wrong with you? In these two years that I have not seen you, you have turned from a boy always flushed with shyness into a very interesting impudent one. And this would promise us a lot of love pleasures, as our grandmothers said, if not for Natalie, with whom you will fall in love to the grave tomorrow morning.

- Who is this Natalie? - I asked, following her into the dining room, illuminated by a bright hanging lamp, with the windows open to the blackness of a warm and quiet summer night.

– This is Natasha Stankevich, my friend from high school, who came to stay with me. And this is truly a beauty, not like me. Imagine: a lovely head, so-called “golden” hair and black eyes. And not even eyes, but black suns, to put it in Persian. The eyelashes, of course, are huge and also black, and an amazing golden complexion of the face, shoulders and everything else.

- What else? – I asked, increasingly admiring the tone of our conversation.

“But tomorrow morning we’ll go swimming with her - I advise you to climb into the bushes, then you’ll see something.” And built like a young nymph...

On the table in the dining room there were cold cutlets, a piece of cheese and a bottle of red Crimean wine.

“Don’t be angry, there’s nothing more,” she said, sitting down and pouring wine for me and herself. - And there is no vodka. Well, God willing, let’s at least clink glasses of wine.

– What exactly does God forbid?

“I need to quickly find a groom who would go to our yard.” After all, I’m already twenty-first years old, and I just can’t get married somewhere: who will dad stay with?

- Well, God forbid!

And we clinked glasses, and, having slowly drunk the entire glass, she again began to look at me with a strange grin, at how I worked with a fork, and began to say to herself, as it were:

“Yes, you’re wow, you look like a Georgian and are quite handsome; before you were very skinny and green-faced.” In general, he has changed a lot, he has become light and pleasant. It's just that my eyes are shifting.

“That’s because you confuse me with your charms.” You weren’t quite like that before either...

And I looked at her cheerfully. She sat on the other side of the table, all climbed up on a chair, her leg tucked under her, her full knee on her knee, slightly sideways to me; under the lamp the even tan of her hands shone, her blue-lilac smiling eyes shone, and her thick and soft hair, braided at night in a large braid, had a reddish chestnut tint; the collar of the open robe revealed a round tanned neck and the beginning of a plump chest, on which also lay a triangle of tan; on her left cheek she had a mole with a beautiful curl of black hair.

- Well, what about dad?

She, still looking with the same grin, took out a small silver cigarette case and a silver box of matches from her pocket and lit a cigarette with some even excessive dexterity, adjusting her tucked thigh under her:

– Dad, thank God, he’s doing well. Still straight, firm, tapping his crutch, fluffing his gray hair, secretly tinting his mustache and sideburns with something brown, looking bravely at Christya... Only even more than before and shaking and shaking his head even more persistently. She never seems to agree with anything,” she said and laughed. - Do you want a cigarette?

I lit a cigarette, although I hadn’t smoked yet, she poured another drink for me and herself and looked into the darkness outside the open window:

- Yes, so far everything, thank God. And a beautiful summer - what a night, huh? Only the nightingales had already fallen silent. And I'm really very happy for you. I sent for you at six o’clock, I was afraid that the crazy Ephraim might be late for the train. I was waiting for you more impatiently than anyone else. And then I was even glad that everyone had left and that you were late, that if you came, we would sit alone. For some reason I thought that you had changed a lot, it always happens with people like you. And you know, it’s such a pleasure to sit alone in the whole house on a summer night, when you’re waiting for someone to get off the train, and finally hear what’s coming, the jingle bells rattling, rolling up to the porch...

I firmly took her hand across the table and held it in mine, already feeling a craving for her whole body. She blew smoke rings from her lips with cheerful calm. I threw my hand and, as if jokingly, said:

- So you say Natalie... No Natalie can compare with you... By the way, who is she, where is she from?

– Our Voronezh woman, from a wonderful family, once very rich, but now just poor. In the house they speak English and French, but there is nothing to eat... A very touching girl, slender, still fragile. She’s smart, but very secretive, you can’t immediately tell whether she’s smart or stupid... These Stankevichs are close neighbors of your dear cousin Alexei Meshchersky, and Natalie says that he often began to visit them and complain about his single life. But she doesn't like him. And then - rich, they will think that she left for the money, sacrificed herself for her parents.

“Yes,” I said. - But let's get back to business. Natalie, Natalie, what about our romance?

“Natalie still won’t interfere with our romance,” she answered. - You will go crazy with love for her, and you will kiss me. You will cry on my chest from her cruelty, and I will console you.

“But you know that I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

- Yes, but it was an ordinary love for your cousin and, moreover, it was too fake, you were just funny and boring then. But God be with you, I forgive you for your previous stupidity and I’m ready to start our romance tomorrow, despite Natalie. In the meantime, let's go to bed, I have to get up early tomorrow to do housework.

And she got up, wrapping her robe around her, took an almost burnt-out candle from the hallway and led me to my room. And on the threshold of this room, rejoicing and marveling at what I marveled and rejoiced in my soul throughout the entire dinner - such a happy success of my love hopes that suddenly fell to my lot at the Cherkasovs - I kissed her long and greedily and pressed her to the ceiling, and she closed her eyes gloomily, lowering the dripping candle lower and lower. Leaving me with a crimson face, she shook her finger at me and said quietly:

- Just watch now: tomorrow, in front of everyone, don’t dare devour me with “passionate gazes”! God forbid if dad notices anything. He is terribly afraid of me, I am even more afraid of him. And I don’t want Natalie to notice anything. I’m very shy, please don’t judge me by the way I behave with you. If you don’t carry out my orders, you will immediately become disgusted with me...

I undressed and fell into bed with dizziness, but fell asleep sweetly and instantly, overwhelmed with happiness and fatigue, not at all suspecting what a great misfortune awaited me ahead, that Sonya’s jokes would not be jokes.

Subsequently, I more than once recalled, as some kind of ominous omen, that when I entered my room and struck a match to light the candle, a large bat softly darted towards me. She rushed to my face so close that even in the light of a match I clearly saw her vile dark velvety and long-eared, snub-nosed, death-like, predatory muzzle, then with a disgusting flutter, breaking, she dived into the blackness of the open window. But then I immediately forgot about her.

II

The first time I saw Natalie the next morning was only briefly: she suddenly jumped up from the hallway into the dining room, looked - she had not yet combed her hair and was wearing only a light vest made of something orange - and, sparkling with this orange, the golden brightness of her hair and black eyes, disappeared. I was alone in the dining room at that moment, I had just finished drinking coffee - the uhlan finished earlier and left - and, getting up from the table, I accidentally turned around...

I woke up quite early that morning, in the still complete silence of the whole house. There were so many rooms in the house that I sometimes got confused in them. I woke up in some distant room, with windows looking out onto the shady part of the garden, having slept soundly, I washed myself with pleasure, dressed in everything clean - it was especially nice to put on a new red silk blouse, - I combed my black wet hair, cut yesterday in Voronezh, more beautifully, went out into the corridor, turned into another and found himself in front of the door to the office and, together, the lancer’s bedroom. Knowing that he gets up at five o'clock in the summer, he knocked. No one answered, and I opened the door, looked in and was pleased to see the unchangedness of this old spacious room with a triple Italian window under a hundred-year-old silver poplar: to the left the entire wall is lined with oak bookcases, between them in one place stands a mahogany clock with a copper disk of a motionless pendulum , in another there is a whole bunch of pipes with beaded pipes, and a barometer hangs above them, in the third there is a bureau from ancient times with a rusty green cloth of a folded walnut board, and on the cloth there are pliers, hammers, nails, a copper telescope; on the wall near the door, above a hundred-year-old wooden sofa, there is a whole gallery of faded portraits in oval frames; under the window there is a desk and a deep armchair - both also of enormous size; to the right, above the wide oak bed, a painting takes up the entire wall: a blackened lacquer background, on it are barely visible clouds of dark-smoky clouds and greenish-blue poetic trees, and in the foreground, like a petrified egg white, a naked, portly beauty, almost life-size, shines , standing half-turned towards the viewer with a proud face and all the convexities of her full-bodied back, steep backside and the back of her powerful legs, seductively covering the nipple of her breast with the elongated spread fingers of one hand, and the lower abdomen in fat folds with the other. Looking around at all this, I heard behind me the strong voice of a uhlan, approaching me from the hallway with a crutch:

- No, brother, you won’t find me in the bedroom at this time. It’s you who are lying on beds up to three oaks.

I kissed his wide, dry hand and asked:

- What oaks, uncle?

“That’s what the men say,” he answered, shaking his gray hair and looking at me with yellow eyes, still keen and intelligent. “The sun has risen three oak trees, and your face is still in the pillow,” the men say. Well, let's go have some coffee...

“Wonderful old man, wonderful house,” I thought, entering the dining room with him, through the open windows of which I looked out the greenery of the morning garden and all the summer prosperity of the village estate. An old nanny, small and hunchbacked, was serving, the lancer was drinking strong tea with cream from a thick glass in a silver glass holder, holding the thin and long, twisted stem of a round golden antique spoon in the glass with a wide finger, I ate slice after slice of black bread with butter and kept adding more to myself from a hot silver coffee pot; The ulan, interested only in himself, without asking me anything, talked about his landowner neighbors, scolding and ridiculing them in every way, I pretended to listen, looked at his mustache, sideburns, at the large hair at the end of his nose, but I myself I was waiting for Natalie and Sonya, but I couldn’t sit still: who is this Natalie and how will we meet Sonya after yesterday? I felt delight and gratitude for her, and thought viciously about her and Natalie’s bedrooms, about everything that happens in the morning chaos of the women’s bedroom... Maybe Sonya did say something to Natalie about our love that began yesterday? If so, then I feel something like love for Natalie, and not because she is supposedly beautiful, but because she has already become Sonya’s and my secret accomplice - why can’t we love two? Now they will come in in all their morning freshness, see me, my Georgian beauty and red braid, start talking, laugh, sit down at the table, beautifully pouring from this hot coffee pot - a young morning appetite, a young morning excitement, the sparkle of sleepy eyes, a light touch powder on cheeks that seemed to be rejuvenated after sleep and this laughter behind every word, not entirely natural and all the more charming... And before breakfast they will walk through the garden to the river, undress in the bathhouse, illuminated by the blue sky from above on their naked body, and by the reflection below clear water... My imagination was always vivid, I mentally saw how Sonya and Natalie would, holding onto the railing of the stairs in the bathhouse, awkwardly walk down its steps, immersed in water, wet, cold and slippery from the nasty green velvet mucus that had grown on them. them, like Sonya, throwing back her thick-haired head, will suddenly fall resolutely onto the water with her raised breasts - and, all strangely visible in the water with a bluish-chalky body, she will slant the corners of her arms and legs in different directions, just like a frog...

“Well, until lunch, you remember: lunch at twelve,” the uhlan said, shaking his head negatively, and stood up with his shaved chin, a brown mustache connected to the same sideburns, tall, senilely firm, in a spacious combed suit and blunt-toed shoes , with a crutch in a wide hand covered with buckwheat, patted me on the shoulder and walked away with a quick step. And it was then, when I also got up to go out through the next room to the balcony, she jumped up, flashed and disappeared, immediately striking me with joyful admiration. I went out onto the balcony in amazement: she really is a beauty! – and stood for a long time, as if gathering his thoughts. I was waiting for them in the dining room, but when I finally heard them in the dining room from the balcony, I suddenly ran into the garden - I was overcome by some kind of fear, either of both of them, with one of whom I already had a captivating secret, or most of all of Natalie, before that instant with which she blinded me half an hour ago in her speed. I walked around the garden, which, like the whole estate, lay in a river lowland, finally overcame myself, entered with feigned simplicity and met Sonya’s cheerful courage and Natalie’s sweet joke, who with a smile raised the shining blackness of her eyes at me from her black eyelashes, especially striking for her hair color:

- We've already met!

Then we stood on the balcony, leaning our elbows on the stone balustrade, feeling with summer pleasure how hot our open heads were baking, and Natalie stood next to me, and Sonya, hugging her and as if absent-mindedly looking somewhere, sang with a grin: “In the midst of the noisy ball , by accident...” Then she straightened up:

- Well, go swimming! First of all, we will go, then you will go...

Natalie ran for the sheets, and she paused and whispered to me:

- From now on, please pretend that you have fallen in love with Natalie. And beware if it turns out that you don't need to pretend.

And I almost answered with cheerful insolence that yes, it’s no longer necessary, but she, glancing sideways at the door, quietly added:

- I’ll come to you after lunch...

When they returned, I went to the bathhouse - first along a long birch alley, then among various old trees along the coast, where the warmth smelled of river water and rooks screamed on the treetops, I walked and again thought with two completely opposite feelings about Natalie and Sonya, oh that I will bathe in the same water in which they just swam...

After lunch, among all that happy, aimless, free and calm that looked from the garden through the open windows - the sky, greenery, sun - after a long lunch with okroshka, fried chicken and raspberries with cream, during which I secretly froze from Natalie’s presence and from waiting for the hour when the whole house would fall silent for the afternoon and Sonya (who had come out for dinner with a dark red velvety rose in her hair) would secretly run to me in order to continue yesterday, no longer hastily or somehow, I immediately went into my room and closed the through shutters, began to wait for her, lying on the Turkish sofa, listening to the hot silence of the estate and the already languid, afternoon singing of birds in the garden, from which air sweet from flowers and herbs flowed into the shutters, and thought hopelessly: how can I live now? in this duality - in secret meetings with Sonya and next to Natalie, the very thought of which already covers me with such pure love delight, a passionate dream of looking at her only with that joyful adoration with which I just looked at her thin, bent figure, at her sharp the girlish elbows with which she, half-standing, leaned on the old stone of the balustrade heated by the sun? Sonya, leaning next to her and hugging her shoulder, looked like a young woman just married in her cambric peignoir with frills, and she, in a canvas skirt and an embroidered Little Russian shirt, under which all the youthful perfection of her figure could be seen, seemed a little not a teenager. This was the highest joy, that I didn’t even dare to think about the possibility of kissing her with the same feelings with which I kissed Sonya yesterday! In the light and wide sleeve of the shirt, embroidered on the shoulders in red and blue, her thin hand was visible, to the dry-golden skin of which reddish hairs were attached - I looked and thought: what would I experience if I dared to touch them with my lips?! And, feeling my gaze, she raised her brilliant black eyes and her entire bright head, entwined with a rather large braid, at me. I walked away and hastily lowered my eyes, seeing her legs through the hem of her skirt visible in the sun and thin, strong, thoroughbred ankles in gray transparent stockings...

Sonya, with a rose in her hair, quickly opened and closed the door and quietly exclaimed: “How, you were sleeping!” I jumped up - what are you, what are you, could I sleep! – grabbed her hands. “Lock the door with the key...” I rushed to the door, she sat down on the sofa, closing her eyes, “Well, come to me,” and we immediately lost all shame and reason. We said almost not a word during these minutes, and she, in all the charm of her hot body, allowed herself to be kissed everywhere - just kissed - and closed her eyes more and more gloomily, her face became more and more flushed. And again, leaving and straightening her hair, she threatened in a whisper:

“As for Natalie, I repeat: beware of going beyond pretense.” My character is not at all as sweet as you might think!

The rose was lying on the floor. I hid it in the table, and by evening its dark red velvet became limp and purple.

III

My life went on outwardly in an ordinary way, but internally I did not know a moment of peace, becoming more and more attached to Sonya, to the sweet habit of exhaustingly passionate meetings with her at night - she now came to me only late in the evening, when the whole house fell asleep, - and more and more painfully and enthusiastically secretly watching Natalie, her every move. Everything went according to the usual summer order: meetings in the morning, swimming before lunch and dinner, then relaxing in their rooms, then the garden - they were embroidering something, sitting in a birch alley and forcing me to read Goncharov aloud, or making jam in a shady clearing under the oak trees , not far from the house, to the right of the balcony; at five o'clock tea in another shady clearing, to the left, in the evening walks or croquet in the wide yard in front of the house - me with Natalie against Sonya or Sonya with Natalie against me - at dusk dinner in the dining room... After dinner the uhlan went to bed, and we still We sat for a long time in the dark on the balcony, Sonya and I joking and smoking, and Natalie was silent. Finally Sonya said: “Well, go to bed!” - and, having said goodbye to them, I went to my room, with cold hands, I waited for that cherished hour when the whole house would become dark and so quiet that I could hear the pocket watch running continuously like a thread at my head under a burnt candle, and I was still amazed, I was horrified: why did God punish me so much, why did he give me two loves at once, so different and so passionate, such painful beauty of Natalie’s adoration and such bodily rapture for Sonya. I felt that she and I were about to not be able to stand our incomplete intimacy and that I would then go completely crazy from waiting for our nightly meetings and from feeling them all day long, and all this next to Natalie! Sonya was already jealous, sometimes flared up menacingly, and at the same time she told me in private:

“I’m afraid that you and I at the table and in front of Natalie are not simple enough.” Dad, it seems to me, is starting to notice something. Natalie too, and the nanny, of course, is already confident in our romance and will probably tell dad. Sit more in the garden with Natalie, read her this unbearable “Precipice”, sometimes take her for a walk in the evenings... It’s terrible, I notice how idiotically you stare at her, at times I feel hatred for you, I’m ready, like some Odarka, grab your hair in front of everyone, but what should I do?

The most terrible thing was that, as it seemed to me, I began to either suffer or be indignant, to feel that there was something secret between me and Sonya, Natalie. She, already silent, became more and more silent, playing croquet or embroidering too intently. We seemed to get used to each other, became closer, but I once joked while sitting with her in the living room, where she was leafing through sheet music, reclining on the sofa:

“And I heard, Natalie, that maybe you and I will become related.”

She looked at me sharply:

- How is this?

– My cousin, Alexey Nikolaich Meshchersky...

She didn't let me finish:

- Oh, that's it! Your cousin, this, excuse me, well-fed, all overgrown with black shiny hair, a burbling giant with a red juicy mouth... And who gave you the right to have such conversations with me?

I was scared:

– Natalie, Natalie, why are you so strict with me! You can't even joke! Well, forgive me,” I said, taking her hand.

She did not take her hand away and said:

– I still don’t understand... I don’t know you... But enough about that...

In order not to see her languidly attracting white tennis shoes, picked up at random on the sofa, I got up and went out onto the balcony. A cloud came in from behind the garden, the air grew dim, the soft summer noise moved wider and closer through the garden, the field rain wind blew sweetly, and suddenly I was so sweetly, youthfully and freely seized by some kind of causeless happiness, to everyone’s agreement, that I shouted :

- Natalie, just a minute!

She approached the threshold:

- Sigh - what a wind! What a joy everything could be!

She paused.

- Natalie, how unkind you are to me! Do you have something against me?

She shrugged her shoulder proudly:

– What and why can I have against you?

In the evening, lying in the dark in wicker chairs on the balcony, all three of us were silent - the stars only flickered here and there in the dark clouds, a sluggish wind was blowing weakly from the river, the frogs were murmuring so drowsily.

“It’s raining, I want to sleep,” Sonya said, suppressing a yawn. - The nanny said that the new moon was born and now it will be “washed” for a week. “And, after a pause, she added: “Natalie, what do you think about first love?”

Natalie responded from the darkness:

“I am convinced of one thing: the terrible difference between the first love of a boy and a girl.”

Sonya thought:

- Well, girls are different...

And she stood up decisively:

- No, sleep, sleep!

“And I’ll take a nap here, I like the night,” said Natalie.

I whispered, listening to Sonya’s retreating steps:

“We said something bad today!”

She replied:

- Yes, yes, we spoke badly...

The next day we met as if calmly. It rained quietly at night, but in the morning the weather cleared up, and in the afternoon it became dry and hot. Before tea at five o'clock, when Sonya was doing some economic calculations in the uhlan's office, we sat in the birch alley and tried to continue reading "The Precipice" aloud. She was bending over, sewing something, flashing her right hand, I read and from time to time I looked with sweet longing at her left hand, visible in the sleeve, at the reddish hairs that were attached to it above the hand and at the same ones where the neck from behind it turned into a shoulder, and he read more and more animatedly, without understanding a word. Finally he said:

- Well, now read...

She straightened up, the points of her breasts became visible under her thin blouse, put aside her sewing and, bending down again, lowering her strange and wonderful head low and showing me the back of her head and the beginning of her shoulder, she put the book on her knees and began to read in a quick and uncertain voice. I looked at her hands, at her knees under the book, exhausted by frantic love for them and the sound of her voice. In different places in the late afternoon garden, orioles cried out in flight; opposite us, hanging high, clinging to the trunk of a pine tree growing alone in an alley among birches, was a reddish-gray woodpecker...

– Natalie, what an amazing hair color you have! And the braid is a little darker, the color of ripe corn...

- Natalie, woodpecker, look!

She looked up:

- Yes, yes, I’ve already seen it, and I saw it today, and I saw it yesterday... Don’t interfere with reading.

I paused, then again:

– Look how it looks like dried gray worms.

- What, where?

I pointed to the bench between us, to the dried lime droppings:

- Is it true?

I took her hand and squeezed it, muttering and laughing with happiness:

- Natalie, Natalie!

She looked at me quietly and for a long time, then said:

- But you love Sonya!

I blushed like a caught swindler, but with such hot haste I renounced Sonya that she even parted her lips slightly:

- Is this not true?

- It's not true, it's not true! I love her very much, but as a sister, because we have known each other since childhood!

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

That summer I put on my student cap for the first time and was happy with that special happiness of the beginning of a young, free life that only happens at that time. I grew up in a strict noble family, in the village, and as a young man, ardently dreaming of love, I was still pure in soul and body, I blushed at the free conversations of my schoolmates, and they frowned: “You should become a monk, Meshchersky!” That summer I would no longer blush. Arriving home for the holidays, I decided that the time had come for me to be like everyone else, to break my purity, to look for love without romance, and, due to this decision, and the desire to show off my blue band, I began to travel in search of love encounters in neighboring estates, relatives and friends. This is how I ended up on the estate of my maternal uncle, the retired and long-widowed Ulan Cherkasov, the father of my only daughter, and my cousin Sonya...

I arrived late, and only Sonya met me at the house. When I jumped out of the carriage and ran into the dark hallway, she came out there in a flannel night robe, holding a candle high in her left hand, offered me her cheek for a kiss and said, shaking her head with her usual mockery:

- Ah, the young man who is always late everywhere!

“Well, this time it’s not my fault,” I answered. “It was not the young man who was late, but the train.”

- Quiet, everyone is sleeping. They spent the whole evening dying of impatience, waiting, and finally gave up on you. Dad went to bed angry, cursing you as a helipad, and Ephraim, who apparently remained at the station until the morning train, as an old fool, Natalie left offended, the servants also left, I was the only one who was patient and faithful to you... Well, undress, and let's go to dinner.

I answered, admiring her blue eyes and her raised hand, open to the shoulder:

- Thank you, dear friend. Now I am especially pleased to be convinced of your loyalty - you have become a perfect beauty, and I have the most serious plans for you. What an arm, what a neck, and how seductive this soft robe, under which there is probably nothing!

She laughed:

- Almost nothing. But you have also become much more mature. A lively look and a vulgar black mustache... Just what is wrong with you? In these two years that I have not seen you, you have turned from a boy always flushed with shyness into a very interesting impudent one. And this would promise us a lot of love pleasures, as our grandmothers said, if not for Natalie, with whom you will fall in love to the grave tomorrow morning.

- Who is this Natalie? - I asked, following her into the dining room, illuminated by a bright hanging lamp, with the windows open to the blackness of a warm and quiet summer night.

– This is Natasha Stankevich, my friend from high school, who came to stay with me. And this is truly a beauty, not like me. Imagine: a lovely head, so-called “golden” hair and black eyes. And not even eyes, but black suns, to put it in Persian. The eyelashes, of course, are huge and also black, and an amazing golden complexion of the face, shoulders and everything else.

- What else? – I asked, increasingly admiring the tone of our conversation.

“But tomorrow morning we’ll go swimming with her - I advise you to climb into the bushes, then you’ll see something.” And built like a young nymph...

On the table in the dining room there were cold cutlets, a piece of cheese and a bottle of red Crimean wine.

“Don’t be angry, there’s nothing more,” she said, sitting down and pouring wine for me and herself. - And there is no vodka. Well, God willing, let’s at least clink glasses of wine.

– What exactly does God forbid?

“I need to quickly find a groom who would go to our yard.” After all, I’m already twenty-first years old, and I just can’t get married somewhere: who will dad stay with?

- Well, God forbid!

And we clinked glasses, and, having slowly drunk the entire glass, she again began to look at me with a strange grin, at how I worked with a fork, and began to say to herself, as it were:

“Yes, you’re wow, you look like a Georgian and are quite handsome; before you were very skinny and green-faced.” In general, he has changed a lot, he has become light and pleasant. It's just that my eyes are shifting.

“That’s because you confuse me with your charms.” You weren’t quite like that before either...

And I looked at her cheerfully. She sat on the other side of the table, all climbed up on a chair, her leg tucked under her, her full knee on her knee, slightly sideways to me; under the lamp the even tan of her hands shone, her blue-lilac smiling eyes shone, and her thick and soft hair, braided at night in a large braid, had a reddish chestnut tint; the collar of the open robe revealed a round tanned neck and the beginning of a plump chest, on which also lay a triangle of tan; on her left cheek she had a mole with a beautiful curl of black hair.

- Well, what about dad?

She, still looking with the same grin, took out a small silver cigarette case and a silver box of matches from her pocket and lit a cigarette with some even excessive dexterity, adjusting her tucked thigh under her:

– Dad, thank God, he’s doing well. Still straight, firm, tapping his crutch, fluffing his gray hair, secretly tinting his mustache and sideburns with something brown, looking bravely at Christya... Only even more than before and shaking and shaking his head even more persistently. She never seems to agree with anything,” she said and laughed. - Do you want a cigarette?

I lit a cigarette, although I hadn’t smoked yet, she poured another drink for me and herself and looked into the darkness outside the open window:

- Yes, so far everything, thank God. And a beautiful summer - what a night, huh? Only the nightingales had already fallen silent. And I'm really very happy for you. I sent for you at six o’clock, I was afraid that the crazy Ephraim might be late for the train. I was waiting for you more impatiently than anyone else. And then I was even glad that everyone had left and that you were late, that if you came, we would sit alone. For some reason I thought that you had changed a lot, it always happens with people like you. And you know, it’s such a pleasure to sit alone in the whole house on a summer night, when you’re waiting for someone to get off the train, and finally hear what’s coming, the jingle bells rattling, rolling up to the porch...

I firmly took her hand across the table and held it in mine, already feeling a craving for her whole body. She blew smoke rings from her lips with cheerful calm. I threw my hand and, as if jokingly, said:

- So you say Natalie... No Natalie can compare with you... By the way, who is she, where is she from?

– Our Voronezh woman, from a wonderful family, once very rich, but now just poor. In the house they speak English and French, but there is nothing to eat... A very touching girl, slender, still fragile. She’s smart, but very secretive, you can’t immediately tell whether she’s smart or stupid... These Stankevichs are close neighbors of your dear cousin Alexei Meshchersky, and Natalie says that he often began to visit them and complain about his single life. But she doesn't like him. And then - rich, they will think that she left for the money, sacrificed herself for her parents.

“Yes,” I said. - But let's get back to business. Natalie, Natalie, what about our romance?

“Natalie still won’t interfere with our romance,” she answered. - You will go crazy with love for her, and you will kiss me. You will cry on my chest from her cruelty, and I will console you.

“But you know that I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

- Yes, but it was an ordinary love for your cousin and, moreover, it was too fake, you were just funny and boring then. But God be with you, I forgive you for your previous stupidity and I’m ready to start our romance tomorrow, despite Natalie. In the meantime, let's go to bed, I have to get up early tomorrow to do housework.

And she got up, wrapping her robe around her, took an almost burnt-out candle from the hallway and led me to my room. And on the threshold of this room, rejoicing and marveling at what I marveled and rejoiced in my soul throughout the entire dinner - such a happy success of my love hopes that suddenly fell to my lot at the Cherkasovs - I kissed her long and greedily and pressed her to the ceiling, and she closed her eyes gloomily, lowering the dripping candle lower and lower. Leaving me with a crimson face, she shook her finger at me and said quietly:

- Just watch now: tomorrow, in front of everyone, don’t dare devour me with “passionate gazes”! God forbid if dad notices anything. He is terribly afraid of me, I am even more afraid of him. And I don’t want Natalie to notice anything. I’m very shy, please don’t judge me by the way I behave with you. If you don’t carry out my orders, you will immediately become disgusted with me...

I undressed and fell into bed with dizziness, but fell asleep sweetly and instantly, overwhelmed with happiness and fatigue, not at all suspecting what a great misfortune awaited me ahead, that Sonya’s jokes would not be jokes.

Subsequently, I more than once recalled, as some kind of ominous omen, that when I entered my room and struck a match to light the candle, a large bat softly darted towards me. She rushed to my face so close that even in the light of a match I clearly saw her vile dark velvety and long-eared, snub-nosed, death-like, predatory muzzle, then with a disgusting flutter, breaking, she dived into the blackness of the open window. But then I immediately forgot about her.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

"Natalie"

Vitaly Meshchersky, a young man who recently entered the university, comes home for the holidays, inspired by the desire to find love without romance. Following his plans, he travels through neighboring estates, ending up one day at his uncle’s house. Along the way, mention is made of the hero's childhood love for his cousin Sonya, whom he now meets and with whom he immediately begins an affair. Sonya coquettishly warns Vitaly that tomorrow he will see her friend from the gymnasium, Natalie Stankevich, visiting her and will fall in love with her “to the grave.” The next day in the morning he actually sees Natalie and is amazed at her beauty. From this time on, a sensual relationship with Sonya and Natalie’s innocent admiration develop simultaneously for Vitaly. Sonya jealously assumes that Vitaly is in love with Natalie, but at the same time asks him to pay more attention to the latter in order to more carefully hide her connection with him. However, Natalie does not leave Sonya’s relationship with Vitaly unnoticed and, when he takes her hand, she informs him about it. Vitaly replies that he loves Sonya like a sister.

The day after this conversation, Natalie does not come out for breakfast or lunch, and Sonya ironically suggests that she has fallen in love. Natalie appears in the evening and surprises Vitaly with her friendliness, liveliness, new dress and changed hairstyle. On the same day, Sonya says that she is sick and will be in bed for five days. In Sonya's absence, the role of mistress of the house naturally passes to Natalie, who meanwhile avoids being alone with Vitaly. One day Natalie tells Vitaly that Sonya is angry with her for not trying to entertain him, and suggests meeting him in the garden in the evening. Vitaly keeps himself busy wondering to what extent he owes this offer to polite hospitality. At dinner, Vitaly announces to his uncle and Natalie that he is going to leave. In the evening, when she and Natalie go for a walk, she asks him if this is true, and he, answering in the affirmative, asks her permission to introduce himself to her family. She goes back to the house with the words “yes, yes, I love you” and tells Vitaly to leave tomorrow, adding that she will return home in a few days.

Vitaly returns home and finds Sonya in her room in a nightgown. At that very moment, Natalie appears on the threshold with a candle in her hand and, seeing them, runs away.

A year later, Natalie marries Alexei Meshchersky, Vitaly's cousin. A year later, Vitaly accidentally meets her at a ball. A few years later, Natalie’s husband dies and Vitaly, fulfilling his family duty, comes to the funeral. They avoid talking to each other.

Years pass. Meshchersky graduates from university and settles in the village. He meets the peasant orphan Gasha, who gives birth to his child. Vitaly invites Gasha to get married, but in response he hears a refusal, an offer to go to Moscow and a warning that if he plans to marry anyone else, she will drown herself along with the child. Some time later, Meshchersky goes abroad and on the way back sends Natalie a telegram, asking permission to visit her. Permission is given, a meeting takes place, a mutual sincere explanation and a love scene take place. Six months later, Natalie dies from premature birth.

A young man named Vitaly Meshchersky came home for the holidays. He wants to find love without romance, and, inspired by this goal, travels to neighboring estates in the hope of realizing his plans. Soon he ends up at his uncle's house, where he meets a girl, Sonya, with whom he was once in love. He wants to start a romantic relationship with her. But Sonya warned Vitaly that her friend, Natalie Stankevich, would arrive tomorrow, with whom he would definitely fall in love.

At first he didn’t believe it, but when he met Natalie the next day, Vitaly’s true feelings flared up. Sonya begins to be jealous of Vitaly, as she sees that he does not have friendly feelings for her friend. Natalie also sees the relationship between Vitaly and Sonya. When he decides to take her hand, he tells him about it. Vitaly said that he loves Sonya like a sister. After some time, Sonya said that she was sick and would be in bed for several days.

Naturally, the role of the good-natured hostess passes to Natalie. She avoids being alone with Vitaly. But soon she meets him in the garden. Vitaly says that he wants to be introduced to her family, and Natalie shows loving feelings towards him. She advises Vitaly to leave the next day, and she herself will come to the city after a while. Returning to his room, Vitaly finds Sonya in only a shirt. At the same moment Natalie enters. Seeing this scene, she runs out of the room and drives away. A year later, Natalie married her cousin Vitaly. And a year later, he met her at a ball. A few years later, Natalie’s husband died, and Vitaly met her at the funeral. They avoid talking to each other.

Time has passed. Vitaly graduated from the university and settled in the village. He lives with a peasant girl, Gasha, who bore him a child. Vitaly proposed to marry Gasha in the church, but she refused him. In addition, she set an ultimatum: if he wants to marry someone, then she will drown herself along with the child. After some time, Vitaly went abroad. From there he wrote a letter to Natalie saying he wanted to meet her. She gives her consent. When they met, old feelings flared up between them again. And six months later, Natalie dies from a failed birth.