Natalie Bunin read the summary. Summary of Natalie Ivan Bunin. Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary
From the first pages of the work, a young man named Vitaly Meshchersky appears before us, who arrived at his father's house for the holidays. During his vacation, he set himself the goal of finding a girlfriend, but the relationship would have flowed without romantic moods. Visiting his uncle, he sees his cousin Sonya there. Once he really liked her, and now Vitaly decided to take care of her. However, the girl warns him that she has a girlfriend of extraordinary beauty, and when the young man sees her, he will immediately fall in love.
And so it happened. The next day, when Natalie appeared, Meshchersky immediately liked her, and he began to show her all sorts of signs of attention. Sonya hinted to her lover so that he would make it clear to her friend that he liked her and courted more, thereby hiding their connection from prying eyes. But Natalie noticed this moment, and asked Victor about their relationship. He began to justify himself, arguing that this was just affection and love for his sister.
In the morning, Natalie did not appear at the table, and came out only in the evening, in a beautiful dress and a magnificent hairdo. Sonya makes fun of her, saying that her friend is in love, and immediately informs her that due to illness she will be absent for several days. Natalie stays in charge of the house. Soon she confesses to Vitaly in one of the conversations with him that his cousin is angry with her for not entertaining in this way. young man, and therefore appoints him a date in the garden. The young man during dinner announces to everyone that he is leaving the next day. Natalie, who heard the news, at a meeting with him in the garden, specifies the date of his departure. Vitaly answers her that he is leaving tomorrow and asks permission to meet her relatives. The girl, thinking that he confesses his love to her, also speaks of a mutual feeling, but asks him to leave urgently.
When the young man returns to his room, he sees that Sonya is in her night dress. Natalie, having caught them together, runs away in frustrated feelings.
Several years pass, and the meeting of our hero with Natalie took place at the funeral of her husband, with whom she lived a little time. Her husband turned out to be the brother of her former suitor. The moment they saw each other, they tried not to act like they knew each other. Soon the young man receives an appropriate education and settles in the village, where he began a relationship with a simple girl Glasha. He proposes to her to move to the city, but she refuses, and says that if he is unfaithful to her, she will commit suicide and kill their joint child. But, Meshchersky still leaves Russia. At parting, he meets with Natalie, where a declaration of love takes place. But, happiness did not last long, his beloved soon dies in childbirth.
The story teaches that if you love a person, then you need to admit it in time to him and cherish these feelings.
A picture or drawing of Natalie
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Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Natalie
I
That summer, for the first time, I put on a student cap and was happy with that special happiness of the beginning of a young free life, which happens only at this time. I grew up in a strict noble family, in the countryside, and as a young man, passionately dreaming of love, I was still pure in body and soul, blushed at the free conversations of my gymnasium comrades, and they frowned: “You, Meshchersky, would go to the monks!” I wouldn't have blushed that summer. Arriving home for the holidays, I decided that the time had come for me to be like everyone else, to violate my purity, to seek love without romance, and, by virtue of this decision, and the desire to show my blue band, I began to travel in search of love meetings in neighboring estates, relatives and friends. So I ended up in the estate of my maternal uncle, a retired and long-widowed lancer 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 in a night flannel dressing gown, holding a candle high in her left hand, turned her cheek to me for a kiss and said, shaking her head with her usual mockery:
“Ah, the young man who is always and everywhere late!
“Well, it’s not my fault this time,” I replied. It was not the young man who was late, but the train.
Hush, everyone is asleep. The whole evening they were dying of impatience, waiting, and finally they gave up on you. Papa went to bed angry, scolding you with a helipad, and Ephraim, who obviously remained at the station until the morning train, an old fool, Natalie left offended, the servants also dispersed, I alone turned out to be patient and faithful to you ... Well, take off your clothes and let's go to dinner.
I answered, admiring her blue eyes and her raised hand, open to the shoulder:
- Thank you, dear friend. It is now especially pleasant for me to make sure of your fidelity - you have become a perfect beauty, and I have the most serious views on you. What a hand, what a neck, and how seductive is this soft dressing gown, under which, surely, there is nothing!
She laughed.
- Almost nothing. But you have become at least where and very matured. A lively look and a vulgar black mustache ... But what is it with you? In these two years that I have not seen you, you have turned from a boy who is always flashing from shyness into a very interesting impudent. And this would promise us a lot of love pleasures, as our grandmothers used to say, if it were not for Natalie, with whom you will fall in love to the grave tomorrow morning.
- Who is Natalie? I asked, following her into the dining room, lit by a bright hanging lamp, with warm and quiet windows open into the blackness. summer night windows.
- This is Natasha Stankevich, my friend from high school, who came to visit me. And this is really a beauty, not like me. Imagine: a lovely head, the so-called "golden" hair and black eyes. And not even eyes, but black suns, to put it in Persian. Eyelashes, of course, huge and also black, and amazing golden complexion, shoulders and everything.
– What else? I asked, admiring the tone of our conversation more and more.
- But tomorrow morning we will go swimming with her - I advise you to climb into the bushes, then you will see what. And built like a young nymph...
On the table in the dining room were cold meatballs, a piece of cheese and a bottle of red Crimean wine.
"Don't be angry, there's nothing else," she said, sitting down and pouring wine for me and herself. And no vodka. Well, God forbid, let's clink glasses with wine.
- And what exactly, God forbid?
- Find me as soon as possible such a groom that would go to us "in the yard." After all, I’m already twenty-one years old, and I can’t get married somewhere on the side: with whom will dad stay?
- Well, God forbid!
And we clinked glasses, and, having slowly drunk the whole glass, she again began to look at me with a strange smile, at how I worked with a fork, began, as it were, to say to herself:
- Yes, you are wow, you look like a Georgian and are quite handsome, before you were already very thin and green-faced. In general, it has changed a lot, it has become light, pleasant. Only here the eyes run.
“That’s because you embarrass me with your charms. You weren't quite the same before...
And I looked at her cheerfully. She was sitting on the other side of the table, all up on a chair, tucking her leg under her, putting her full knee on her knee, a little sideways to me; under the lamp, the even tan of her hand shone, her blue-purple smiling eyes shone, and her thick and soft hair, braided at night in a large braid, shone reddish chestnut; the collar of the open dressing gown 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 smile, took out of her pocket a small silver cigarette case and a silver box of matches and lit a cigarette with some even excessive dexterity, adjusting her tucked thigh under her:
- Dad, thank God, well done. As before, he is straight, firm, taps with a crutch, whips up his gray-haired cook, secretly tints his mustache and sideburns with something brown, looks gallantly at Christya ... Only even more than before and even more insistently shakes, shakes his head. He never seems to agree with anything,” she said, and laughed. - Do you want a cigarette?
I lit a cigarette, although I had not yet smoked then, she again poured me and herself and looked into the darkness outside the open window:
- Yes, for now, thank God. And a beautiful summer - what a night, huh? Only the nightingales were already silent. And I'm really happy for you. I sent for you at six o'clock, I was afraid that Ephraim, who had gone out of his mind, would not be late for the train. Waiting for you most impatiently. And then I was even pleased that everyone had dispersed and that you were late, that if you came, we would sit alone. For some reason, I thought that you had changed a lot, with people like you, it always happens like that. And you know, it's such a pleasure to sit alone in the whole house on a summer night, when you are waiting for someone from the train, and finally hear that they are coming, bells rumble, roll up to the porch ...
I firmly took her hand across the table and held it in mine, already feeling a pull to her entire body. She blew rings of smoke from her lips with cheerful calmness. I threw out 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, from a wonderful family, once very rich, now just a beggar. They speak English and French in the house, but there is nothing to eat ... A very touching girl, slender, still fragile. Clever, only very secretive, it’s not immediately clear whether she is smart or stupid ... These Stankeviches are close-minded neighbors of your dearest cousin Alexei Meshchersky, and Natalie says that he often began to call on them and complain about his single life. But she doesn't like him. And then - rich, they will think that she left because of the money, she sacrificed herself for her parents.
“Yes,” I said. - But back to business. Natalie, Natalie, what about our romance with you?
- Natalie still does not interfere with our romance, - she answered. - You will go crazy with love for her, and you will kiss with me. You will cry on my chest from her cruelty, and I will comfort you.
"But you know that I've been in love with you for a long time."
“Yes, but it was an ordinary love for a cousin, and, moreover, too subdued, you were only ridiculous and boring then. But God bless you, I forgive you your previous stupidity and I am ready to start our romance tomorrow, despite Natalie. In the meantime, we go to bed, I have to get up early tomorrow to do housework.
And she got up, wrapping her dressing gown around her, took an almost burnt out candle in the hallway and led me to my room. And on the threshold of this room, rejoicing and marveling at what I marveled at in my soul and rejoiced over the whole dinner—such a happy success of my love hopes, which suddenly fell to my lot at the Cherkasovs—I kissed her long and greedily and pressed her against the lintel, 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 look now: tomorrow, in front of everyone, do not dare to devour me with "passionate eyes"! 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 bashful, please don't judge by the way I behave with you. And if you don’t follow my orders, you will immediately become disgusted with me ...
I undressed and fell into bed with dizziness, but fell asleep sweetly and instantly, overwhelmed by happiness and fatigue, not at all suspecting what a great misfortune lay ahead of me, that Sonya's jokes would turn out to be no jokes.
Subsequently, I repeatedly recalled, as a kind of ominous omen, that when I entered my room and struck a match to light a candle, a large bat softly darted at me. She rushed so close to my face that even by the light of a match I clearly saw her vile dark velvety and eared, snub-nosed, death-like muzzle of a predator, then with a disgusting trembling, breaking, 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 a glimpse: she suddenly jumped up from the hallway into the dining room, looked - she was not yet combed and in one light vest made of something orange - and, flashing with this orange, golden brightness of her hair and black eyes, disappeared. At that moment I was alone in the dining room, I had just finished drinking coffee - the lancer finished earlier and left - and, getting up from the table, 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 overlooking the shady part of the garden, having slept soundly, washed myself with pleasure, dressed in everything clean - it was especially pleasant to put on a new red silk blouse, - combed my black wet hair more beautifully, cut yesterday in Voronezh, went out into the corridor, turned into another and found himself in front of the door to the study and, together with 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 satisfied with the invariability of this old spacious room with a triple Italian window under a hundred-year-old silver poplar: to the left the whole wall is in oak bookcases, between them in one place rises a mahogany clock with a copper disk of a fixed pendulum , in another there is a whole bunch of pipes with beaded chibouks, and a barometer hangs above them, in the third a bureau of ancient times is pushed in with a reddish green cloth of a walnut board thrown back, and on the cloth there are pincers, hammers, nails, a copper telescope; on the wall near the door, above a hundred-pound wooden sofa, a whole gallery of faded portraits in oval frames; under the window desk and a deep armchair - both of which are also of enormous size; more to the right, above the widest oak bed, a painting on the entire wall: a blackened lacquer background, on it are barely visible swirls of swarthy smoky clouds and greenish-blue poetic trees, and in the foreground a naked, portly beauty, almost life-size, shines like a petrified egg white , standing half-turned to the viewer with a proud face and all the bulges of a full back, a steep butt and rear of powerful legs, seductively covering the nipple of the chest with elongated fingers of one hand, and the other lower abdomen in fatty folds. Glancing around all this, I heard behind me the strong voice of a lancer, with a crutch coming up to me from the hallway:
- No, brother, you will not find me in the bedroom at this time. It's you lying on the beds up to three oaks.
I kissed his broad dry hand and asked:
- What oaks, uncle?
"That's what the peasants say," he replied, shaking his gray-haired coque and looking at me with his yellow eyes, still sharp-sighted and intelligent. - The sun has risen three oaks, and you are still in the pillow with your face, the men say. Well, let's go get some coffee...
“Wonderful old man, wonderful house,” I thought, entering the dining room with him, through the open windows of which looked out the greenery of the morning garden and all the summer prosperity of the country estate. An old nanny, small and hunchbacked, served, the lancer drank strong tea with cream from a thick glass in a silver glass holder, holding in the glass with a wide finger the thin and long, twisted stem of a round golden old spoon, I ate slice after slice of black bread with butter and poured everything on myself from a hot silver coffee pot; the uhlan, being interested only in himself, without asking me anything, talked about the landlord neighbors, scolding and ridiculing them in every way, I pretended to listen, looked at his mustaches, sideburns, at the large hair at the end of his nose, and I was waiting for Natalie and Sonya, which couldn’t sit still: who is this Natalie and how will we meet Sonya after yesterday? felt admiration for her, gratitude, viciously thought about her and Natalie's bedrooms, about everything that happens in the morning mess female 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 our secret accomplice with Sonya - why is it impossible to love two? Now they will enter in all their morning freshness, they will see me, my Georgian beauty and a red blouse, they will talk, laugh, sit down at the table, beautifully pouring from this hot coffee pot - young morning appetite, young morning excitement, the gleam of sleepy eyes, a light touch powders on their cheeks, as if still rejuvenated after sleep, and this laughter behind every word, not quite natural and all the more charming ... And before breakfast they will go through the garden to the river, they will undress in the bath, illuminated over their naked bodies from above by the blue sky, and from below by a reflection transparent water... I always had a vivid imagination, I mentally saw how Sonya and Natalie, holding onto the railing of the stairs in the bathhouse, would awkwardly go down its steps, immersed in water, wet, cold and slippery from the nasty green velvet of mucus that had grown on them, like Sonya, throwing back her thick-haired head, suddenly decisively falls into the water with raised breasts - and, all strangely visible in the water with a bluish-chalky body, she obliquely spreads the corners of her arms and legs in different directions, just like a frog ...
“Well, before dinner, you remember: dinner is at twelve,” said the lancer, shaking his head negatively, and stood up with his shaved chin, in a brown mustache connected to the same sideburns, tall, old-fashionedly hard, in a spacious comb suit and blunt shoes , with a crutch in a wide hand covered with buckwheat, patted me on the shoulder and left with a quick step. And just then, when I also got up to go 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 amazed: in fact, a beauty! - and stood for a long time, as if gathering his thoughts. I was so 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 seized by some kind of fear, not only in front of both, with one of whom I already had a captivating secret, or most of all in front of Natalie, before the instant she blinded me half an hour ago with her swiftness. I walked around the garden, which, like the rest of the estate, lay in the lowlands of the river, finally overcame myself, entered with mock simplicity and met Sonya's cheerful courage and Natalie's sweet joke, who with a smile threw up at me from her black eyelashes the radiant blackness of her eyes, especially striking with the color of her hair:
- We've already met!
Then we stood on the balcony, leaning on the stone balustrade, feeling with summer pleasure how hot our open heads were baking, and Natalie stood beside me, and Sonya, embracing her and as if looking absentmindedly somewhere, sang with a grin: “In the midst of a noisy ball accidentally…” Then she straightened up:
- Well, swim! First of all, we, then you go ...
Natalie ran for the sheets, but she lingered and whispered to me:
“From now on, please pretend that you have fallen in love with Natalie. And watch out if it turns out you don't have to pretend.
And I almost answered with cheerful insolence that yes, it was no longer necessary, and she, glancing sideways at the door, added quietly:
- I'll come to you after dinner ...
When they returned, I went to the bathhouse - first along a long birch avenue, then among various old trees of the coast, where it smelled warm river water and the rooks yelled on the tree tops, walked and again thought with two completely opposite feelings about Natalie and Sonya, that I would bathe in the same water in which they had just bathed ...
After dinner, among all that happy, aimless, free and calm that looked out of the garden through the open windows - sky, greenery, sun - after a long dinner with okroshka, fried chicken and raspberries with cream, over which I secretly froze from the presence of Natalie and from waiting for the hour when the whole house would be quiet for the afternoon and Sonya (who had come out for dinner with a dark red velvety rose in her hair) would secretly come running to me in order to continue yesterday’s work, no longer hastily and somehow, I immediately went to 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 the air, sweet from flowers and herbs, went into the shutters, and hopelessly thought: how can I live now in this duality - in secret rendezvous with Sonya and next to Natalie, one thought of which already seizes 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 body, at sharp girlish elbows, with which she, half-standing, leaned on the old stone of the balustrade heated by the sun? Sonya, leaning on her elbows and embracing her by the shoulder, in her cambric peignoir with frills looked like a young woman who had just married, and she, in a canvas skirt and an embroidered Little Russian shirt, under which all the youthful perfection of her constitution was guessed, seemed a little not a teenager. That was the supreme joy, that I did not 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 lay - I looked and thought: what would I feel if I dared to touch them with my lips ?! And, feeling my gaze, she threw up at me the brilliant blackness of her eyes and her whole bright head, entwined with a whip of a rather large braid. I moved away and hurriedly lowered my eyes, seeing her legs through the hem of her skirt, translucent in the sun, and thin, strong, thoroughbred ankles in a gray transparent stocking ...
Sonya, with a rose in her hair, quickly opened and shut the door, quietly exclaimed: “What, you were sleeping!” I jumped up - what are you, what are you, could I sleep! grabbed her hands. “Lock the door with a 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 hardly uttered a word during these minutes, and she, in all the charm of her hot body, allowed herself to be kissed everywhere - only to kiss - and closed her eyes more and more gloomily, her face flared up more and more. And again, leaving and straightening her hair, she threatened in a whisper:
- And as for Natalie, I repeat: beware of going over to pretense. My character is not as cute as you might think!
Rose lay on the floor. I hid it in the table, and by evening its crimson velvet had become dull and purple.
III
My life went on outwardly ordinary, but inwardly 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 watching Natalie secretly, her every movement. Everything went on in the usual summer order: meetings in the morning, swimming before dinner and dinner, then resting in their rooms, then the garden - they embroidered something, sitting in a birch alley and forcing me to read Goncharov aloud, or they cooked jam in a shady clearing under oaks , not far from the house, to the right of the balcony; at five o'clock tea in another shady clearing, to the left, 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 twilight dinner in the dining room ... After dinner, the lancer 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, sleep!" - 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 you could hear the ticking thread of a pocket watch at my head under a burning candle, and everything was amazed, I was horrified: for what God punished me so, for which he gave me two loves at once, so different and so passionate, such an agonizing beauty of adoration for Natalie and such bodily ecstasy of Sonya. I felt that just about we could not stand our incomplete intimacy and that then I would completely go crazy from waiting for our nightly meetings and from feeling them all day later, and all this next to Natalie! Sonya was already jealous, sometimes flared menacingly, and at the same time she said to me in private:
- I'm afraid that we are not simple enough at the table and with Natalie. Dad, I think he's starting to notice something. Natalie, too, and the nanny, of course, is already sure of our romance and is probably trying to trick dad. Sit more in the garden together with Natalie, read to her this unbearable "Precipice", take her sometimes for a walk in the evenings ... It's terrible, I notice how idiotically you stare at her, at times I feel hatred for you, 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, she 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, we became close, but then I somehow joked, sitting with her alone in the living room, where she leafed through the notes, reclining on the sofa:
- And I heard, Natalie, that maybe we will be related.
She looked sharply at me.
- Like this?
- My cousin, Alexei Nikolaevich Meshchersky ...
She didn't let me finish.
- Ah, that's it! Your cousin, this, excuse me, plump, all overgrown with black shiny hair, a burring giant with a red juicy mouth ... And who gave you the right to talk like that with me?
I was afraid:
- 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 remove her hand 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, randomly picked up on the sofa, I got up and went out onto the balcony. A cloud came in from behind the garden, the air grew dim, a soft summer noise went wider and closer through the garden, a sweet field rain wind blew, and I was suddenly so sweet, young and free :
- Natalie, wait a minute!
She walked up to the threshold.
- Breathe - what a wind! What a joy it could be!
She paused.
- Natalie, how unkind you are to me! Do you have something against me?
She shrugged proudly.
- What and why can I have against you?
In the evening, lying in the dark in the wicker chairs on the balcony, all three of us were silent - the stars only flickered here and there in the dark clouds, a weak wind blew from the direction of the river, the frogs murmured so drowsily.
“To rain, I want to sleep,” said Sonya, suppressing a yawn. - The nanny said that a new moon was born and now it will “wash itself” for a week. - And, after a pause, she added: - Natalie, what do you think about first love?
Natalie answered from the darkness:
- I am convinced of one thing: in the terrible difference between the first love of a young man and a girl.
Sonya thought:
- Well, girls are different ...
And stood up resolutely.
No, sleep, sleep!
- And I'll take a nap here, I like the night, - said Natalie.
I whispered, listening to Sonya's retreating steps:
- Something bad we said today with you!
She answered:
- Yes, yes, we talked badly ...
The next day we met as if calmly. It rained lightly at night, but in the morning the weather cleared up, in the afternoon it became dry and hot. Before tea at five o'clock, when Sonya was doing some household calculations in the lancer's office, we sat in the birch avenue and tried to continue reading aloud "The Cliff". She, bending down, was sewing something, flickering with her right hand, I read, and from time to time I looked with sweet melancholy at her left hand, visible in the sleeve, at the reddish hairs that adjoined it above the hand and at the same ones where the neck is. behind passed into the shoulder, and read more and more animatedly, not understanding a word. Finally said:
Well, now you read...
She straightened up, the points of her breasts showed under her thin blouse, put down 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, put the book on her knees, began to read in a quick and unsteady voice. I looked at her hands, at her knees under the book, exhausted by the fierce love for them and the sound of her voice. Orioles screamed in flight in different parts of the evening garden, against us hung high, clinging to the trunk of a pine tree that grew alone in an alley among birches, 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 already saw him, and I saw him today, and I saw him yesterday .. Do not interfere with reading.
I paused, then again:
“Look how it looks like withered gray worms.
- What do you mean where?
I pointed to the bench between us, to the dried lime dung.
- Is it true?
I took and squeezed her hand, 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 ardent haste I disavowed Sonya that she even parted her lips slightly:
- It is not true?
- Not true, not true! I love her very much, but as a sister, because we have known each other since childhood!
Vitaly Meshchersky, a young man who has recently entered the university, comes home for the holidays, inspired by the desire to find love without romance. Following his plans, he travels around the neighboring estates, getting one day to his uncle's house. In passing, mention is made of the hero's childhood love for his cousin Sonya, whom he now meets and with whom he immediately begins a novel. Sonya coquettishly warns Vitaly that tomorrow he will see her friend from the gymnasium Natalya Stankevich visiting her and fall in love with her "to the grave." The next morning, he really sees Natalie and is amazed at her beauty. Since that time, a sensual relationship with Sonya and Natalie's innocent admiration have been developing for Vitaly at the same time. 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 his connection with him. However, Natalie does not leave Sonya's relationship with Vitaly unnoticed and, when he takes her by the hand, informs him about it. Vitaly replies that he loves Sonya like a sister.The day after this conversation, Natalie does not go out for breakfast or dinner, and Sonya ironically assumes that she has fallen in love. Natalie appears in the evening and surprises Vitaly with friendliness, liveliness, a new dress and a changed hairstyle. On the same day, Sonya says that she is ill 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 that they meet in the garden in the evening. Vitaly occupies himself with reflections 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 herself as her relatives. She, with the words “Yes, yes, I love you,” goes back to the house and tells Vitaly to leave tomorrow, adding that she will return home in a few days. Vitaly returns home and finds Sonya in her nightgown in his room. At the same 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 the 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 the university and settles in the countryside. He converges with the peasant orphan Gasha, who gives birth to a child for him. Vitaly invites Gache to marry, but in response he hears a refusal, an offer to go to Moscow and a warning that if he is going to marry someone else, she will drown herself with the child. Some time later, Meshchersky goes abroad and sends a telegram to Natalie on the way back, asking permission to visit her. Permission is given, a meeting takes place, a mutual sincere explanation and a love scene. Six months later, Natalie dies from premature birth.
Many wonderful works were written by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. "Natalie" ( summary story) will be of primary interest to us today. The plot, the main characters are waiting for the reader in this article.
Chapter 1
It all starts with the fact that a young high school student named Meshchersky firmly decided to end his inexperience and sexual innocence. Moreover, he did not seek love, but only carnal satisfaction. Therefore, he began to passionately look for a girlfriend for these purposes, made visits to relatives and friends. The search for a female body brought "a pale young man with a burning gaze" (V. Bryusov) to the estate of his maternal uncle.
The train was late, but Viktor Petrovich Meshchersky was patiently waiting for Sonya Cherkasova, the daughter of her uncle and, accordingly, the cousin of the protagonist. Young people quickly found a common language and agreed that their "romance will begin right from tomorrow."
But the most important thing is not that the dreams and aspirations of the young man came true, but what happened next. Sonya calmly said: tomorrow Meshchersky will fall in love with Natalie, or with Natasha Stankevich, a cousin's friend. Then Sonya also reports without a shadow of a doubt: the young man will suffer for Natalie, and seek solace in Sonya's arms.
Meshchersky just laughed.
The reader probably already understands what the Russian classic wrote - I. A. Bunin. “Natalie” (a summary will try to reveal and show this) is a work about the tragedy of involving people in
Chapter 2
We should immediately make a reservation and say that we are concentrating only on the main line of the story - love-erotic.
So, in the second chapter, the main event of the whole story takes place - the first meeting of Meshchersky with Natalie. The girl is really gorgeous. It's really hard not to fall in love with her at first sight.
Most of the events of the chapter take place in the head of the protagonist. After drinking coffee and eating countless butter sandwiches, he daydreams about Sonya all morning. Then he suddenly sees Natalie in a negligee, the young man really liked her. And his fantasy began to work in two directions. On the one hand, he dreamed of unhurried carnal pleasures with Sonya, and on the other hand, he was imbued with a pure spiritual erotic desire for Natalie. Of course, Sonya is sorry, but "what is given does not attract."
The described state of affairs is the main result of the second chapter. There were other events, the reader can find out if he turns to full version the story that Bunin left to his descendants. "Natalie" (summary is meant) moves further in terms of the plot.
Chapter 3. Meshchersky renounces his love for Sonya
The main tragedy of love is that even the most passionate, sooner or later it turns into a routine. So, for example, the main character at the beginning of the story passionately wanted a young female body to satisfy his needs. But after some time, secret meetings with Sonya became boring to him.
Sonya began to suspect that her cousin was using her, and he had deeper feelings for Natalie. At the same time, people around began to think that between cousins sister and brother is not just kindred love. Therefore, Sonya herself tells the hero of the story to spend more time with Natalie. And he is glad. At one of these meetings, Meshchersky almost confesses his love to Natasha and renounces his love for Sonya. Viktor Petrovich claims that he has purely platonic and kindred feelings for his cousin. This, of course, is not true.
I recall the work of S. Maugham "Rain", the moral of the story is something like this: all men are bad people and are very greedy for the unlawful and forbidden. All the same, it should be noted that I. A. Bunin (“Natalie”) wrote a rather bold essay for his time. The summary of the story has reached the middle.
Chapter 4
The subtitle best illustrates the main event of the story: Natalie confesses her love to Meshchersky. But all this was by no means as fast as it seems.
Sonya fell into that period that every woman has from time to time. The hero was, on the one hand, annoyed that he could not eat his cousin, and on the other hand, glad that he could finally confess his feelings to Natalie.
Since then, the interaction of the elements of the love triangle began. Some time later, Sonya appeared from her room, and Natasha, on the contrary, was lying that day and left her room only in the evening.
Vitaly Petrovich also said that he wanted to leave in the near future, but his uncle rebelled. After the indirect recognition of the young man, the girl (Natalie) changed her anger to mercy, but continued to avoid Meshchersky's company. And only under a partial moon in the late evening, according to all the laws of the genre, she confesses her feelings to him. And then the third player intervenes in the matter - Sonya Cherkasova. Intrigue, as we see, was added to the story by Bunin "Natalie". The summary of the work is steadily moving towards the finale.
Chapter 5
This head is the smallest of all. It captures a phenomenon well known to everyone: when habit takes precedence over courage and determination and, as a result, almost destroys the possibility of happiness.
Main character he came to his room, and a storm had already broken out outside, as if illustrating the inner state of the young man, and there Sonya was waiting for him - that girl who had not been with him for five whole days. Of course, she asked to be petted. Viktor Petrovich, without desire, began to do what he had been doing all this time. And then Natalie finds them.
Chapter 6
A year after the well-known events, Natasha got married, she chose her cousin Viktor Petrovich as her husband. Someone, perhaps, will find here a trace of female perfidy, but we do not undertake to judge whether it was or whether the card just lay down.
Our hero graduated from high school and was a student in the capital. Fate, on the Christmas holidays, threw him into his native Voronezh, where he expected to notably have fun with the same students as he was.
Of course, there was a ball. Viktor Petrovich, once there, saw that his adored Natalie, with whose loss he had almost got used to, gracefully danced with her husband. Without postponing things indefinitely, the young man decided to get drunk drunk and, perhaps, if he was lucky, die from it. Bad luck.
Another year and a half passed. Sad news came from the house of my cousin and Natalie: the husband of Meshchersky's love died, without suffering for a long time, from a stroke. Victor had to come.
One can imagine what kind of atmosphere reigned in the house of the deceased, but in this chapter it is only important that when Viktor Petrovich expressed his condolences to the widow, she did not show any interest in communication either on the day of the funeral or the next.
Chapter 7
Some more time passed. Our hero is already 26. He is married in fact, but not legally, to his servant, he has a small son. He can do almost everything, except for the official marriage to another woman. If this event suddenly happens, then his current wife will drown herself in the pond with her child.
Viktor Petrovich has a crazy thought: “Why not drop by in your cousin - Natalie?”. He was just returning from his overseas trip. No sooner said than done. He came to her. At first, communication did not go on, then they confessed everything to each other, the hero told her about what kind of marriage he fell into from despair. The cousin told Victor not to worry about anything. And the lovers finally became lovers, though secret ones.
But it cannot be said that history a happy ending: after some time, Natalie died of premature birth.
So Ivan Bunin wrote "Natalie". The summary turned out to be not too concise, but a person who is not interested in the delights of the style of the Russian classic can confine himself to our retelling. And this is the undoubted plus of the latter.
That summer, for the first time, I put on a student cap and was happy with that special happiness of the beginning of a young free life, which happens only at this time. I grew up in a strict noble family, in the countryside, and as a young man, passionately dreaming of love, I was still pure in body and soul, blushed at the free conversations of my gymnasium comrades, and they frowned: “You, Meshchersky, would go to the monks!” I wouldn't have blushed that summer. Arriving home for the holidays, I decided that the time had come for me to be like everyone else, to violate my purity, to seek love without romance, and, by virtue of this decision and the desire to show my blue band, began to travel in search of love meetings on neighboring estates , by relatives and friends. So I ended up in the estate of my maternal uncle, a retired and long-widowed lancer 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 in a night flannel dressing gown, holding a candle high in her left hand, turned her cheek to me for a kiss and said, shaking her head with her usual mockery:
Ah, the young man who is always and everywhere late!
Well, it’s not my fault this time, I replied. - It was not the young man who was late, but the train.
Hush, everyone is sleeping. The whole evening they were dying of impatience, waiting, and finally they gave up on you. Papa went to bed angry, cursing you as a helipad, and Ephraim, who apparently remained at the station until the morning train, an old fool. Natalie left offended, the servants also dispersed, I alone turned out to be 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. It is now especially pleasant for me to make sure of your fidelity - you have become a perfect beauty, and I have the most serious views on you. What a hand, what a neck, and how seductive is this soft dressing gown, under which, surely, there is nothing!
She laughed.
Almost nothing. But you have become at least where and very matured. A lively look and a vulgar black mustache ... But what is it with you? For these two years that I have not seen you, you have turned from a boy who is always flashing from shyness into negaa, an interesting impudent. And this would promise us a lot of love pleasures, as our grandmothers used to say, if it were not for Natalie, with whom you will fall in love to the grave tomorrow morning.
Who is Natalie? I asked, following her into the dining room, lit by a bright hanging lamp, with the windows open into the blackness of a warm and quiet summer night.
This is Natasha Stankevich, my friend from high school, who came to visit me. And this is really a beauty, not like me. Imagine: a lovely head, the so-called "golden" hair and black eyes. And not even eyes, but black suns, to put it in Persian. Eyelashes, of course, huge and also black, and amazing golden complexion, shoulders and everything.
What else? I asked, admiring the tone of our conversation more and more.
But tomorrow morning we will go swimming with her - I advise you to climb into the bushes, then you will see what. And built like a young nymph...
On the table in the dining room were cold meatballs, a piece of cheese and a bottle of red Crimean wine.
Don't be angry, there's nothing else,” she said, sitting down and pouring wine for me and herself. - And no vodka. Well, give the south, we'll clink glasses at least with wine.
And what exactly, God forbid?
Find me as soon as possible such a groom that would go to us "in the yard." After all, I’m already twenty-one years old, and I can’t get married somewhere on the side: with whom will dad stay?
Well, God bless!
And we clinked glasses, and, having slowly drunk the whole glass, she again began to look at me with a strange smile, at how I worked with a fork, began, as it were, to say to herself:
Yes, you are wow, you look like a Georgian and are quite handsome, before you were already very thin and green-faced. In general, it has changed a lot, it has become light, pleasant. Only here the eyes run.
It's because you embarrass me with your charms. You weren't quite the same before...
And I looked at it cheerfully. She was sitting on the other side of the table, all up on a chair, tucking her leg under her, putting her full knee on her knee, a little sideways to me, under the lamp the even tan of her hand shone, her blue-purple smiling eyes shone and her thick and soft hair shone reddish chestnut , braided at night in a large braid; The collar of her open dressing gown revealed a round, tanned neck and the beginning of a plump chest, on which also lay a triangle of tanning: on her left cheek she had a mole with a beautiful curl of black hair.
