Black chicken number of pages. Black hen, or underground inhabitants
Once upon a time there was a keeper of a men's boarding house, who is still probably still in the fresh memory of many, although the house where the boarding house was located had long ago given way to another, not at all similar to the previous one. At that time, our Petersburg was already famous throughout Europe for its beauty, although it was far from being what it is now. Then on the avenues of Vasilyevsky Ostrov there were no cheerful shady alleys: wooden scaffolding, often knocked together from rotten boards, took the place of the current beautiful sidewalks. St. Isaac's Bridge, narrow at that time and uneven, was a completely different view than it is now; and St. Isaac's Square itself was not at all like that. Then the monument to Peter the Great was separated from St. Isaac's Square by a ditch; The Admiralty was not lined with trees, the Konnogvardeisky Manege did not adorn the square with its beautiful current facade - in a word, Petersburg then was not what it is today. Cities have an advantage over people, by the way, that they sometimes become more beautiful with age ... However, this is not the point now. Another time and on another occasion, perhaps, I will talk with you more at length about the changes that have taken place in Petersburg during my century, but now we will turn again to the boarding house, which was located on Vasilievsky Island, in the First Line, forty years ago.
The house, which you will not find now - as I have already told you - was about two floors, covered with Dutch tiles. The porch, through which it was entered, was wooden and protruded into the street. From the entrance, a rather steep staircase led to the upper dwelling, which consisted of eight or nine rooms, in which the owner of the boarding house lived on one side, and on the other there were classes. The dortoirs, or children's bedrooms, were on the lower floor, on the right side of the vestibule, and on the left lived two old Dutch women, each of whom was more than a hundred years old and who saw Peter the Great with their own eyes and even talked to him. At the present time, it is unlikely that in the whole of Russia you will meet a person who would have seen Peter the Great; the time will come when our traces will be erased from the face of the earth! Everything passes, everything disappears in our mortal world ... but that is not what the matter is now about.
Among the thirty or forty children who studied at that boarding house, there was one boy named Alyosha, who was then no more than 9 or 10 years old. His parents, who lived far, far from Petersburg, had brought him to the capital two years before, sent him to a boarding school and returned home, having paid the teacher the agreed payment for several years in advance. Alyosha was a smart little boy, cute, he studied well, and everyone loved and caressed him. However, despite the fact, he was often bored at the boarding house, and sometimes even sad. Especially at first he could not get used to the idea that he was separated from his relatives. But then, little by little, he began to get used to his position, and there were even moments when, playing with his comrades, he thought that it was much more fun in the boarding house than in his parents' house. In general, the days of teaching passed quickly and pleasantly for him, but when Saturday was teaching and all his comrades hurried home to their relatives, then Alyosha bitterly felt his loneliness. On Sundays and holidays he was alone all day, and then his only consolation was to read books that the teacher allowed him to borrow from his small library. The teacher was by birth German, at that time the fashion for knightly novels and fairy tales prevailed in German literature, and this library for the most part consisted of books of this kind.
So, Alyosha, even at the age of ten, already knew by heart the deeds of the most glorious knights, at least as they were described in the novels. His favorite pastime on long winter evenings, on Sundays and others holidays was mentally transported to the old, long past centuries ... Especially in a vacant time, such as Christmas or on the bright Sunday of Christ - when he was separated for a long time from his comrades, when he often sat in solitude for whole days, - his young imagination wandered through knightly castles, through terrible ruins or through dark, dense forests.
I forgot to tell you that a rather spacious courtyard belonged to this house, separated from the alley by a wooden fence made of baroque planks. The gate and the gate leading to the alley were always locked, and therefore Alyosha never managed to visit this alley, which greatly aroused his curiosity. Whenever he was allowed to play outside during his leisure hours, his first move was to run up to the fence. Here he stood on tiptoe and gazed intently into the round holes with which the fence was dotted. Alyosha did not know that these holes came from wooden nails with which the barges had been hammered together, and it seemed to him that some kind sorceress had purposely drilled these holes for him. He kept expecting that someday this sorceress would appear in the alley and through the hole would give him a toy, or a talisman, or a letter from papa or mama, from whom he had not received any news for a long time. But, to his extreme regret, no one even looked like a sorceress.
Another occupation of Alyosha was to feed the chickens who lived near the fence in a house specially built for them and played and ran in the yard all day. Alyosha got to know them very briefly, knew everyone by name, broke up their fights, and the bully punished them with the fact that sometimes for several days in a row he did not give them anything from the crumbs, which he always collected from the tablecloth after lunch and dinner. Among the chickens, he especially loved the black crested, called Chernushka. Nigella was more affectionate to him than others; she even sometimes allowed herself to be stroked, and therefore Alyosha brought her the best pieces. She had a quiet disposition; She rarely walked with others and seemed to love Alyosha more than her friends.
Once (it was during the vacations, between the New Year and Epiphany - the day was beautiful and unusually warm, no more than three or four degrees of frost) Alyosha was allowed to play in the yard. That day the teacher and his wife were in great trouble. They gave lunch to the director of the schools, and even the day before, from morning until late at night, everywhere in the house they washed the floors, wiped the dust and waxed mahogany tables and dressers. The teacher himself went to buy provisions for the table: white Arkhangelsk veal, a huge ham and Kiev jam from Milutin shops. Alyosha also contributed to the preparations to the best of his ability: he was forced to cut a beautiful net for the ham out of white paper and decorate the six wax candles that were specially bought on purpose with paper carvings. On the appointed day in the morning, the hairdresser appeared and showed his skill over the curls, the dumb and long scythe of the teacher. Then he began to work on his wife, pomade and powdered her curls and a hairpiece, and perched on her head a whole greenhouse of different colors, between which two diamond rings skillfully placed, once presented to her husband by her pupils' parents, glittered. At the end of the headdress, she threw on an old, worn-out cloak and went to fuss about the housework, observing strictly so that her hairstyle did not deteriorate in some way; and for this she herself did not enter the kitchen, but gave orders to her cook, standing in the doorway. When necessary, she sent her husband there, whose hair was not so high.
Sometimes he accepted the intention to improve, but, unfortunately, his self-esteem was so strong in him that it drowned out the voice of conscience, and he became worse from day to day, and from day to day his comrades loved him less.
Moreover, Alyosha has become a terrible mischievous person. Not having the need to repeat the lessons that were given to him, at the time when other children were preparing for classes, he was engaged in pranks, and this idleness further spoiled his temper.
Finally, he was so tired of everyone with his bad disposition that the teacher seriously began to think about the means for correcting such a bad boy, and for this he asked him lessons twice and three times more than others; but this did not help in the least. Alyosha did not study at all, but still knew the lesson from beginning to end, without the slightest mistake.
One day the teacher, not knowing what to do with him, asked him to memorize twenty pages by the next morning and hoped that at least that day he would be quieter.
Where! Our Alyosha didn't even think about the lesson! On this day, he deliberately played more than usual, and the teacher in vain threatened him with punishment if the next morning he did not know the lesson. Alyosha laughed inwardly at these threats, being sure that the hemp seed would certainly help him.
The next day, at the appointed hour, the teacher took the book from which the lesson was given to Alyosha, called him over to him and told him to say the given. All the children with curiosity drew attention to Alyosha, and the teacher himself did not know what to think, when Alyosha, despite not repeating his lesson at all the day before, boldly got up from the bench and approached him. Alyosha had no doubt that this time too he would be able to show his extraordinary ability; he opened his mouth ... and could not utter a word!
Why are you silent? - the teacher told him. - Speak lesson.
Alyosha blushed, then turned pale, blushed again, began to wrinkle his hands, tears from fear welled up in his eyes ... Everything is in vain! He could not utter a single word, because, hoping for a hemp seed, he did not even look into the book.
What does this mean, Alyosha? - shouted the teacher. - Why don't you want to talk?
Alyosha himself did not know what to attribute such a strangeness to, put his hand in his pocket to feel the seed ... But how to describe his despair when he did not find it! Tears like a hail poured from his eyes ... He wept bitterly and yet could not say a word.
Meanwhile, the teacher was losing patience. Accustomed to the fact that Alyosha always answered flawlessly and without hesitation, he considered it impossible that Alyosha did not know at least the beginning of the lesson, and therefore attributed the silence to his stubbornness.
Go to the bedroom, he said, and stay there until you know the lesson perfectly.
Alyosha was taken to the lower floor, given a book and locked the door with a key.
As soon as he was left alone, he began to look everywhere for a hemp seed. He fumbled in his pockets for a long time, crawled on the floor, looked under the bed, fingered the blanket, pillow, sheets - all in vain! There was no trace of the dear grain anywhere! He tried to remember where he could have lost it, and at last was convinced that he had dropped it one day before, playing in the yard. But how can one find it? He was locked in the room, and if they were allowed to go out into the yard, this probably would not have served anything, for he knew that hens were delicious on hemp and its seed, probably, one of them had time to peck ! Desperate to find him, he decided to call Chernushka to his aid.
Sweet Chernushka! - he said. - Dear minister! Please appear to me and give me another seed! I really will be more careful from now on ...
But no one answered his requests, and he finally sat down on a chair and again began to cry bitterly.
In the meantime, it was time for dinner; the door opened and the teacher entered.
Do you know the lesson now? - he asked Alyosha.
Alyosha, sobbing loudly, was forced to say that he did not know.
Well, stay here until you learn! - said the teacher, ordered to give him a glass of water and a piece rye bread and left him alone again.
Alyosha began to repeat it by heart, but nothing entered his head. He has long lost the habit of studying, and how to harden twenty printed pages! No matter how much he worked, no matter how much he strained his memory, but when evening came, he did not know more than two or three pages, and even that was bad. When it was time for the other children to go to bed, all of his comrades at once descended into the room, and the teacher came again with them.
Alyosha, do you know a lesson? - he asked. And poor Alyosha answered through tears:
I only know two pages.
So, apparently, tomorrow you will have to sit here on bread and water, - said the teacher, wished the other children a restful sleep and left.
Alyosha stayed with his comrades. Then, when he was a kind and modest child, everyone loved him, and if, it happened, he was punished, then everyone pitied him, and this served as a consolation for him. But now no one paid attention to him: everyone looked at him with contempt and did not say a word to him.
He himself decided to start a conversation with one boy, with whom he had been very friendly in the past, but he turned away from him without answering. Alyosha turned to the other, but he also did not want to talk to him and even pushed him away from him when he spoke to him again. Then the unfortunate Alyosha felt that he deserved such treatment of his comrades with him. Shedding tears, he lay down in his bed, but could not fall asleep.
For a long time he lay in this way and remembered with sorrow about the past happy days. All the children were already enjoying a sweet dream, only he could fall asleep! “And Chernushka left me,” thought Alyosha and tears again poured from his eyes.
Forty years ago, in St. Petersburg, on Vasilievsky Island, in the First Line, there was a keeper of a male boarding house, who still, probably, still remains in the fresh memory of many, although the house where the boarding house was located for a long time has already given way to another, not in the least like the previous one. At that time, our Petersburg was already famous throughout Europe for its beauty, although it was far from being what it is now. At that time, there were no cheerful shady alleys on the avenues of Vasilyevsky Island: wooden scaffoldings, often knocked together from rotten boards, took the place of today's beautiful sidewalks. St. Isaac's Bridge, narrow at that time and uneven, was a completely different view than it is now; and St. Isaac's Square itself was not at all like that. Then the monument to Peter the Great was separated from St. Isaac's Church by a ditch; The Admiralty was not tree-lined; The Konnogvardeisky Manege did not adorn the square with its beautiful current facade - in a word, Petersburg then was not what it is today. Cities have an advantage over people, by the way, that they sometimes become more beautiful with age ... However, this is not the point now. Another time and on another occasion, perhaps, I will talk with you more at length about the changes that have taken place in Petersburg during my century, but now we turn again to the boarding house, which was located on Vasilievsky Island, in the First Line, forty years ago.
The house, which now - as I have already told you - you will not find, was about two floors, covered with Dutch tiles. The porch through which it was entered was wooden and protruded out into the street ... From the entrance a rather steep staircase led to the upper dwelling, which consisted of eight or nine rooms, in which the owner of the boarding house lived on one side, and classes on the other. The dortoirs, or children's bedrooms, were on the lower floor, on the right side of the vestibule, and on the left lived two old women, Dutch women, each of whom was more than a hundred years old and who saw Peter the Great with their own eyes and even talked to him ...
Among the thirty or forty children who studied at that boarding school, there was one boy named Alyosha, who was then no more than nine or ten years old. His parents, who lived far, far from Petersburg, had brought him to the capital two years earlier, sent him to a boarding house and returned home, having paid the teacher the agreed wages several years in advance. Alyosha was a smart, sweet boy, he studied well, and everyone loved and caressed him. However, despite the fact, he was often bored at the boarding house, and sometimes even sad. Especially at first he could not get used to the idea that he was separated from his relatives. But then, little by little, he began to get used to his position, and there were even moments when, playing with his comrades, he thought that it was much more fun in the boarding house than in his parents' house.
In general, the days of teaching passed quickly and pleasantly for him; but when Saturday came and all his comrades hurried home to their relatives, then Alyosha bitterly felt his loneliness. On Sundays and holidays he was alone all day, and then his only consolation was to read books that the teacher allowed him to borrow from his small library. The teacher was by birth German, and at that time the fashion for knightly novels and fairy tales prevailed in German literature, and the library that our Alyosha used consisted mostly of books of this kind.
So, Alyosha, still at the age of ten, already knew by heart the deeds of the most glorious knights, at least as they were described in the novels. His favorite pastime on long winter evenings, on Sundays and other holidays, was mentally transported to ancient, long past centuries ... wandered through knightly castles, terrible ruins or dark, dense forests.
I forgot to tell you that a rather spacious courtyard belonged to this house, separated from the alley by a wooden fence made of Baroque boards. The gate and the gate leading to the alley were always locked, and therefore Alyosha never managed to visit this alley, which greatly aroused his curiosity. Whenever he was allowed to play outside during his leisure hours, his first move was to run up to the fence. Here he stood on tiptoe and gazed intently into the round holes with which the fence was dotted. Alyosha did not know that these holes came from wooden nails with which barges had been hammered together, and it seemed to him that some kind sorceress had purposely drilled these holes for him. He kept expecting that someday this sorceress would appear in the alley and through the hole would give him a toy, or a talisman, or a letter from papa or mamma, from whom he had not received any news for a long time. But, to his extreme regret, no one even looked like a sorceress.
Another occupation of Alyosha was to feed the chickens, who lived near the fence in a house specially built for them and played and ran in the yard all day. Alyosha got to know them very briefly, knew everyone by name, broke up their fights, and the bully punished them with the fact that sometimes for several days in a row he did not give them anything from the crumbs, which he always collected from the tablecloth after lunch and dinner. Among the chickens, he especially loved one black crested, named Chernushka. Nigella was more affectionate to him than others; sometimes she even allowed herself to be stroked, and therefore Alyosha brought her the best pieces. She had a quiet disposition; she rarely walked with others and seemed to love Alyosha more than her friends.
Once (it was during the winter vacations - the day was beautiful and unusually warm, no more than three or four degrees of frost) Alyosha was allowed to play in the yard. That day the teacher and his wife were in great trouble. They gave lunch to the director of the schools, and even the day before, from morning until late at night, everywhere in the house they washed the floors, wiped the dust and waxed mahogany tables and chests of drawers. The teacher himself went to buy provisions for the table: white Arkhangelsk veal, a huge ham and Kiev jam. Alyosha also contributed to the preparations as much as he could: he was forced to cut a beautiful net for the ham out of white paper and decorate the six wax candles that had been bought on purpose on purpose with paper carvings. On the appointed day, early in the morning, the hairdresser appeared and showed his skill over the curls, the dull and long scythe of the teacher. Then he began to work on his wife, poured and powdered her curls and a hairpiece, and perched on her head a whole greenhouse of different colors, between which two diamond rings, skillfully placed, once presented to her husband by the parents of the pupils, gleamed. At the end of the headdress, she threw on an old, worn-out cloak and went to fuss about the housework, observing, moreover, strictly so that her hairstyle did not deteriorate in some way; and for this she herself did not enter the kitchen, but gave orders to her cook, standing in the doorway. When necessary, she sent her husband there, whose hair was not so high.
In the course of all these worries, our Alyosha was completely forgotten, and he took advantage of this to play outdoors in the open air. As usual, he went first to the board fence and looked for a long time into the hole; but on that day almost no one passed along the alley, and with a sigh he turned to his amiable hens. Before he had time to sit down on a log and had just begun beckoning them to him, he suddenly saw a cook with a large knife beside him. Alyosha never liked this cook - angry and scolding. But since he noticed that she was the reason that from time to time the number of his chickens decreased, he began to love her even less. When one day he accidentally saw in the kitchen one pretty, very beloved cockerel, hanged by his legs with his throat cut, he took on horror and disgust for her. Seeing her now with a knife, he immediately guessed what it meant, and feeling with grief that he could not help his friends, he jumped up and ran far away.
- Alyosha, Alyosha, help me catch a chicken! Shouted the cook.
But Alyosha began to run even harder, hid by the fence behind the chicken coop and himself did not notice how tears one after another rolled out of his eyes and fell to the ground.
For a long time he stood by the chicken coop, and his heart was beating violently in him, while the cook ran around the yard - sometimes beckoning the chickens: “Chick, chick, chick!”, Then scolding them.
Suddenly, Alyosha's heart beat even stronger: he heard the voice of his beloved Chernushka! She clucked in the most desperate way, and it seemed to him that she was shouting:
Where, where, where, where!
Alyosha, save Churnukha!
Kudukhu, kudukhu,
Chernukha, Chernukha!
Alyosha could not stay in his place any longer. He, sobbing loudly, ran to the cook and threw himself on her neck the very minute she caught Chernushka by the wing.
- Dear, dear Trinushka! He cried, shedding tears. - Please don't touch my Chernukha!
Alyosha threw himself on the cook's neck so unexpectedly that she let Chernushka out of her hands, who, taking advantage of this, flew up from fear to the roof of the shed and continued clucking there.
But Alyosha now heard that she was teasing the cook and shouting:
Where, where, where, where!
You didn't catch Chernukha!
Kudukhu, kudukhu,
Chernukha, Chernukha!
Meanwhile, the cook was beside herself with annoyance and wanted to run to the teacher, but Alyosha would not allow her. He clung to the hem of her dress and began to beg so sweetly that she stopped.
- Darling, Trinushka! - he said. - You are so pretty, clean, kind ... Please, leave my Chernushka! Look at what I’ll give you, if you’re kind.
Alyosha took out of his pocket the imperial that made up his entire estate, which he protected more than his own eyes, because it was a gift from his kind grandmother ... The cook looked at the gold coin, looked around the windows of the house to make sure that no one saw them, and held out her hand behind the imperial. Alyosha was very, very sorry for the imperial, but he remembered Chernushka and gave the precious gift with firmness.
Thus, Chernushka was saved from a cruel and inevitable death. As soon as the cook retired into the house, Chernushka flew off the roof and ran up to Alyosha. She seemed to know that he was her deliverer: she circled around him, flapped her wings and clucked in a cheerful voice. All morning she followed him around the yard, like a dog, and it seemed as if she wanted to tell him something, but could not. At least he couldn't make out her clucking.
About two hours before dinner, guests began to gather. Alyosha was called upstairs, put on a shirt with a round collar and cambric cuffs with small folds, white trousers and a wide silk blue sash. Long Brown hair, which hung from him almost to the waist, were thoroughly combed, divided into two even parts and placed in front on both sides of the chest.
So then they dressed up children. Then they taught him how he should shuffle his foot when the director enters the room - and what he should answer if any questions were asked to him.
At other times, Alyosha would have been very glad to see the director, whom he had long wanted to see, because, judging by the respect with which the teacher and the teacher spoke of him, he imagined that it had to be some famous knight in shiny armor and a helmet with large feathers. But this time this curiosity gave way to a thought that only then occupied him: about a black chicken. He imagined everything how the cook was running after her with a knife and how Chernushka clucked in different voices. Moreover, he was very annoyed that he could not make out what she wanted to say to him, and he was drawn to the chicken coop ... But there was nothing to do: he had to wait until dinner was over!
Finally the director arrived. His arrival was announced by his teacher, who had been sitting at the window for a long time, staring intently in the direction from which they were waiting for him.
Everything was in motion: the teacher rushed headlong out of the door to meet him below, at the porch; the guests got up from their seats, and even Alyosha forgot about his chicken for a minute and went to the window to watch the knight dismount from the zealous horse. But he did not manage to see him, for he had already managed to enter the house. At the porch, instead of a zealous horse, there was an ordinary cab sled. Alyosha was very surprised by this! "If I were a knight," he thought, "I would never ride a cab, but always on horseback!"
Meanwhile, all the doors were opened wide, and the teacher began to squat in anticipation of such a respectable guest, who soon showed up. At first it was impossible to see him behind the fat teacher's neck, who was standing in the very doorway; but when she, having finished her long greeting, sat down below the usual one, Alyosha, to extreme surprise, saw from behind her ... not a feathered helmet, but just a small bald head, completely powdered, the only decoration of which, as Alyosha later noticed, was a small bunch! When he entered the drawing-room, Alyosha was even more surprised to see that, in spite of the simple gray tailcoat that the director was wearing instead of shiny armor, everyone treated him with extraordinary respect.
However strange it all seemed to Alyosha, no matter how at other times he would have been delighted with the extraordinary decoration of the table, but on that day he did not pay much attention to it. The morning incident with Chernushka was rambling in his head. Dessert was served: all kinds of jams, apples, bergamots, dates, wine berries and walnuts; but even here he did not for a single moment stop thinking about his chicken. And they had just got up from the table when, with a heart trembling with fear and hope, he approached the teacher and asked if it was possible to go and play in the yard.