When I was very young, probably under the age of five, my reading was limited to all sorts of glorious children's stories in which everything is warm, good and cozy, and if evil and bares its teeth for a while, then at the end of the work it will definitely run away into the bushes, tucking punished tail. And somewhere, just at the age of five, I was overtaken by this story by Korolenko, which not only enriched my vocabulary unexpected dialect words, but also brought down from literary heaven to earth, mercilessly thrown into the harsh domestic noir, from which then at night I dreamed of pictures worthy of Kafka. The end of a short story drove the penultimate nail into the coffin of my childhood thoughts that literature is the sun, princesses and always smiling perky baby dolls (the last nail was the children's arrangement of "Gavroche" and "Cosette", which forever made me respect things gloomy and realistic ).

Probably, everyone read this story when they were at school (well, or almost everyone, I didn’t have a chance, because it fell under the reduction of the program). Having re-read it now, I was surprised at how “difficult” it was for children both in terms of the choice of words and the features of the text, although this had not been noticed at all before. I was even more confused by Wikipedia, which claims that the story "Children of the Underground" is an adapted and abridged story for adults "In Bad Society". How should a story be shortened to make a story? Still, "In Bad Society" is also a story, albeit a small one. I looked at it diagonally for comparison with "Children of the Underground", in general, they reduced it quite a bit, only some descriptive moments and abstract thoughts of the author, and for some reason removed all the moments of mentioning the Jews. And yet, the story turned out to be quite childish. It was very interesting to see the amazing moments that in childhood are, in principle, uninteresting and not visible - this is not eternal question"Where it's good and where it's bad", not a confrontation between rich and poor, but a story about the father of the protagonist, whom Korolenko describes with such pain that it's quite clear that this moment is deeply autobiographical. Well, anyway ... A very useful story in order to dilute the categorical children's division into black and white. Children are taught exactly: "Telling the truth is good," "Stealing is bad." But life does not tolerate only black and white, therefore it produces numerous "if ..." and "when ..." There are moments when these seemingly transparent categories of good and bad have to be revised.

And yet, there is something gothic in this story. Cemeteries, a dilapidated fortress, a church, a gray stone that drinks life from a fragile girl, and the girl herself looks like a clumsy and weak flower that grew in captivity without the sun... period it is worth buying washing powder for black clothes and suitable gloomy authors for the home library.

Children of the Underground

1. Ruins

My mother died when I was six years old. Father, completely surrendering to his grief, seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister Sonya and took care of her in his own way, because she had the features of a mother. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one hampered my freedom.
The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Prince-Gorodok. It belonged to a seedy but proud Polish family and resembled any of the small towns of the Southwestern Territory.
If you drive up to the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself is spread out below, over sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by the traditional "outpost". A sleepy invalid lazily raises the barrier - and you are in the city, although, perhaps, you do not notice it right away. "Grey fences, wastelands with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with blind, gone into the ground huts. Further on, a wide square gapes in different places with dark gates of Jewish "visiting houses"; state institutions are depressing with their white walls and barracks-even lines. A wooden bridge, thrown across a narrow stream, groans, shuddering under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man.After the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, shops, stalls and overhanging kalachniks.Stink, dirt, heaps of children crawling in the street dust.But here's another minute - and you are already outside the city. Birches whisper softly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind stirs the grain in the fields and rings a dull, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph.
The river, over which the said bridge was thrown, flowed out of the pond and flowed into another. Thus, from the north and south, the town was fenced off by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds grew shallow from year to year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds rippled like the sea in the vast marshes. In the middle of one of the ponds is an island. On the island - an old, dilapidated castle.
I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. It was said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “An old castle stands on human bones,” the old-timers used to say, and my childish frightened imagination drew thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting the island with its bony hands with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more terrible, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we approached it closer, it often inspired panic attacks in us - the black cavities of the long-beaten out windows; in the empty halls there was a mysterious rustle: pebbles and plaster, breaking away, fell down, awakening a booming echo, and we ran without looking back, and for a long time there was a knock, and clatter, and laughter behind us.
And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplar trees swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spread from the old castle and reigned over the whole city.
On the western side, on the mountain, among decayed crosses and collapsed graves, stood a long-abandoned chapel. Its roof had caved in in some places, the walls were crumbling, and instead of a high-pitched copper bell, the owls started their ominous songs in it at night.
There was a time when old lock served as a free refuge for every poor man without the slightest restriction. Everything that did not find a place in the city, which for one reason or another lost the opportunity to pay at least a miserable penny for shelter and a corner at night and in bad weather - all this stretched to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious little heads, paying for hospitality only at the risk of being buried under piles of old rubbish. "Living in the castle" - this phrase has become an expression extreme poverty. The old castle hospitably received and covered both the temporarily impoverished scribe, and the orphan old women, and the homeless vagrants. All these poor people tormented the insides of a decrepit building, breaking off ceilings and floors, stoked stoves, cooked something and ate something - generally somehow supported their existence.
However, the days came when among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, strife broke out. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the count's minor servants, secured for himself something like the title of manager and began to reform. For several days there was such a noise on the island, such cries were heard that at times it seemed as if the Turks had escaped from underground dungeons. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the "good Christians" from obscure personalities. When order was finally restored to the island, it turned out that Janusz left in the castle mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count's family. They were all some kind of old men in shabby frock coats and chamarkas, with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, noisy and ugly, but in complete impoverishment they retained their bonnets and coats. All of them made up a closely knit aristocratic circle, which received the right of recognized begging. On weekdays, these old men and women went with a prayer on their lips to the homes of more prosperous townspeople, spreading gossip, complaining about their fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they lined up in long rows near churches and majestically accepted handouts in the name of "Pan Jesus" and "Ladies of the Mother of God".
Attracted by the noise and cries that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made their way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched Janusz at the head whole army red-nosed elders and ugly old women drove out of the castle the last tenants to be expelled. Evening came. The cloud hanging over the high tops of the poplars was already pouring rain. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapping themselves in utterly torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, poked their way around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to slip unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the old witches, screaming and cursing, chased them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands.
And the unfortunate dark personalities involuntarily, drooping, hid behind the bridge, leaving the island forever, and one after another drowned in the slushy twilight of the rapidly descending evening.
Since that memorable evening, both Janusz and the old castle, from which some kind of vague grandeur had previously wafted over me, lost all their attractiveness in my eyes. I used to like to come to the island and, at least from a distance, admire its gray walls and old moss-covered roof. When in the morning dawn various figures crawled out of it, yawning, coughing and crossing themselves in the sun, I looked at them with some respect, as at beings clothed with the same mystery that shrouded the whole castle. They sleep there at night, they hear everything that happens there when the moon peeps through the broken windows into the huge halls or when the wind rushes into them in a storm.
I liked to listen when Janusz would sit down under the poplars and, with the talkativeness of a seventy-year-old man, begin to talk about the glorious past of the dead building.
But from that evening both the castle and Janusz appeared before me in a new light. Meeting me the next day near the island, Janusz began to invite me to his place, assuring me with a satisfied look that now the “son of such respectable parents” can safely visit the castle, as he will find quite decent society in it. He even led me by the hand to the castle itself, but then, with tears, I tore my hand from him and started to run. The castle became disgusting to me. The windows on the top floor were boarded up, and the bottom was in the possession of hoods and salopes. The old women crawled out of there in such an unattractive form, flattering me so cloyingly, cursing among themselves so loudly. But the main thing - I could not forget the cold cruelty with which the triumphant residents of the castle drove their unfortunate cohabitants, and at the memory of dark personalities left homeless, my heart sank.
Several nights after the described upheaval on the island, the city spent very restless: dogs barked, doors of houses creaked, and the townsfolk, every now and then going out into the street, banged on the fences with sticks, letting someone know that they were on their guard. The city knew that people were wandering along its streets in the rainy darkness of a rainy night, hungry and cold, shivering and wet; realizing that cruel feelings must be born in the hearts of these people, the city became alert and sent its threats towards these feelings. And the night, as if on purpose, descended to the ground in the midst of a cold downpour and left, leaving low running clouds above the ground. And the wind raged in the midst of bad weather, shaking the tops of the trees, banging the shutters and singing to me in my bed about dozens of people deprived of warmth and shelter.
But then spring finally triumphed over the last gusts of winter, the sun dried up the earth, and at the same time the homeless wanderers subsided somewhere. The barking of dogs subsided at night, the townsfolk stopped knocking on the fences, and the life of the city, sleepy and monotonous, went on its own track.
Only the unfortunate exiles did not find their own track even now in the city. True, they did not loiter in the streets at night; they said that they found shelter somewhere on the mountain, near the chapel, but how they managed to settle down there, no one could say for sure. Everyone saw only that from the other side, from the mountains and ravines surrounding the chapel, the most incredible and suspicious figures descended into the city in the mornings, which disappeared in the same direction at dusk. With their appearance, they disturbed the quiet and dormant course of city life, standing out against a gray background with gloomy spots. The townsfolk glanced at them with hostile anxiety. These figures did not at all resemble the aristocratic beggars from the castle - the city did not recognize them, and their relations with the city were of a purely militant nature: they preferred to scold the layman than to flatter him, to take for themselves than to beg. Moreover, as is often the case, among this ragged and ignorant crowd of unfortunates there were people who, in intelligence and talents, could do honor to the most chosen society of the castle, but did not get along in it and preferred the democratic society of the chapel.
In addition to these people who stood out from the crowd, a dark mass of miserable ragamuffins huddled around the chapel, whose appearance in the bazaar always caused great alarm among the merchants, who hastened to cover their goods with their hands, just as hens cover chickens when a kite appears in the sky. There were rumors that these poor people, completely deprived of any means of life since the expulsion from the castle, made up a friendly community and were engaged, among other things, in petty theft in the city and its environs.
The organizer and leader of this community of unfortunates was pan Tyburtsy Drab, the most wonderful personality of all those who did not get along in the old castle.
The origin of Drab was shrouded in the most mysterious obscurity. Some attributed to him aristocratic name, which he covered with shame and therefore was forced to hide. But Pan Tyburtsiy's appearance had nothing aristocratic about it. He was tall, his large features were coarsely expressive. Short, slightly reddish hair stuck out; low forehead, slightly protruding forward lower jaw and the strong mobility of the face resembled something of a monkey; but the eyes that flashed from under the overhanging brows looked stubbornly and gloomily, and sharp insight, energy and intelligence shone in them, along with slyness. While his face changed whole line grimace, these eyes constantly kept one expression, which is why it always happened to me somehow unconsciously terribly to look at the antics of this strange person. There seemed to be a deep, permanent sadness flowing underneath him.
Pan Tyburtsy's hands were rough and covered with calluses, his big feet walked like a man's. In view of this, most of the inhabitants did not recognize his aristocratic origin. But then how to explain his amazing learning, which was obvious to everyone? There was not a tavern in the whole city in which Pan Tyburtsy, in order to instruct the crests who had gathered on the market days, did not utter, standing on a barrel, whole speeches from Cicero, whole chapters from Xenophon. Khokhols, generally endowed by nature with a rich imagination, knew how to somehow put their own meaning into these animated, albeit incomprehensible speeches ... And when, hitting his chest and sparkling with his eyes, he addressed them with the words: “Patres conscripti”, - they too frowned and said to each other:
- Oh, the enemy's son, how to bark!
When then Pan Tyburtsy, raising his eyes to the ceiling, began to recite the longest Latin texts The mustachioed listeners watched him with fearful and pitiful sympathy. It seemed to them then that the soul of Tyburtius was hovering somewhere in an unknown country where they did not speak Christian, and that she was experiencing some kind of woeful adventures there. His voice sounded in such muffled, otherworldly peals that the listeners sitting in the corners and the most weakened from the vodka lowered their heads, hung their long "chuprin" and began to sob.
- Oh, mother, she is plaintive, give him an encore! - And tears dripped from the eyes and flowed down the long mustache.
And when the speaker, suddenly jumping off the barrel, burst into merry laughter, the gloomy faces of the crests suddenly cleared up and their hands reached for the pockets of their wide trousers for coppers. Delighted by the happy ending of the tragic adventures of Pan Tyburtsy, the Khokhols gave him vodka to drink, hugged him, and coppers fell into his cap, ringing.
In view of such astonishing learning, there appeared new legend that Pan Tyburtsiy was once a courtyard boy of some count, who sent him, along with his son, to the school of the Jesuit fathers, in fact, to clean the boots of a young panich. It turned out, however, that while the young count was idle, his lackey intercepted all the wisdom that was assigned to the barchuk's head.
No one also knew where Pan Tyburtsiy's children came from, and meanwhile the fact was obvious, even two facts: a boy of about seven, but tall and developed beyond his years, and a little three-year-old girl. Pan Tyburtsy brought the boy with him from the first days, as he himself appeared. As for the girl, he was absent for several months before she appeared in his arms.
A boy named Valek, tall, thin, with black hair, sometimes wandered sullenly around the city without much to do, his hands in his pockets and throwing glances from side to side that embarrassed the hearts of the kalachnitsa. The girl was seen only once or twice in the arms of Pan Tyburtsy, and then she disappeared somewhere, and no one knew where she was.
There was talk of some kind of dungeons on the mountain near the chapel, and since such dungeons are not uncommon in those parts, everyone believed these rumors, especially since all these people lived somewhere. And they usually disappeared in the evening in the direction of the chapel. There, with his sleepy gait, a half-mad old beggar hobbled, who was nicknamed the "professor", Pan Tyburtsy strode resolutely and quickly. Other dark personalities went there in the evening, drowning in twilight, and there was no brave person who would dare to follow them along the clay cliffs. The mountain, pitted with graves, used notoriety. In the old cemetery, on damp autumn nights, blue lights lit up, and in the chapel the owls screamed so piercingly and loudly that even the fearless blacksmith's heart sank from the cries of the damned bird.

2. Me and my father

Bad, young man, bad! - old Janusz from the castle often told me, meeting me on the streets of the city among the listeners of Pan Tyburtsy.
And the old man shook his gray beard at the same time.
- It's bad, young man - you are in bad company! .. It's a pity, it's a pity for the son of respectable parents.
Indeed, ever since my mother died and my father's stern face grew even more sullen, I have very rarely been seen at home. In later summer evenings I crept through the garden, like a young wolf cub, avoiding meeting with his father, using special devices to open his window, half-closed by the dense green of lilacs, and quietly lay down in bed. If the little sister has not yet slept in her rocking chair in next room, I approached her, and we quietly caressed each other and played, trying not to wake the grouchy old nanny.
And in the morning, at a little light, when everyone was still sleeping in the house, I was making a dewy trail in the thick, tall grass of the garden, climbed over the fence and walked to the pond, where the same tomboyish comrades were waiting for me with fishing rods, or to the mill, where the sleepy the miller had just pushed back the locks and the water, shuddering sensitively at mirror surface, threw herself into the "tray" and cheerfully set to day work.
The big mill wheels, awakened by noisy jolts of water, also trembled, somehow reluctantly moved, as if they were too lazy to wake up, but after a few seconds they were already spinning, splashing foam and bathing in cold streams. Behind them, thick shafts moved slowly and solidly, gears began to rumble inside the mill, millstones rustled, and white flour dust rose in clouds from the cracks of the old, old mill building.
Then I moved on. I liked to meet the awakening of nature; I was glad when I managed to frighten off a sleeping lark, or drive a cowardly hare out of the furrow. Drops of dew fell from the tops of the shaker, from the heads of meadow flowers, as I made my way through the fields to the country grove. The trees greeted me with a whisper of lazy slumber.
I managed to make a long detour, and yet in the city every now and then I met sleepy figures opening the shutters of houses. But now the sun has already risen over the mountain, a noisy bell is heard from behind the ponds, calling the schoolboys, and hunger calls me home for morning tea.
In general, everyone called me a vagabond, a worthless boy, and I was so often reproached for various bad inclinations that I finally became imbued with this conviction myself. My father also believed this and sometimes made attempts to educate me, but these attempts always ended in failure.
At the sight of a stern and gloomy face, on which lay the stern stamp of incurable grief, I became shy and closed in on myself. I stood in front of him, shifting, fiddling with my panties, and looked around. At times something seemed to rise in my chest, I wanted him to embrace me, put me on his knees and caress me. Then I would cling to his chest, and perhaps we would cry together - a child and a stern man - about our common loss. But he looked at me with hazy eyes, as if over my head, and I shrank all under this incomprehensible look for me.
- Do you remember your mother?
Did I remember her? Oh yes, I remember her! I remembered how I used to wake up at night, I searched in the dark for her tender hands and pressed tightly against them, covering them with kisses. I remembered her when she sat ill in front of the open window and looked sadly at the wonderful spring picture, saying goodbye to her in Last year own life.
Oh yes, I remembered her!.. When she, all covered with flowers, young and beautiful, lay with the seal of death on her pale face, I, like an animal, hid in a corner and looked at her with burning eyes, before which for the first time the whole horror of the mystery was revealed about life and death.
And now often, at the dead of midnight, I woke up, full of love, which was crowded in my chest, overflowing my child's heart, woke up with a smile of happiness. And again, as before, it seemed to me that she was with me, that I would now meet her loving, sweet caress.
Yes, I remembered her! .. But when asked by a tall, gloomy man in whom I desired, but could not feel my own soul, I cringed even more and quietly pulled my hand out of his hand.
And he turned away from me with annoyance and pain. He felt like he didn't care about me slightest influence that there is a wall between us. He loved her too much when she was alive, not noticing me because of his happiness. Now I was shielded from him by heavy grief.
And little by little the abyss that separated us became wider and deeper. He became more and more convinced that I was a bad, spoiled boy, with a callous, selfish heart, and the consciousness that he must, but cannot take care of me, must love me, but does not find this love in his heart, still increased his dislike. And I felt it. Sometimes, hiding in the bushes, I watched him; I saw how he walked along the alleys, faster and faster, and groaned muffledly from unbearable mental anguish. Then my heart lit up with pity and sympathy. Once, when, squeezing his head in his hands, he sat down on a bench and sobbed, I could not bear it and ran out of the bushes onto the path, obeying a vague impulse that pushed me towards this man. But, hearing my footsteps, he looked sternly at me and besieged me with a cold question:
- What do you need?
I didn't need anything. I quickly turned away, ashamed of my impulse, afraid that my father would not read it in my embarrassed face. Running away into the thicket of the garden, I fell on my face into the grass and wept bitterly from annoyance and pain.
Since the age of six I have experienced the horror of loneliness.
Sister Sonya was four years old. I loved her passionately, and she repaid me with the same love; but the established view of me, as of an inveterate little robber, erected a high wall between us as well. Every time I started playing with her, noisily and briskly in her own way, the old nanny, always sleepy and always tearing, with her eyes closed, chicken feathers for pillows, immediately woke up, quickly grabbed my Sonya and carried away to her, throwing at me angry looks; in such cases, she always reminded me of a disheveled mother hen, I compared myself with a predatory kite, and Sonya with a small chicken. I became very sad and annoyed. No wonder, therefore, that I soon stopped all attempts to entertain Sonya with my criminal games, and after a while it became crowded in the house and in the garden, where I did not meet greetings and affection in anyone. I started wandering. My whole being trembled then with some strange foreboding of life. It seemed to me that somewhere out there, in that great and unknown light, behind the old fence of the garden, I would find something; it seemed that I had to do something and could do something, but I just did not know what it was. I instinctively began to run from the nurse with her feathers, and from the familiar lazy whisper of apple trees in our little garden, and from the stupid clatter of knives chopping cutlets in the kitchen. Since then, the names of a street boy and a tramp have been added to my other unflattering epithets, but I did not pay attention to this. I got used to the reproaches and endured them, as I endured the sudden rain or the heat of the sun. I sullenly listened to the remarks and acted in my own way. Staggering through the streets, I peered with childishly curious eyes at the unpretentious life of the town with its shacks, listened to the rumble of wires on the highway, trying to catch what news were rushing along them from distant big cities, or in the rustle of ears of corn, or in the whisper of the wind on the high Haidamak graves. More than once my eyes opened wide, more than once I stopped with a painful fright before the pictures of life. Image after image, impression after impression fell on the soul like bright spots; I learned and saw a lot of things that children much older than me have not seen.
When all the corners of the city became known to me down to the last dirty nooks and crannies, then I began to look at the chapel that could be seen in the distance, on the mountain. At first, like a shy animal, I approached her with different sides, still not daring to climb the mountain, which was notorious. But, as I got to know the area, only quiet graves and ruined crosses appeared before me. There were no signs of any habitation or human presence anywhere. Everything was somehow humble, quiet, abandoned, empty. Only the chapel itself looked, frowning, through empty windows, as if thinking some sad thought. I wanted to examine it all, look inside to make sure that there was nothing there but dust. But since it would be both frightening and inconvenient for one to undertake such an excursion, I gathered on the streets of the city a small detachment of three tomboys, attracted by the promise of rolls and apples from our garden.

3. I get a new acquaintance

We went on an excursion after lunch and, approaching the mountain, began to climb the clay landslides, dug up by the shovels of the inhabitants and spring streams. The landslides exposed the slopes of the mountain, and in some places white, decayed bones protruded out of the clay. In one place a wooden coffin was exposed, in another a human skull bared its teeth.
Finally, helping each other, we hurriedly climbed the mountain from the last cliff. The sun was beginning to set. Oblique rays gently gilded the green ant of the old cemetery, played on the rickety crosses, shimmered in the surviving windows of the chapel. It was quiet, calm and deep peace abandoned cemetery. Here we have not seen any skulls, no bones, no coffins. The green, fresh grass, with an even canopy, lovingly hid the horror and ugliness of death.

Vladimir Korolenko

Children of the Underground

1. Ruins

My mother died when I was six years old. Father, completely surrendering to his grief, seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister Sonya and took care of her in his own way, because she had the features of a mother. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one hampered my freedom.

The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Prince-Gorodok. It belonged to a seedy but proud Polish family and resembled any of the small towns of the Southwestern Territory.

If you drive up to the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself is spread out below, over sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by the traditional "outpost". A sleepy invalid lazily raises the barrier - and you are in the city, although, perhaps, you do not notice it right away. "Grey fences, wastelands with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with blind, gone into the ground huts. Further on, a wide square gapes in different places with dark gates of Jewish "visiting houses"; state institutions are depressing with their white walls and barracks-even lines. A wooden bridge, thrown across a narrow stream, groans, shuddering under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man.After the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, shops, stalls and overhanging kalachniks.Stink, dirt, heaps of children crawling in the street dust.But here's another minute - and you are already outside the city. Birches whisper softly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind stirs the grain in the fields and rings a dull, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph.

The river, over which the said bridge was thrown, flowed out of the pond and flowed into another. Thus, from the north and south, the town was fenced off by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds grew shallow from year to year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds rippled like the sea in the vast marshes. In the middle of one of the ponds is an island. On the island - an old, dilapidated castle.

I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. It was said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “An old castle stands on human bones,” the old-timers used to say, and my childish frightened imagination drew thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting the island with its bony hands with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more terrible, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we approached it closer, it often inspired panic attacks in us - the black cavities of the long-beaten out windows; in the empty halls there was a mysterious rustle: pebbles and plaster, breaking away, fell down, awakening a booming echo, and we ran without looking back, and for a long time there was a knock, and clatter, and laughter behind us.

And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplar trees swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spread from the old castle and reigned over the whole city.

On the western side, on the mountain, among decayed crosses and collapsed graves, stood a long-abandoned chapel. Its roof had caved in in some places, the walls were crumbling, and instead of a high-pitched copper bell, the owls started their ominous songs in it at night.

There was a time when the old castle served as a free haven for every poor person without the slightest restriction. Everything that did not find a place in the city, which for one reason or another lost the opportunity to pay at least a miserable penny for shelter and a corner at night and in bad weather - all this stretched to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious little heads, paying for hospitality only at the risk of being buried under piles of old rubbish. "Lives in a castle" - this phrase has become an expression of extreme poverty. The old castle hospitably received and covered both the temporarily impoverished scribe, and the orphan old women, and the homeless vagrants. All these poor people tormented the insides of a decrepit building, breaking off ceilings and floors, stoked stoves, cooked something and ate something - generally somehow supported their existence.

However, the days came when among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, strife broke out. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the count's minor servants, secured for himself something like the title of manager and began to reform. For several days there was such a noise on the island, such cries were heard that at times it seemed as if the Turks had escaped from underground dungeons. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the "good Christians" from obscure personalities. When order was finally restored to the island, it turned out that Janusz left in the castle mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count's family. They were all some kind of old men in shabby frock coats and chamarkas, with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, noisy and ugly, but in complete impoverishment they retained their bonnets and coats. All of them made up a closely knit aristocratic circle, which received the right of recognized begging. On weekdays, these old men and women went with a prayer on their lips to the homes of more prosperous townspeople, spreading gossip, complaining about their fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they lined up in long rows near churches and majestically accepted handouts in the name of "Pan Jesus" and "Ladies of the Mother of God".

Attracted by the noise and cries that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made their way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched as Janusz, at the head of a whole army of red-nosed old men and ugly old women, drove the last tenants to be expelled from the castle . Evening came. The cloud hanging over the high tops of the poplars was already pouring rain. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapping themselves in utterly torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, poked their way around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to slip unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the old witches, screaming and cursing, chased them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands.

And the unfortunate dark personalities involuntarily, drooping, hid behind the bridge, leaving the island forever, and one after another drowned in the slushy twilight of the rapidly descending evening.

Since that memorable evening, both Janusz and the old castle, from which some kind of vague grandeur had previously wafted over me, lost all their attractiveness in my eyes. I used to like to come to the island and, at least from a distance, admire its gray walls and old moss-covered roof. When in the morning dawn various figures crawled out of it, yawning, coughing and crossing themselves in the sun, I looked at them with some respect, as at beings clothed with the same mystery that shrouded the whole castle. They sleep there at night, they hear everything that happens there when the moon peeps through the broken windows into the huge halls or when the wind rushes into them in a storm.

I liked to listen when Janusz would sit down under the poplars and, with the talkativeness of a seventy-year-old man, begin to talk about the glorious past of the dead building.

Current page: 1 (total book has 5 pages)

Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

Children of the Underground

1. Ruins

My mother died when I was six years old. Father, completely surrendering to his grief, seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Sometimes he caressed my little sister Sonya and took care of her in his own way, because she had the features of a mother. I grew up like a wild tree in a field - no one surrounded me with special care, but no one hampered my freedom.

The place where we lived was called Knyazhye-Veno, or, more simply, Prince-Gorodok. It belonged to a seedy but proud Polish family and resembled any of the small towns of the Southwestern Territory.

If you drive up to the town from the east, the first thing that catches your eye is the prison, the best architectural decoration of the city. The city itself is spread out below, over sleepy, moldy ponds, and you have to go down to it along a sloping highway, blocked by the traditional "outpost". A sleepy invalid lazily raises the barrier - and you are in the city, although, perhaps, you do not notice it right away. “Grey fences, wastelands with heaps of all sorts of rubbish are gradually interspersed with blind-eyed huts that have sunk into the ground. Further on, a wide square gapes in different places with the dark gates of Jewish "visiting houses"; state institutions are despondent with their white walls and barracks-smooth lines. The wooden bridge thrown over a narrow stream grunts, shuddering under the wheels, and staggers like a decrepit old man. Behind the bridge stretched a Jewish street with shops, shops, small shops and with sheds of kalochniks. Stink, dirt, heaps of kids crawling in the street dust. But here's another minute - and you're out of town. Birch trees whisper softly over the graves of the cemetery, and the wind stirs the grain in the fields and rings a dull, endless song in the wires of the roadside telegraph.

The river, over which the said bridge was thrown, flowed out of the pond and flowed into another. Thus, from the north and south, the town was fenced off by wide expanses of water and swamps. The ponds grew shallow from year to year, overgrown with greenery, and tall, dense reeds rippled like the sea in the vast marshes. In the middle of one of the ponds is an island. There is an old, dilapidated castle on the island.

I remember with what fear I always looked at this majestic decrepit building. There were legends and stories about him, one more terrible than the other. It was said that the island was built artificially, by the hands of captured Turks. “An old castle stands on human bones,” the old-timers used to say, and my childish frightened imagination drew thousands of Turkish skeletons underground, supporting the island with its bony hands with its tall pyramidal poplars and the old castle. This, of course, made the castle seem even more frightening, and even on clear days, when, encouraged by the light and the loud voices of birds, we would come closer to it, it often inspired fits of panic horror in us - the black cavities of the long-beaten out windows; in the empty halls there was a mysterious rustle: pebbles and plaster, breaking away, fell down, awakening a booming echo, and we ran without looking back, and for a long time there was a knock, and clatter, and laughter behind us.

And on stormy autumn nights, when the giant poplar trees swayed and hummed from the wind blowing from behind the ponds, horror spread from the old castle and reigned over the whole city.

On the western side, on the mountain, among decayed crosses and collapsed graves, stood a long-abandoned chapel. Its roof had caved in in some places, the walls were crumbling, and instead of a high-pitched copper bell, the owls started their ominous songs in it at night.

There was a time when the old castle served as a free haven for every poor person without the slightest restriction. Everything that did not find a place for itself in the city, which for one reason or another lost the opportunity to pay even a miserable penny for shelter and a corner at night and in bad weather - all this stretched to the island and there, among the ruins, bowed their victorious little heads, paying for hospitality only at the risk of being buried under piles of old rubbish. "Lives in a castle" - this phrase has become an expression of extreme poverty. The old castle hospitably received and covered both the temporarily impoverished scribe, and the orphan old women, and the homeless vagrants. All these poor people tormented the insides of a decrepit building, breaking off ceilings and floors, stoked stoves, cooked something and ate something - generally somehow supported their existence.

However, the days came when among this society, huddled under the roof of gray ruins, strife broke out. Then old Janusz, who had once been one of the count's minor servants, secured for himself something like the title of manager and began to reform. For several days there was such a noise on the island, such cries were heard that at times it seemed that the Turks had escaped from the underground dungeons. It was Janusz who sorted the population of the ruins, separating the "good Christians" from obscure personalities. When order was finally restored to the island, it turned out that Janusz left in the castle mainly former servants or descendants of servants of the count's family. They were all some kind of old men in shabby frock coats and chamarkas, with huge blue noses and gnarled sticks, old women, noisy and ugly, but in complete impoverishment they retained their bonnets and coats. All of them made up a closely knit aristocratic circle, which received the right of recognized begging. On weekdays, these old men and women went with a prayer on their lips to the homes of more prosperous townspeople, spreading gossip, complaining about their fate, shedding tears and begging, and on Sundays they lined up in long rows near churches and majestically accepted handouts in the name of "Pan Jesus" and "Ladies of the Mother of God".

Attracted by the noise and cries that rushed from the island during this revolution, I and several of my comrades made their way there and, hiding behind the thick trunks of poplars, watched as Janusz, at the head of a whole army of red-nosed old men and ugly old women, drove the last tenants to be expelled from the castle . Evening came. The cloud hanging over the high tops of the poplars was already pouring rain. Some unfortunate dark personalities, wrapping themselves in utterly torn rags, frightened, pitiful and embarrassed, poked their way around the island, like moles driven out of their holes by boys, trying again to slip unnoticed into one of the openings of the castle. But Janusz and the old witches, screaming and cursing, chased them from everywhere, threatening them with pokers and sticks, and a silent watchman stood aside, also with a heavy club in his hands.

And the unfortunate dark personalities involuntarily, drooping, hid behind the bridge, leaving the island forever, and one after another drowned in the slushy twilight of the rapidly descending evening.

Since that memorable evening, both Janusz and the old castle, from which some kind of vague grandeur had previously wafted over me, lost all their attractiveness in my eyes. I used to like to come to the island and, at least from a distance, admire its gray walls and old moss-covered roof. When in the morning dawn various figures crawled out of it, yawning, coughing and crossing themselves in the sun, I looked at them with some respect, as at beings clothed with the same mystery that shrouded the whole castle. They sleep there at night, they hear everything that happens there when the moon peeps through the broken windows into the huge halls or when the wind rushes into them in a storm.

I liked to listen when Janusz would sit down under the poplars and, with the talkativeness of a seventy-year-old man, begin to talk about the glorious past of the dead building.

But from that evening both the castle and Janusz appeared before me in a new light. Meeting me the next day near the island, Janusz began to invite me to his place, assuring me with a satisfied look that now the “son of such respectable parents” can safely visit the castle, as he will find quite decent society in it. He even led me by the hand to the castle itself, but then, with tears, I tore my hand from him and started to run. The castle became disgusting to me. The windows on the top floor were boarded up, and the bottom was in the possession of hoods and salopes. The old women crawled out of there in such an unattractive form, flattering me so cloyingly, cursing among themselves so loudly. But the main thing is that I could not forget the cold cruelty with which the triumphant residents of the castle drove their unfortunate cohabitants, and at the memory of dark personalities left homeless, my heart sank.

Several nights after the described upheaval on the island, the city spent very restless: dogs barked, doors of houses creaked, and the townsfolk, every now and then going out into the street, banged on the fences with sticks, letting someone know that they were on their guard. The city knew that people were wandering along its streets in the rainy darkness of a rainy night, hungry and cold, shivering and wet; realizing that cruel feelings must be born in the hearts of these people, the city became alert and sent its threats towards these feelings. And the night, as if on purpose, descended to the ground in the midst of a cold downpour and left, leaving low running clouds above the ground. And the wind raged in the midst of bad weather, shaking the tops of the trees, banging the shutters and singing to me in my bed about dozens of people deprived of warmth and shelter.

But then spring finally triumphed over the last gusts of winter, the sun dried up the earth, and at the same time the homeless wanderers subsided somewhere. The barking of dogs subsided at night, the townsfolk stopped knocking on the fences, and the life of the city, sleepy and monotonous, went on its own track.

Only the unfortunate exiles did not find their own track even now in the city. True, they did not loiter in the streets at night; they said that they found shelter somewhere on the mountain, near the chapel, but how they managed to settle down there, no one could say for sure. Everyone saw only that from the other side, from the mountains and ravines surrounding the chapel, the most incredible and suspicious figures descended into the city in the mornings, which disappeared in the same direction at dusk. With their appearance, they disturbed the quiet and dormant course of city life, standing out against a gray background with gloomy spots. The townsfolk glanced at them with hostile anxiety. These figures did not at all resemble the aristocratic beggars from the castle - the city did not recognize them, and their relations with the city were of a purely militant nature: they preferred to scold the layman than to flatter him, to take themselves than to beg. Moreover, as is often the case, among this ragged and ignorant crowd of unfortunates there were people who, in intelligence and talents, could do honor to the most chosen society of the castle, but did not get along in it and preferred the democratic society of the chapel.

In addition to these people who stood out from the crowd, a dark mass of miserable ragamuffins huddled around the chapel, whose appearance in the bazaar always caused great alarm among the merchants, who hastened to cover their goods with their hands, just as hens cover chickens when a kite appears in the sky. There were rumors that these poor people, completely deprived of any means of life since the expulsion from the castle, made up a friendly community and were engaged, among other things, in petty theft in the city and its environs.

The organizer and leader of this community of unfortunate people was Pan Tyburtsy Drab, the most remarkable personality of all those who did not get along in the old castle.

The origin of Drab was shrouded in the most mysterious obscurity. Some attributed to him an aristocratic name, which he covered with disgrace and therefore was forced to hide. But Pan Tyburtsiy's appearance had nothing aristocratic about it. He was tall, his large features were coarsely expressive. Short, slightly reddish hair stuck out; a low forehead, a somewhat protruding lower jaw, and a strong mobility of the face resembled something of a monkey; but the eyes that flashed from under the overhanging brows looked stubbornly and gloomily, and sharp insight, energy and intelligence shone in them, along with slyness. While a whole series of grimaces changed on his face, these eyes always kept the same expression, which is why it always happened to me somehow unconsciously eerie to look at the antics of this strange man. There seemed to be a deep, permanent sadness flowing underneath him.

Pan Tyburtsy's hands were rough and covered with calluses, his big feet walked like a man's. In view of this, most of the inhabitants did not recognize his aristocratic origin. But then how to explain his amazing learning, which was obvious to everyone? There was not a tavern in the whole city in which Pan Tyburtsy, in order to instruct the crests who had gathered on the market days, did not utter, standing on a barrel, whole speeches from Cicero, whole chapters from Xenophon. Khokhols, generally endowed by nature with a rich imagination, were able to somehow put their own meaning into these animated, albeit incomprehensible speeches ... And when, hitting his chest and sparkling with his eyes, he addressed them with the words: “Patres conscripti”, - they too frowned and said to each other:

- Oh, the enemy's son, how to bark!

When then Pan Tyburtius, raising his eyes to the ceiling, began to recite the longest Latin texts, the mustachioed listeners watched him with timid and pitiful sympathy. It seemed to them then that the soul of Tyburtius was hovering somewhere in an unknown country where they did not speak Christian, and that she was experiencing some kind of woeful adventures there. His voice sounded in such muffled, otherworldly peals that the listeners sitting in the corners and the most weakened from the vodka lowered their heads, hung their long "chuprin" and began to sob.

- Oh, mother, she is plaintive, give him an encore! And tears dripped from her eyes and ran down her long mustaches.

And when the speaker, suddenly jumping off the barrel, burst into merry laughter, the gloomy faces of the crests suddenly cleared up and their hands reached for the pockets of their wide trousers for coppers. Delighted by the happy ending of the tragic adventures of Pan Tyburtsy, the Khokhols gave him vodka to drink, hugged him, and coppers fell into his cap, ringing.

In view of such amazing learning, a new legend arose that Pan Tyburtsy was once a courtyard boy of some count, who sent him, along with his son, to the school of the Jesuit fathers, in fact, to clean the boots of the young panich. It turned out, however, that while the young count was idle, his lackey intercepted all the wisdom that was assigned to the barchuk's head.

No one also knew where Pan Tyburtsiy's children came from, and meanwhile the fact was obvious, even two facts: a boy of about seven, but tall and developed beyond his years, and a little three-year-old girl. Pan Tyburtsy brought the boy with him from the first days, as he himself appeared. As for the girl, he was absent for several months before she appeared in his arms.

A boy named Valek, tall, thin, with black hair, sometimes wandered sullenly around the city without much to do, his hands in his pockets and throwing glances from side to side that embarrassed the hearts of the kalachnitsa. The girl was seen only once or twice in the arms of Pan Tyburtsy, and then she disappeared somewhere, and no one knew where she was.

There was talk of some kind of dungeons on the mountain near the chapel, and since such dungeons are not uncommon in those parts, everyone believed these rumors, especially since all these people lived somewhere. And they usually disappeared in the evening in the direction of the chapel. There, with his sleepy gait, a half-mad old beggar hobbled, who was nicknamed the "professor", Pan Tyburtsy strode resolutely and quickly. Other dark personalities went there in the evening, drowning in twilight, and there was no brave person who would dare to follow them along the clay cliffs. The mountain, riddled with graves, was notorious. In the old cemetery, on damp autumn nights, blue lights lit up, and in the chapel the owls screamed so piercingly and loudly that even the fearless blacksmith's heart sank from the cries of the damned bird.

2. Me and my father

“Bad, young man, bad!” - old Janusz from the castle often told me, meeting me on the streets of the city among the listeners of Pan Tyburtsy.

And the old man shook his gray beard at the same time.

- It's bad, young man - you are in bad company! .. It's a pity, it's a pity for the son of respectable parents.

Indeed, ever since my mother died and my father's stern face grew even more sullen, I have very rarely been seen at home. On late summer evenings, I would creep through the garden, like a young wolf cub, avoiding meeting with his father, using special devices to open his window, half-closed by the dense green of lilacs, and quietly lie down in bed. If the little sister was still awake in her rocking chair in the next room, I went up to her, and we softly caressed each other and played, trying not to wake the grouchy old nanny.

And in the morning, at a little light, when everyone was still sleeping in the house, I was making a dewy trail in the thick, tall grass of the garden, climbed over the fence and walked to the pond, where the same tomboyish comrades were waiting for me with fishing rods, or to the mill, where the sleepy the miller had just pushed back the locks and the water, trembling sensitively on the mirror surface, rushed into the "tray" and cheerfully set to work during the day.

The big mill wheels, awakened by noisy jolts of water, also trembled, somehow reluctantly moved, as if they were too lazy to wake up, but after a few seconds they were already spinning, splashing foam and bathing in cold streams. Behind them, thick shafts moved slowly and solidly, gears began to rumble inside the mill, millstones rustled, and white flour dust rose in clouds from the cracks of the old, old mill building.

Then I moved on. I liked to meet the awakening of nature; I was glad when I managed to frighten off a sleeping lark, or drive a cowardly hare out of the furrow. Drops of dew fell from the tops of the shaker, from the heads of meadow flowers, as I made my way through the fields to the country grove. The trees greeted me with a whisper of lazy slumber.

I managed to make a long detour, and yet in the city every now and then I met sleepy figures opening the shutters of houses. But now the sun has already risen over the mountain, a noisy bell is heard from behind the ponds, calling the schoolboys, and hunger calls me home for morning tea.

In general, everyone called me a vagabond, a worthless boy, and I was so often reproached for various bad inclinations that I finally became imbued with this conviction myself. My father also believed this and sometimes made attempts to educate me, but these attempts always ended in failure.

At the sight of a stern and gloomy face, on which lay the stern stamp of incurable grief, I became shy and closed in on myself. I stood in front of him, shifting, fiddling with my panties, and looked around. At times something seemed to rise in my chest, I wanted him to embrace me, put me on his knees and caress me. Then I would cling to his chest, and perhaps we would cry together - a child and a stern man - about our common loss. But he looked at me with hazy eyes, as if over my head, and I shrank all under this incomprehensible look for me.

- Do you remember your mother?

Did I remember her? Oh yes, I remember her! I remembered how I used to wake up at night, I searched in the dark for her tender hands and pressed tightly against them, covering them with kisses. I remembered her when she sat sick in front of the open window and looked sadly at the wonderful spring picture, saying goodbye to her in the last year of her life.

Oh yes, I remembered her!.. When she, all covered with flowers, young and beautiful, lay with the seal of death on her pale face, I, like an animal, hid in a corner and looked at her with burning eyes, before which for the first time the whole horror of the mystery was revealed about life and death.

And now often, at the dead of midnight, I woke up, full of love, which was crowded in my chest, overflowing my child's heart, woke up with a smile of happiness. And again, as before, it seemed to me that she was with me, that I would now meet her loving, sweet caress.

Yes, I remembered her! .. But when asked by a tall, gloomy man in whom I desired, but could not feel my own soul, I cringed even more and quietly pulled my hand out of his hand.

And he turned away from me with annoyance and pain. He felt that he did not have the slightest influence on me, that there was some kind of wall between us. He loved her too much when she was alive, not noticing me because of his happiness. Now I was shielded from him by heavy grief.

And little by little the abyss that separated us became wider and deeper. He became more and more convinced that I was a bad, spoiled boy, with a callous, egotistical heart, and the consciousness that he must, but cannot take care of me, must love me, but does not find this love in his heart, still increased his dislike. And I felt it. Sometimes, hiding in the bushes, I watched him; I saw how he walked along the alleys, faster and faster, and groaned muffledly from unbearable mental anguish. Then my heart lit up with pity and sympathy. Once, when, squeezing his head in his hands, he sat down on a bench and sobbed, I could not bear it and ran out of the bushes onto the path, obeying a vague impulse that pushed me towards this man. But, hearing my footsteps, he looked sternly at me and besieged me with a cold question:

- What do you need?

I didn't need anything. I quickly turned away, ashamed of my impulse, afraid that my father would not read it in my embarrassed face. Running away into the thicket of the garden, I fell on my face into the grass and wept bitterly from annoyance and pain.

Since the age of six I have experienced the horror of loneliness.

Sister Sonya was four years old. I loved her passionately, and she repaid me with the same love; but the established view of me, as of an inveterate little robber, erected a high wall between us as well. Every time I started playing with her, noisily and briskly in her own way, the old nanny, always sleepy and always tearing, with her eyes closed, chicken feathers for pillows, immediately woke up, quickly grabbed my Sonya and carried away to her, throwing at me angry looks; in such cases, she always reminded me of a disheveled mother hen, I compared myself with a predatory kite, and Sonya with a small chicken. I became very sad and annoyed. No wonder, therefore, that I soon stopped all attempts to entertain Sonya with my criminal games, and after a while it became crowded in the house and in the garden, where I did not meet greetings and affection in anyone. I started wandering. My whole being trembled then with some strange foreboding of life. It seemed to me that somewhere out there, in that great and unknown light, behind the old fence of the garden, I would find something; it seemed that I had to do something and could do something, but I just did not know what it was. I instinctively began to run from the nurse with her feathers, and from the familiar lazy whisper of apple trees in our little garden, and from the stupid clatter of knives chopping cutlets in the kitchen. Since then, the names of a street boy and a tramp have been added to my other unflattering epithets, but I did not pay attention to this. I got used to the reproaches and endured them, as I endured the sudden rain or the heat of the sun. I sullenly listened to the remarks and acted in my own way. Staggering through the streets, I peered with childishly curious eyes at the unpretentious life of the town with its shacks, listened to the rumble of wires on the highway, trying to catch what news was rushing along them from distant big cities, or into the rustle of ears of corn, or into the whisper of the wind on the high graves. More than once my eyes opened wide, more than once I stopped with a painful fright before the pictures of life. Image after image, impression after impression fell on the soul like bright spots; I learned and saw a lot of things that children much older than me have not seen.

When all the corners of the city became known to me down to the last dirty nooks and crannies, then I began to look at the chapel that could be seen in the distance, on the mountain. At first, like a timid animal, I approached her from different sides, still not daring to climb the mountain, which was notorious. But, as I got to know the area, only quiet graves and ruined crosses appeared before me. There were no signs of any habitation or human presence anywhere. Everything was somehow humble, quiet, abandoned, empty. Only the chapel itself looked, frowning, through empty windows, as if thinking some sad thought. I wanted to examine it all, look inside to make sure that there was nothing there but dust. But since it would be both frightening and inconvenient for one to undertake such an excursion, I gathered on the streets of the city a small detachment of three tomboys, attracted by the promise of rolls and apples from our garden.

Composition "Children of the Underground" ( summary we will consider it in this article) is great because, although it is teen prose, but it gives a lot to an adult reader. If a child flips through it, then she teaches him a certain canon of human behavior: one must not betray friends, one must remain firm and true to one's convictions. Both large and small readers of "Children of the Underground" are taught to be humane and not turn away from the grief of others, despite social prejudices.

V. G. Korolenko "Children of the Underground" (a brief summary of this work) is in a hurry to appear before us in all its glory.

Chapter 1. Castle and chapel

It takes place in the small town of Knyazhie-Veno. This place was not ordinary, it was surrounded by ponds. In one of them there was an island, and on that island there was an abandoned castle, which terribly looked at the city with the emptiness of the eye sockets of its windows. The ancient building was still at least somewhere, and the poor lived in it. But once in the circles of poverty there was a “class stratification”: the poor of noble birth or those who used to serve the counts expelled those who did not serve in high circles, and no “blue blood” was noticed in their veins. Among the latter were the heroes of the second plan of the story: Tyburtsy Drab and his children: Valek (7-year-old boy) and Marusya (3-year-old) girl.

The “exiles” were forced to look for another shelter and found it in a dungeon “among the gray stones” right above the old chapel, which, just like a castle, frightened local residents with their appearance. It is interesting to note that the inhabitants of the town were more afraid of the old buildings than the people inhabiting them. They were wary of the lumpen, but without obvious fear.

Also in the first chapter of the essay “Children of the Underground” (a brief summary, unfortunately, cannot contain all the facts), a lot of space is given to the description of Tyburtsy Drab: his appearance and amazing education, which came from nowhere.

Chapter 2. Vasya and his father

The main character of the story is a boy named Vasya. He became a vagabond and a "street" not out of necessity, but in to some extent with grief: the boy's mother died early, leaving a little girl and son, the father (a judge, a respected person) lost all interest in life after the death of his wife. And if he still paid attention to his daughter, because she looked like a mother and awakened in him some bright memories of his wife, then the boy was left to chance. Vasya, a boy with a fine mental organization, had a hard time breaking up with his father and his cooling towards him. That's probably why he started wandering.

“Children of the Underground” (a summary also sets in a similar mood) is an extremely touching and heartfelt work. Schedro V.G. Korolenko paints the image of an unhappy, but morally healthy and sensitive child. The main thing in this image is that Vasya, figuratively speaking, is a man of two worlds: on the one hand, he is a boy from prosperous family. Since childhood, servants followed him, he never knew what it meant to starve. In other words, he was always accompanied by all the delights of a prosperous life. On the other hand, he is a child of the streets, abandoned by his father without attention and "from the age of six he has already experienced the horror of loneliness." This experience unfolds further narration.

The second chapter of the work "Children of the Underground" (a brief summary, we hope this demonstrates) is devoted to the actual psychological portrait of the protagonist.

Chapter 3. Vasya, Valek, Marusya

When Vasya explored all the hidden corners of the city and wandering as such, he got a little bored, he decided to study terra incognita (lat. unknown land) - an old chapel with a cemetery adjacent to it.

Of course, it was scary to go there alone, so he called a small boyish council. The guys were seduced by the secret hidden in the chapel (of course, there were many legends about it around the city), and the promised apples from the judge's garden.

We will not bore the reader with the details of the campaign and attack of the chapel, which the guys carried out. The main thing is that Vasya got into a dark and terrible building, and his "colleagues" got scared and fled. The hero did not discover the secret, but he met wonderful guys: Valek and Marusya. At the time of the meeting, Valek was already 9, like Vasya, and Marusya was almost 5, but so far 4, like the sister of the judge's son.

From the story of Valek, Vasya learned that the children found in the chapel are part of those "exiles" who were evicted from the castle. Vasya says that he will visit his new acquaintances as often as possible and bring apples from his native garden with him. Valek, as if reluctantly, allows him to do good deeds. Questions about the house, addressed to the little beggar, he bypasses "noble silence."

In the third chapter, relationships are formed that will become the engine further developments story, so it was built by Korolenko. "Children of the Underground" (the summary is meant) goes further.

Chapter 4

And so it went for some time. Vasya came to the guys, they played, the girl was especially happy with his visits, to whom he brought various “goodies”. On one of those days the protagonist discovered that the thinness, unsteady gait of 4-year-old Marusya is not accidental - the girl is sick. But what exactly, it’s not clear, it’s clear that life is being pulled out of it. gray stones”, in other words, a dungeon.

This is the main thing that the fourth chapter is remembered for. And yet Korolenko's prose is beautiful. "Children of the Dungeon": a summary and analysis courageously reached the middle.

Chapter 5

Valek decides and shows Vasya their place of residence with Marusya, i.e. they descend into the dungeon. But something else more important happens: the main character has an internal moral conflict - he learns that Valek and other beggars live by theft. It would seem an obvious truth, but for a 9-year-old boy from a good family, it was not so easy to understand that his closest friend was a thief.

Therefore, even after Valek escorted Vasily to the "inner sanctum", the latter could not play with the children, as before. Their amusements quickly faded away, and Vasya himself returned home early and went to bed, he fell asleep all in tears. The boy cried because some people have to live the way his friends live.

Chapter 6

Tramp children would still not be able to hide their friendship with Vasya from their father for a long time anyway. And the “owner of the house” one day nevertheless found a stranger in his house. Surprisingly, he showed unexpected nobility during an acquaintance for a man who leads a similar lifestyle. True, the host showed hospitality only when he was sure that Vasily had not blabbed to anyone about the shelter. Tybutius had a very high opinion of the boy's father, he said that he was perhaps the only judge who had a heart. But first, Drab checked the boy "for lice" and he passed the test with honor. The chapter ends with a dinner in which the judge's son also takes part.

Tyburtsy Drab is a wonderful character created by the writer V.G. Korolenko. "Children of the Underground" (a summary of the chapters does not convey the charm of the image of a wise homeless man) must be read in full.

Chapter 7

Another autumn has come. The weather turned bad, but meanwhile Vasya needed to get out of the house more often and visit his friends. But it was not only bad weather: Janusz, the leader of the “aristocrats” who settled in the castle (or rather, in its ruins), visited the judge and told him that his son was walking in the dungeon. Vasya's father, of course, did not believe him, but visits to " bad company"became dangerous for the boy. This was all the more bad, since the girl Marusya was completely ill. It was unbearable for Vasily to watch how the girl, to whom he had become attached as a sister, slowly disappears from being.

And yet, he told about the gossip of the old man Janusz Drab. He said that it was very bad, because the judge, although a very good and decent person, would not go against the law.

The dialogue between Vasya and Drab ends the seventh chapter, but not our story. "Children of the Dungeon" (summary contains one more chapter) continues.

Chapter 8

At the climax, of course, Marusa got worse. And Vasya was so kind that he brought his toys to the dungeon, but they did little to help the girl forget about her illness. Then the boy turned to his sister for help. She had a luxurious young lady (doll) - a gift from her deceased mother. At first, Sonya (that was the name of the girl) did not want to give up her pet, but then Vasily still broke his sister's resistance.

To say that Marusa liked the doll is to say nothing. The doll had the effect of "living water" on her. Sister Valek not only got up from the bed, but also began to walk on the floor of the dungeon with her bare feet.

It is a pity that the remission did not last long. After some time, Marusya fell ill again, and Vasya had problems at home because of the doll. Moreover, Sonya was not at all to blame for this, the servants suspected something was wrong, and the father began to worry, because this was a gift from his beloved wife.

As a result, Vasya fell under House arrest. And it ended with a biased interrogation of the judge of his son, but he did not defame his friends with a word and did not reveal the secret of the disappearance of the doll. Father squeezed his shoulder more and more and did everything sicker son, but not out of malice, but only because he could not cope with the rage raging inside. In the midst of a tense action, Tyburtsy Drab began to call Vasya from the street. Then he entered the office and after a short dialogue with the judge, the two of them went to another room, where Drab himself told the whole story to the inconsolable husband. Of course, the "Father of the Family" had previously returned the doll and invited Vasya to say goodbye to Marusya. Tyburtsy said: “Come to us to say goodbye to my girl. Father will let you go. She…she died.” "Children of the Underground" (a summary of the chapters does not convey the whole drama of what is happening) reaches the limit of tragedy at this point.

Basically, this is the end of the story. The following is a description of the farewell ceremony, and in conclusion V.G. Korolenko, on behalf of the boy, says that the tramps soon left the dungeon. Valek and his father disappeared somewhere in the world. The old chapel collapsed, breaking the ceiling of the dungeon, and in the cemetery located nearby, only one grave (it is easy to understand which one) has been preserved in decent condition. Sonya, Vasya and their father very often came to her.