I
General reasoning. Rock
My friend, moral educator and mentor Boris Popov, who spent all my youthful years with me, often spoke in his deaf, gentle voice:
- Do you know how I would paint the picture "Life"? A huge glass wall is moving heavily across an immense field dug with graves ... People with madly rolling eyes, tense muscles of their arms and backs want to stop her offensive movement, fight at the bottom edge of it, but it is impossible to stop it. It moves and dumps people into the pits that have turned up - one by one ... One by one! Ahead of her are empty open graves; behind - filled, filled up graves. And a bunch of living people at the edge sees the past: graves, graves and graves. And it is impossible to stop the wall. We will all fall into the pits. All.
I remember this unwritten picture and, while the glass wall has not swept me into the grave, I want to confess one monstrous act that I committed in the days of my childhood. Nobody knows about this act, but the act is wild and unheard of for childhood: at the base of a large yellow rock, on the seashore, not far from Sevastopol, in a deserted place - I buried in the sand, I buried one Englishman and one Frenchman ...
General reasoning. Rock
My friend, moral educator and mentor Boris Popov, who spent all my youthful years with me, often spoke in his deaf, gentle voice:
Do you know how I would paint a picture of "Life"? A huge glass wall is moving heavily across an immense field dug with graves ... People with madly rolling eyes, tense muscles of their arms and backs want to stop her offensive movement, fight at the bottom edge of it, but it is impossible to stop it. It moves and dumps people into the pits that have turned up - one by one ... One by one! Ahead of her are empty open graves; behind - filled, filled up graves. And a bunch of living people at the edge sees the past: graves, graves and graves. And it is impossible to stop the wall. We will all fall into the pits. All.
I remember this unwritten picture and, while the glass wall has not swept me into the grave, I want to confess one monstrous act that I committed in the days of my childhood. Nobody knows about this act, but the act is wild and unheard of for childhood: at the base of a large yellow rock, on the seashore, not far from Sevastopol, in a deserted place - I buried in the sand, I buried one Englishman and one Frenchman ...
Peace be upon you - talkers and deceivers!
The glass wall moves towards me, but I put my face to it and, flattening my nose, I see what is left behind: my father, the Vapiti Indian and the Negro Bashelico. And behind them, in heavy jumps and twists of powerful bodies, lions, tigers and hyenas rush.
These are all the protagonists of the story, which ended with a mysterious funeral at the base of a large rock on a deserted seashore.
My parents lived in Sevastopol, which I could not understand at that time: how it was possible to live in Sevastopol, when the Philippine Islands, the southern coast of Africa, the border cities of Mexico, the huge prairies of North America, the Cape of Good Hope, the Orange rivers, the Amazon, exist, Mississippi and Zambezi? ..
As a ten-year-old pioneer at heart, my father's place of residence did not satisfy me.
And what about the occupation? My father sold tea, flour, candles, oats and sugar.
Of course, I had nothing against trading ... but the question is: what to trade? I allowed the trade in cochineal, ivory, exchanged by the natives for trinkets, golden sand, cinchona, precious rosewood, sugar cane ... I even recognized such a dangerous activity as the trade in ebony (Negro traders call them that way).
But soap! But candles! But sawn sugar!
The prose of life weighed down on me. I walked several miles from the city and, lying all day on the deserted seashore, at the foot of a lonely rock, dreamed ...
The pirate ship decided to moor at this place to bury the stolen treasure: a bound iron chest full of old Spanish doubloons, guineas, gold Brazilian and Mexican coins and various gold, jeweled utensils ...
I, hiding in one well-known depression on the top of the cliff, silently watch everything that happens: muscular arms vigorously dig the sand, lower a heavy chest into the hole, fill it up and, having made a mysterious mark on the cliff, leave for new robberies and adventures. For a minute I hesitate: should I cling to them? It is good to ride together, bask in the hot equatorial sun, rob passing "merchants", grapple with an English brig on board, selling your life dearly, because meeting the British is a sure tie around your neck.
On the other hand, you can not cling to the pirates. Another combination is no less tempting: to dig a chest with doubloons, bring it to your father, and then use the "proceeds" to buy a van carrying South African boers, weapons, supplies, hire several hunters for the company, and even move to the African diamond fields.
Suppose father and mother reject Africa! But my God! Remains beautiful North America with bison, endless prairie, Mexican vaquero and painted Indians. For such a grace it would be worth risking scalps - ha ha!
The sun heats up the sea sand at my feet, the shadows are gradually lengthening, and I, stretched out in the chill under the rock I have chosen, book after book devour two of my favorites: Louis Boussinard and Captain Main Reed.
“… Sitting under the shade of a giant baobab tree, the travelers enjoyed breathing in the delicious aroma of the elephant's front leg roasted over the fire. The negro Hercules plucked some breadfruit and added them to a delicious roast. After a thorough breakfast and a roast with a few sips of crystal water from the brook, diluted with rum, our travelers, and so on. "
I swallow my saliva and whisper, overwhelmed with envy:
People know how to live! Well ... we'll have breakfast too.
From a secret vault in a crevice of a rock, I take out a couple of cold cutlets, a ram, a piece of meat pie, a bottle of booze and - I begin to fill myself up, occasionally glancing at the clear sea horizon: is a pirate ship approaching?
And the shadows are getting longer and longer ...
It's time to go to your blockhouse on Crafts Street.
I think - this rock on the deserted coast still stands, and the crevice has survived, and at the bottom of it, probably, there is still a broken knife and a can of gunpowder - everything is still there, but I am already thirty-two years old, and that's it. more often, one of our good friends exclaims with a joyful laugh:
Look! But you also have gray hair.
The author recalls one “monstrous deed” committed in childhood. “Nobody knows about this act, and the act is wild and unheard of for childhood: at the base of a large yellow rock, on the seashore, not far from Sevastopol, in a deserted place, I buried in the sand, I buried one Englishman and one Frenchman ...” Such a confession can scare the reader. But as you read the story, it becomes clear what the author had in mind.
He talks about his childhood. His parents lived in Sevastopol.
And he did not understand how it was possible to choose such an uninteresting place as Sevastopol, because there are the Philippine Islands, the southern coast of Africa, the border cities of Mexico, the vast prairies of North America, the Cape of Good Hope, the Orange rivers, the Amazon, the Mississippi and the Zambezi. The romantic boy did not like the place where his family lived. His father’s occupation did not suit him either. My father sold tea, flour, candles, oats and sugar. The boy was not against trade. But he believed that completely different things should be traded. “I allowed the trade in cochineal, ivory, exchanged by the natives for trinkets, golden sand, cinchona
crust, precious rosewood, sugarcane ... I even recognized such a dangerous activity as trading in ebony (Negro traders call them that way). But soap! But candles! But sawn sugar! "
The boy was burdened by the prose of life. And so he often went to the seashore and dreamed. In his dreams, he saw himself as a pirate or a traveler. The author was very fond of reading Louis Boussinard and Mein Read. And so the thoughts of sea voyages, unseen treasures, battles worried him. And ordinary, simple life seemed boring, gray, uninteresting.
Once the father happily told the boy that a real menagerie was coming to the city. The boy was delighted. But, of course, he didn't show it. The father said that there are lions, tigers, a boa constrictor, a crocodile in the menagerie. There was also a shooter, an Indian and a negro. Upon learning this news, the boy was very happy. He walked into the menagerie with a sinking heart. But almost immediately he was disappointed. At first he did not like black. The boy believed that the negro should be practically naked, only the loincloth should be made of bright fabric. In the menagerie, the Negro was dressed in a red dress coat and had a green top hat on his head. The boy believed that a black man should be formidable. But this negro was funny, showed tricks and looked ingratiatingly at everyone.
The boy was deeply impressed by the Indian, the archer Va-piti. He was wearing an Indian national costume and was decorated with skins and feathers. But there were no human scalps on it, nor was there a necklace made of gray bear teeth. The Indian was shooting from a bow at a target. It didn't seem right to the boy. After all, in the auditorium sat the pale-faced, blood enemies of the Indian. Logically, he should have shot them. The boy was outraged that the Indian did not. It seemed to him that the Indian had forgotten his ancestors, that he was simply cowardly.
The boy did not like the performance of the boa constrictor, which the girl wore around her neck. In his opinion, the boa constrictor should not have tolerated this, he had to strangle the girl. The lion's performance also disappointed the boy. After all, the formidable king of beasts could break the tamer, but he did not.
As an adult, the author recalled his impressions of that time and understood that he reasoned based on the idea that everyone has their own destiny. “Everyone should do his own thing: an Indian to remove a scalp, a Negro is to eat the travelers who have fallen into his clutches, and a lion torment indiscriminately one, the other, and the third, because the reader must understand: everyone needs to drink and eat”. Subsequently, the author wondered what he wanted to see in the menagerie. “A couple of lions, who escaped from the cage and eaten in the corner of the gallery a sailor who had not managed to escape? An Indian painstakingly scalping the entire front row of horrified spectators? A Negro who made a fire from the broken planks of an elephant fence and roasted the flour merchant Slutskin on this fire? " Probably such a sight would have pleased the boy.
When the boy and his father watched the show and went home, the father happily announced that in the evening he had invited the owner of the menagerie, an Indian and a Negro, to visit him. And in the evening, the boy suffered another disappointment. The Va-piti Indian and Bashelico the Negro were dressed in jackets that did not suit them at all. It was Easter, and the Negro and the Indian, together with the owner of the menagerie, consulted with father and mother. It seemed to the boy monstrous that a negro cannibal had Christ, and also that a red-skinned Indian had Christ. After all, they shouldn't have done it. The boy was disappointed that they ate Easter cakes and colored eggs. Then they drank the liqueur. The boy's father began to sing the Ukrainian song “Vitry, riot riots ...”, and the Indian sang along with him. The Negro began to dance the polka mazurka with his aunt.
The next morning the boy sadly went to the seashore. He flipped through his favorite Boussinard books for the last time. Now he could no longer read about adventures. He now perceived blacks and Indians as his yesterday's guests, completely ordinary people... The boy was very upset. He said: "Farewell, my childhood, my sweet, amazingly interesting childhood ..." After that, the boy dug a hole in the sand under the rock, put all the volumes of the Frenchman Boussinard and the Englishman Captain Mine Reed in it. After that, he filled up this grave. He no longer thought about pirates, travel and adventure. The boy has matured, began to perceive life differently.
Children see the world with different eyes. Unlike adults, they are burdened by a boring, monotonous life, attracted by everything bright and unusual. Main character Averchenko's story is no exception. He dreamed of unprecedented adventures. In the books that he loved to read, the Indians and Negroes were warlike, fearless people. And he was really disappointed when he saw ordinary people, not at all similar to those described in the book. The boy had to accept this reality and grow up. After all, we become adults not because of the number of years we have lived, but because of the experience acquired, which helps to better understand life and the people around us.
Glossary:
- death of an african hunter summary
- summary death of an african hunter
- averchenko death of an african hunter summary
- death of an african hunter
- averchenko death of an African hunter
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I
General reasoning. Rock.
My friend, moral educator and mentor Boris Popov, who spent all my youthful years with me, often spoke in his deaf, gentle voice:
- Do you know how I would paint the picture "Life"? A huge glass wall is moving heavily across an immense field dug with graves ... People with madly rolling eyes, tense muscles of their arms and backs want to stop its offensive movement, fight at the bottom edge of it, but it is impossible to stop it. It moves and dumps people into the pits that have turned up - one by one ... One by one! Ahead of her are the empty holes of the grave; behind - filled filled graves. And a bunch of living people at the edge see the past: graves, graves and graves. And it is not possible to stop the wall. We will all fall into the pits. All.
I remember this unwritten picture and, while the glass wall has not swept me into the grave, I want to confess one monstrous act that I committed in the days of my childhood. Nobody knows about this act, but the act is wild and unheard of for childhood: at the base of a large yellow rock, on the seashore, not far from Sevastopol, in a deserted place - I buried in the sand, buried one Englishman and one Frenchman ...
Peace be on yours, talkers and deceivers! The glass wall moves towards me, but I put my face to it and, flattening my nose, I see what is left behind: my father, the Vapiti Indian and the Negro Bashelico. And behind them, in heavy jumps and twists of powerful bodies, lions, tigers and hyenas rush.
These are all the main characters of the story, which ended with a mysterious funeral at the base of a large rock, on a deserted haze of the coast.
I think - this rock on the deserted coast still stands, and the crevice is preserved, and at the bottom of it, probably, there is still a broken knife and a can of gunpowder - everything is still there, but I am already thirty-two years old, and that's it. more often, one of our good friends exclaims with a joyful laugh:
- Look! But you also have gray hair.
II.
First disappointment.
I do not know which of us was a big child - me or my father.
In any case, I, as a true red-skinned man, would not have been capable of such a violent manifestation of delight as my father, at the moment when he informed me that a real menagerie was coming to us, which would stay the whole Holy Week and, perhaps (in this where the father winked, with the air of a diplomat exposing an important state secret), will remain until May.
Inside, everything froze with delight, but outwardly I did not show it.
And at that time he played not there, but as a torban under the skillful hand of his father.
And the formidable German, the owner of the menagerie, simply slept, forgetting his lions and elephants.
In the morning, when everyone was still asleep, I got up and, putting on my cap, quietly walked along the coast of the bay.
I wandered for a long time, wandered sadly.
Here is my rock, here is the crevice - my food and book depository.
I took out Bussenar, Mein-Reed and sat down at the foot of the cliff. Flipped through the books ... for the last time.
And from the pages the Indians were looking at me, singing: "They are biting the windows, the riots are blowing", the negroes were looking at me, dancing the polka-mazurka to the sounds of the hohlak torban, the lions were jumping over the hoop, and the elephants were shooting with their trunk from a pistol ...
I sighed.
Goodbye, my childhood, my sweet amazingly interesting childhood ...
I dug a hole in the sand, under a rock, put all the volumes of the Frenchman Boussinard and the Englishman Captain Main-Reed in it, filled this grave, got up and straightened up, circling the horizon with a completely different look ... There were no pirates and could not be; must not be.
The boy died.
Instead, a young man was born.
Elephants are best shot with explosive bullets.
Averchenko A.T.
I. General considerations. Rock
II. First disappointment
III. Second disappointment. Death
General reasoning. Rock
My friend, moral educator and mentor Boris Popov, who spent all my youthful years with me, often spoke in his deaf, gentle voice:
Do you know how I would paint a picture of "Life"? A huge glass wall is moving heavily across an immense field dug with graves ... People with madly rolling eyes, tense muscles of their arms and backs want to stop her offensive movement, fight at the bottom edge of it, but it is impossible to stop it. She moves and dumps people into the pits that have turned up - one by one ... One by one! Ahead of her are empty open graves; behind - filled, filled up graves. And a bunch of living people at the edge sees the past: graves, graves and graves. And it is impossible to stop the wall. We will all fall into the pits. All.
I remember this unwritten picture and, while the glass wall has not swept me into the grave, I want to confess one monstrous act that I committed in the days of my childhood. Nobody knows about this act, but the act is wild and unheard of for childhood: at the base of a large yellow rock, on the seashore, not far from Sevastopol, in a deserted place - I buried it in the sand, I buried one Englishman and one Frenchman ...
Peace be upon you - talkers and deceivers!
The glass wall moves towards me, but I put my face to it and, flattening my nose, I see what is left behind: my father, the Vapiti Indian and the Negro Bashelico. And behind them, in heavy jumps and twists of powerful bodies, lions, tigers and hyenas rush.
These are all the protagonists of the story that ended with a mysterious burial at the base of a large rock on a deserted seashore.
My parents lived in Sevastopol, which I could not understand at that time: how it was possible to live in Sevastopol when there are the Philippine Islands, the southern coast of Africa, the border cities of Mexico, the huge prairies of North America, the Cape of Good Hope, the Orange rivers, the Amazon, Mississippi and Zambezi? ..
As a ten-year-old pioneer at heart, my father's place of residence did not satisfy me.
And what about the occupation? My father sold tea, flour, candles, oats and sugar.
Of course, I had nothing against trading ... but the question is: what to trade? I allowed the trade in cochineal, ivory, exchanged with the natives for trinkets, golden sand, cinchona, precious rosewood, sugar cane ... I even recognized such a dangerous activity as the trade in ebony (Negro traders call them that way).
But soap! But candles! But sawn sugar!
The prose of life weighed down on me. I walked several miles from the city and, lying all day on a deserted seashore, at the foot of a lonely rock, dreamed ...
The pirate ship decided to moor at this place to bury the looted treasure: a bound iron chest full of old Spanish doubloons, guineas, gold Brazilian and Mexican coins and various gold, jeweled utensils ...
I, hiding in one well-known depression on the top of the cliff, silently watch everything that happens: muscular arms vigorously dig the sand, lower a heavy chest into the hole, fill it up and, having made a mysterious mark on the cliff, leave for new robberies and adventures. For a minute I hesitate: should I cling to them? It is good to ride together, bask in the hot equatorial sun, rob passing "merchants", grapple on board with an English brig, selling your life dearly, because meeting the British is a sure tie around your neck.
On the other hand, you can not cling to the pirates. Another combination is no less tempting: to dig a chest with doubloons, bring it to your father, and then use the "proceeds" to buy a van carrying South African boers, weapons, supplies, hire several hunters for the company, and even move to the African diamond fields.
Suppose father and mother reject Africa! But my God! What remains is beautiful North America with bison, endless prairies, Mexican vaquero and painted Indians. For such a grace it would be worth risking scalps - ha ha!
The sun heats up the sea sand at my feet, the shadows are gradually lengthening, and I, stretching out in the chill under the rock I have chosen, book after book devour two of my favorites: Louis Boussinard and Captain Mine Reed.
"... Sitting under the shade of a giant baobab tree, the travelers enjoyed inhaling the delicious aroma of the elephant's front leg roasted over the fire. The Negro Hercules plucked several breadfruit and added them to a delicious roast. rum, our travelers, etc. ".
I swallow my saliva and whisper, overwhelmed with envy:
People know how to live! Well ... we'll have breakfast too.
From a secret vault in a crevice of a rock, I take out a couple of cold cutlets, a ram, a piece of meat pie, a bottle of booze and - I begin to fill myself up, occasionally glancing at the clear sea horizon: is a pirate ship approaching?
And the shadows are getting longer and longer ...
It's time to go to your blockhouse on Crafts Street.
I think - this rock on the deserted shore still stands, and the crevice has survived, and at the bottom of it there is probably still a broken knife and a can of gunpowder - everything is still there, but I am already thirty-two years old, and that's it. more often, one of your good friends exclaims with a joyful laugh:
Look! But you also have gray hair.
First disappointment
I don't know which of us was a big child - me or my father.
In any case, I, as a true red-skinned man, would not have been capable of such a violent manifestation of delight as my father at the moment when he informed me that a real menagerie was coming to us, which would stay the entire Holy Week and, perhaps (in this where my father winked with the air of a diplomat exposing an important state secret), will remain until May.
Inside, everything froze with delight, but outwardly I did not show it.
Just think, menagerie! What animals are there? Probably, and agouti, and wildebeest, and anacondas - the mother of waters, not to mention giraffes, peccari and anteaters.
You see - there are lions! Tigers! Crocodile! Boa! The tamers and the owner buy something from me in the shop, so they said. This, brother, is a thing! There is an Indian - a shooter, and a negro.
And that nigger doing? - I asked with a face turned pale with delight.
He’s doing something, ”my father mumbled vaguely. - They won't keep it for free.
Which tribe?
Yes, a good tribe, brother, you can immediately see it. All black, no matter how you turn it On the first day of Easter, let's go - you'll see.
Who will understand my feeling, with which I dived under the red red lace trim of the booth with yellow decorations? Who will appreciate the symphony of the husky ariston, the flapping of the whip and the awesome roar of the lion?
Where are the words to convey a complex, wondrous combination of three smells: a lion's cage, horse manure and gunpowder? ..
Eh, we have hardened! ..
However, when I came to my senses, I no longer liked much in the menagerie.
First, a black man.
The Negro must be naked, except for the thighs, which are covered with bright paper material. And then I saw a profanation: a negro in a red dress coat, with an absurd green top hat on his head. Secondly, the negro must be formidable. And this one showed some tricks, ran through the rows of the audience, taking out greasy cards from all pockets, and generally treated everyone very ingratiatingly.
Thirdly, Va-piti made a heavy impression on me - an Indian, an archer. True, he was in an Indian national costume, adorned with some kind of skin and studded with feathers like a rooster, but ... where are the scalps? Where is the necklace of the teeth of a gray grizzly bear?
No, it’s not that.
And then: a man shoots from a bow - at what? - in a black circle drawn on a wooden board.
And this at a time when his worst enemies, pale-faced, are sitting a stone's throw from him!
Be ashamed, Va-piti, red-skinned dog! I wanted to tell him. - Your heart is cowardly, and you have already forgotten how the pale-faced took away your pasture, burned the wigwam and stole your mustang. Another decent Indian would not have hesitated, but would have slapped a couple of arrows in the face of that excise official, whose well-fed look proves that the death of the wigwam and the hijacking of the mustang did not go without his assistance.
Alas! Va-piti has forgotten the precepts of his ancestors. Not a single scalp he ripped off today, but simply bowed to the applause and left. Goodbye cowardly dog!
A living boa constrictor - and he endured it, did not entwine the wretch with his deadly rings? Didn't he squeeze it so that the blood spurted out of it in all directions ?! You are an unfortunate worm, not a boa constrictor!
A lion! The king of beasts, majestic, formidable, one leap carried out from the dense thickets and, like a heavenly thunder, falling on the back of an antelope ... A lion, a thunderstorm of blacks, a scourge of herds and gaping hunters, jumped through the hoop! Became all four paws on a painted ball! The hyena stood with its front legs on his croup! ..
If I were in the place of this lion, I would have tapped this tamer by the leg so that he would not even come close to the cage any other time.
The hyena also became insolent, like the latest rubbish ...
Please do not blame me for bloodlust ... I reasoned, so to speak, academically.
Everyone should do his own thing: an Indian to remove a scalp, a Negro to eat travelers who have fallen into his clutches, and a lion to torment indiscriminately one, the other, and the third, because the reader must understand: everyone needs to drink and eat.
Now I myself am perplexed: what did I hope to see when I came to the menagerie? A couple of lions, escaping from the cage and eating in the corner of the gallery, a sailor who did not have time to escape? An Indian painstakingly scalping the entire front row of horrified spectators? The Negro who made a fire from the broken planks of an elephant fence and roasted the flour merchant Slutskin on this fire?
Probably, this sight would be the only one that would satisfy me ...
And when we left the booth, my father told me in a jubilant tone:
Imagine, I have invited the host, an Indian and a negro, to visit us tonight. Let's have some fun.
It was the same paternal trait that led him to buy cuttlefish at the market, which we then ate together with my father. I am out of love for adventure, he is out of a desire to prove to everyone in the household that buying it does not have a certain character of meaninglessness.
Yes, he invited me. Interesting people.
With this look, Rothschild is probably now inviting Chaliapin to his place.
The spirit of patronage made a strong nest for itself in my father.
Second disappointment. Death
Blow by blow!
The Va-piti Indian and the Negro Bashelico came to us in gray jackets, which sat on them like a glove on a pencil.
They, following the example of the owner of the menagerie, consulted with their father and mother.
A negro - a cannibal - has Christ!
The red-skinned dog - Va-piti, who would have been laughed at by the Indian squaw (women) - has Christ!
God, God! They ate Easter cake. After the fried missionary - cake! And the formidable Indian Va-piti peacefully ate three colored eggs, smearing his entire brick face with blue and green. This is instead of being painted in the colors of war.
It ended with the fact that the father, grabbing Kiev liqueur over a measure, pulled on "Viut vitry, vyut riots", and the Indian pulled him up!
And the Negro danced a polka-mazurka with his aunt ... True, he ate it, but only with his eyes ...
And at that time he played not tom-toms, but torban under the skillful hand of his father.
And the formidable German, the owner of the menagerie, simply slept, forgetting his lions and elephants.
In the morning, when everyone was still asleep, I got up and, putting on my cap, walked quietly along the coast of the bay.
I wandered for a long time, wandered sadly.
Here is my rock, here is the crevice - my food and book depository.
I took out Bussenar, Mine Reed and sat down at the foot of the cliff. Flipped through the books ... for the last time.
And from the pages the Indians looked at me, singing: "They whine the windows, whine the riots", the negros looked, dancing the polka-mazurka to the sounds of the hohlack torban, the lions jumped through the hoop and the elephants fired their trunk from a pistol ...
I sighed.
Goodbye, my childhood, my sweet, amazingly interesting childhood ...
I dug a hole in the sand under the rock, put in it all the volumes of the Frenchman Boussinard and the Englishman Captain Mein Reed, covered this grave, got up and straightened up, looking around the horizon with a completely different look ... There were no pirates and could not be; must not be. The boy died. Instead, a young man was born.
Elephants are best shot with explosive bullets.