Если писателю суждено стать классиком, даже его реалистические зарисовки - не копия действительности, а хроники волевых усилий, которые свеивают фальшь, как ветер перед грозой поднимает сухое сено. Такой писатель “познай
самого себя” заменяет на “превзойди самого себя”. Давайте прочитаем один из рассказов Михаила Михайловича Зощенко.
The father of one of the tenants in our communal flat came up from the country to see his son.
The reason for his coming was that the son was ill, of course. Otherwise he would probably never have seen Leningrad to the end of his days. But as his son was ill, there he was.
His son was a tenant in our communal flat. And he worked in a restaurant as a waiter. He brought the customers their food and everyone thought highly of him.
Perhaps because he was trying to improve his already high standing, one night, all hot and
sweating after his evening’s work, he walked straight out into the cold to go home, with the result, of course, that he caught a chill while on culinary duty, so to speak. At first it was a head cold and he went about sneezing for a week, then the chill spread to his chest and his temperature rose to 40 Centigrade above zero.
To crow it all, just before this he had decided to spend a cultured day-off at the ancient city of Pavlovsk, looking over the palaces, and there he had strained his back a bit, helping his wife into the train.
So all this put together produced the sad spectacle
of a man in the prime of life suddenly struck down by illness.
And being of a somewhat impressionable nature, our poor waiter soon made up his mind that he was not going the get better and would never again, as they say, return to the performance of his proper duties.
So there it was, because of all this he invited his dear Daddy to Leningrad to ask his last forgiveness.
Not that he was terribly fond of his Daddy and with life drawing to close, had conceived a sudden desire to see him at all costs. On the contrary, he had never made so much as in inquiry about him in forty years, and had treated the fact of his existence with complete indifference. But his wife, when she saw her husband with such a very high temperature – it was more a matter of vanity, really, of keeping up with the neighbours – sent Father a telegram telling him to come
to Leningrad because his son was in a bad way.
Well, the upshot of it all was that just when his son was beginning to get better, who should appear, to everyone’s surprise, but Daddy in his bast shoes, with a stick and a knap-sack on his back, and arrival from very distant parts.
True, it turned out later that the old man did have a pair of boots in the sack, but he wouldn’t wear them on principle, because, as he put it, “The rich care for their mugs, and the poor for their rags.”
Everyone, of course, the son included, had excepted the new
arrival to be a humble and perhaps even religious old fellow of about seventy, full of godly talk and terrified of everything. But he turned out to be quite the reverse, in a manner of speaking.
He was unusually aggressive, in fact, quite a trouble-maker, braggart and boor. To crown
it all, he was, if not actually a counter-revolutionary, extremely underdeveloped in the political sense.
The moment he went out into the courtyard he had a set-to with the janitor and ended up by pulling the ears of a full-grown boy who had come to visit his uncle, a resident in our house of twelve
years’ standing.
In the house management office he talked so bluntly to the chairman that the chairman expressed surprise at the views that were held in some quarters about contemporary life and even had a mind to report the fact to the old man’s place of residence.
The last straw was when this father from afar scared the life out of his son by going to the house management office and inquiring whether he could get permission for permanent residence in Leningrad.
Of course, the old man was probably quite a decent old fellow in himself, but the trouble was that from the very first day nearly all the residents in our house gave rather a poor account of themselves from the cultural point of view. They all began making fun of him and treating him like a fool, laughing at his provincial, countrified ways. Everyone tended to say something idiotic when they saw him. There
was the janitor, for instance, who would inquire in his crowing voice, “And what collective farm do you come from, young man?”
Even his own son, the waiter Gavrilov, would not be left behind the trend of public opinion. He would pretend to look at the newspaper and,
choking with suppressed laughter, say to the old man, “You’d better not go out today, Dad. They’re going to round up all the greybeards and gingerheads.”
There was nothing malicious about this, of course, it was all quite loving, but it could hardly have been
very pleasant for an old man on a visit, who had lived his three score and ten, and two more besides, and was probably a good deal wiser than all the rest of them put together. He was looked upon as a simpleton, a fool, an ignorant peasant, and was treated as such.
Naturally, all this had a negative
effect on his behaviour.
Never a day passed without some new explosion. People shouting at each other, making scenes, calling each other names, and so on.
To cap it all, on the seventh day of his stay he got drunk in a public bar and became violent. The people there wanted to have him taken in charge, but he got away from them all and went for a stroll on his own.
So
there he was, walking down the street, singing away, a grey-haired old man, dressed in his country garb, as drab a sight as you can imagine.
And all of a sudden he realized that he was lost.
This was absurd, of course, he couldn’t really be lost. Specially as he knew the address. But being drunk as he was, he got frightened, and this sobered him up a bit.
He
asked a passer-by the way. But the passer-by couldn’t tell him and advised him to consult the militia.
Of course, our old man was afraid to go up to a militiaman at his post and walked another two or three blocks out of sheer nervousness. Eventually, however, he did warily approach a militiaman,
expecting him to blow his whistle and start bawling at him.
But the militiaman, in accordance with the regulations of the force, saluted respectfully, raising a white-gloved hand to the peak of his cap.
The old man had been ready for a row and was so used to trouble that this unexpected greeting took him by surprise and he could only mumble a few words that were nowhere near the point.
The militiaman asked him which street he needed and showed him how to get there, then saluted again and returned to his duties.
But this small token of respect and courtesy, devised originally for generals and barons, produces an extraordinary impression on our old man.
He positively shook with delight when the militiaman saluted him the second time, thus proving that there had been no mistake and all was as it should be.
The old man, so it transpired later, went up to another militiaman and, collected another salute, which sank even deeper into his
feeble old heart.
Of course, I don’t know whether such a thing could have an immediate effect on character, but everyone noticed that the old fellow came home in a mood of great restraint and, as he passed the janitor, indulged in none of the usual altercations, but silently saluted him and
proceeded to his own quarters.
I don’t know, of course, whether it is possible for such a trifle, a mere nothing, really, to play a part in the remaking of character, but everyone noticed that something else, of a highly original nature, had happened to Dad Gavrilov.
Some of our people saw him go up to the militiaman at the corner of the street and chat with him politely.
Many of those with the coarser type of mind, seeing this change, attributed it to the fear the old man had experienced when they wanted to march him off to the militia station. But others gave quite a different interpretation.
And one intellectual living in
our flat, who suffers from diabetes, hat this to say about the incident: “It had always been my contention that respect for the individual produces exceptional results. Under its influence some characters open up literally like roses at dawn.”
The majority was not on his side and the ensuing discussion yielded no positive results.
But three days later Dad Gavrilov announced to his son that certain urgent affairs demanded
his departure for the country.
Some of the people in our flat, wishing to make up for their clumsy jests, went to the station to see the old man off.
And when the train started, Dad, who was standing at the open door, saluted the whole lot of them. And they all laughed, and Dad laughed, and then off he went on the long journey back to his home country.
Now
he is there I dare say he will introduce a certain amount of politeness into his relations with other people. And this should make his life even brighter and more pleasant.
