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Translated from the original: Bujar Hudhri<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The woman was very old, almost in her nineties. And I was quite young at seventeen. Our meeting happened on the left sandy shore of the Dnieper, just opposite the strange hilly panorama of the right bank of the Kiev. It was a sunny summer day in the year one thousand nine hundred and fifty-two. I was playing football with friends on the beach sand. We laughed and shouted as much as we could. Dressed in a long sarafan to the bottom of her legs where they stood out full of large flowers, the old woman was lying down, to hide from the sun, nearby, under a canopy tent and was reading a book. Most likely, our used ball, except when it was inserted into this lightweight tent, which was held by a few thin wooden pegs. But we were some carefree teenagers and that did not bother us at all. And after all, the ball really penetrated the old woman’s fragile shelter! The ball hit the tent so hard that all the rocking building collapsed instantly, almost burying the miserable old woman underneath. I was terrified. I ran up to him, quickly removed the pegs, and pulled the tent aside.<\/p>\n
-Grandma, – I said, helping her to her feet, – you feel me.
“I’m not your grandmother, boy,” she said in a calm but dignified voice, shaking the sand from the sarafan.
-Please, do not call me grandmother. For mutual communication, boy, hence the names. My name is Ana Nikolajevna Voroncova.
I still remember the surprise I got from her pompous style of speaking. None of my acquaintances or relatives would ever say like this: “For mutual communication, boy, there are names\u2026” This old woman was a very strange woman. And besides, there was also a famous name- Voroncova! As an educated boy, of course, I knew that this name belonged to the well-known dynasty of pre-revolutionary Russian aristocrats. I had never heard of such an adjective chosen by ordinary people.
-Feel me, Ana Nikolayevna.
She put her lip to the gas.
“You look like a good boy to me,” he said. – what’s your name?
-Aleksej. Aljosha.
“Beautiful name,” he congratulated me. was her death. Have you read Tolstoy?
Definitely, – I said and added proudly: – I have read all the Russian classics – from Pushkin to Chekhov.
Shake your head.
-Long before the revolution, I was acquainted with many Russian aristocrats, whom Tolstoy made heroes of his novels.
\u2026 Today’s reader, I guess, finds it difficult to understand those mixed feelings I experienced when I heard these words. For I was a true Komsomol *, knowing full well that the Russian aristocrats were sworn enemies of the working people; despised belogordists, traitors to Russia. And this woman, this fragile, charming old woman, smiling, without being frightened, lets me know, me, an unknown boy, that she knew these traitors! And, most likely, he had friendships with them, oppressors of the common people!
The first thought that came to my mind was to interrupt this sudden, so strange, perhaps even dangerous acquaintance and return to my football friends, but an insurmountable curiosity, which I could not resist, anymore raised up and indecisively I asked in a low voice:
-Ana Nikolayevna, the Vorontsovs, it seems to me, were princes, right?
She started laughing.
-No, Aljosha. My father, Nikolaj Aleksandrovi,, was the count.
-\u2026 Ljoshka! – my friends were telling me. -What are you doing there? Will you play or not?
-No! – I answered wholeheartedly.
I was busy rebuilding the dilapidated shelter of my new acquaintance – and what an acquaintance – a Russian countess! – and I did not even want to know about my football friends.
“Leave me alone,” said one of my friends. -He found a girlfriend.
And they began to gass. The woman also put her lip to the gas.
“I’m a little old to be someone’s companion,” she said, and I noticed a slight foreign accent in her pronunciation. -Do you have a girlfriend, Aljosha? Are you in love with him?
Now I lost it completely.Ana Nikolayevna Voroncova
-No, – I said.- I am only seventeen years old. And, to tell you the truth, I have never been in love.
“Congratulations!” He said. – You are too young to understand what true love is. It can be dangerous, strange, unpredictable. When I was your age, I almost fell in love with a man who was forty-eight years older than me. It has been the most horrible meeting in my whole life. Glory to God, which lasted only three hours.
I was feeling that this old woman who talked so much, waited for me to tell me some strange and tragic story. We were already sitting under the rebuilt tent and eating from an apple.
-You know, Ana Nikolayevna, I noticed a certain foreign accent. Was it French?
She smiled.
-Yes of course. French is as native to me as Russian. The man I almost fell in love with also recognized my accent. But my emphasis was different then and yes my answer was different. And the consequences of that answer were terrible! – She paused for a few seconds, then added: – This happened in the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven, in Paris. I was seventeen years old while he was sixty five.
Here is what Ana Nikolayevna Voroncova told me that quiet summer day on the sandy shore of the Dnieper.<\/p>\n
-\u2026 He was very handsome – perhaps the most handsome of the men I had met before him and after him \u2014 tall, regular, broad-shouldered, with a cullufe untouched by ashes. I did not know his age, but he had a somewhat youthful appearance and looked like a middle-aged man. And from the first minute of our acquaintance I realized that he was a very wise, cultured and fascinating man. It was Christmas Eve in Paris. My father, Count Nikolai Alexandrovich Vorontsov was at that time ambassador of Russia to France; and it was no surprise that he and his family were invited to the Christmas celebration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs building. Do you remember Aljosha, how Lev Tolstoy describes in “War and Peace”, Natasha Rostova’s first appearance at the ball, when she was sixteen years old – her fears, her emotions, her premonitions? This is exactly how I imagined myself, as soon as I set foot on the parquet of the ministry, which was located in the magnificent Quai d’Orsay **. He invited me to a dance, then a second, a third\u2026 We danced, we talked, we laughed, we joked – and every minute I felt like I had first met a man who had awakened my vague premonition, but amazing love!
Of course, we were speaking French. I learned that his name was George and that he was a senator in the French parliament. We were resting in the armchair after a crazy waltz spin, when he asked me exactly this question, which you, Aljosha, asked me.
“Anna,” he said, “you have a strange accent.” Are you German? I laughed.-Dutch? Swedish? – he continued with questions.-You did not find it.
-Greek, Polish, Spanish? -No, – I said.- I am Russian.
He turned sharply and with torn eyes looked at me with a strange expression- as haunted and at the same time shocked.- Ruse\u2026 his murmur was barely audible.<\/p>\n
“By the way,” I said, “I do not know your last name, George.” Who are you, the mysterious stranger?
He was silent for a while, he seemed to be thinking, then, as he lowered his voice, he spoke: – I can not tell you my last name, Ana. – Why? – I can not. – But why? – I insisted. , Ana, -said quietly. We quarreled for a few minutes. I insisted. He refused.-Ana, -he said, – do not ask. If I tell you my last name, then you will get up immediately, leave this room, and I will never see you again.
-No! No! – I almost shouted. -Yes, – he said with a sad smile and took my hand.-Believe me.
-I swear! – I cried. -Whatever happens, I will always be your friend.-Do not swear, Ana. Take back your oath, I beg you. With these words, he made a half-turn from me and I barely heard: -I am Georges d’Anthes. Forty years ago I killed Pushkin in a duel\u2026
Then he turned to me. His face was gone. As if he had suddenly aged; I noticed two black circles under the eyes; forehead cut from the wrinkles of suffering; tear-filled eyes\u2026 I looked at him in all disbelief and horror. Was this man, sitting next to me, the killer of the genius of Russian literature? I instantly felt a pain in my heart. Unthinkable! Impossible! This man, in whose arms I was spinning in the careless waltz only twenty minutes ago, this charming man had ruthlessly interrupted the life of the legendary Alexander Pushkin, whose name is known to every Russian, old or young, poor or rich, simple fanatic or high aristocrat\u2026
I pulled my palm from his hand and stood up. Without saying a word, I left the hall, climbed the stairs, crossed the promenade, and leaned against a tree. Tears welled up in my eyes. All poison I felt his right hand, around my waist as we spun in the fast waltz\u2026 That hand that had held the pistol towards Pushkin! Exactly that hand with which he fired the bullet that killed Pushkin! Through the veil of tears, I saw the mortally wounded Pushkin, who was struggling to get up on his elbow and try to shoot the opponent\u2026 And desperately collapsed on the snow after the unfortunate shooting\u2026 And buried after a few days, unable to write even half what he would be capable of\u2026 I cried all sobs\u2026
A few days later I received a letter from Dantes. Do you want to see it, Aljosha? Come to me on Monday for tea and I will show you the letter. And hundreds of rare books and dozens of wonderful pictures\u2026
***
After three days I knocked on the door of her apartment. It was opened by a man in his sixties.
-Are you Aljosha? – he asked.-Yes.-Ana Nikolajevna is in the hospital in a serious condition from pneumonia. Jam and biri. She begged me to give you this letter. And she handed me an envelope. I went to the nearby park, from where the amazing panorama of the Dnieper looked out. Opposite me, on the opposite side lay the sandy shore, where three days earlier I had heard this incredible story, which had happened to a seventeen-year-old in distant Paris seventy-five years ago.
I opened the envelope and pulled out two letters. One yellow, almost a rotten leaf from obsolescence, filled with incomprehensible lines in French. The other, in Russian, was copied with an old twisted old writing. It was the translation of the French text.
Read:
Paris, December 30, 1877
Dear Ana!<\/p>\n
I am not apologizing, because no apology, even the most sincere, can erase that horrible crime, which I committed forty years ago, when my victim, the famous Alexander Pushkin, was thirty-seven, and I twenty-five. Forty years-14,600 days and nights! – I live with this unbearable burden. I can not count the nights when it appeared to me – alive or dead – in my dreams. Over the thirty-seven years of his life he created an extraordinary world of poems, poems, tales and dramas. Prominent composers have written operas based on his works. If he had lived another thirty-seven years, he would have doubled this magnificent world – but he did not do it because I killed him and with him I wiped out my future creativity. I am now sixty-five years old and full of health. I am convinced Anna, that God himself gave me this long life, that I was constantly, day by day, tortured with the horrible awareness that I am the cold-blooded killer of genius.
Goodbye, Ana!
George Dantes<\/p>\n
PS I know that for the good of humanity it would have been right if I had died and not him. But is it possible to stand in front of the barrel of a duel pistol and wait for death and even think for the good of humanity?
Zh. D.
Below his signature, was added the same old-fashioned inscription: The senator and knight of the Legion of Honor, Georges Dante, died in 1895, quietly, in his own house, surrounded by children and grandchildren. He was eighty-three years old.
***
Countess Nikolayevna Voroncova died in July 1952, ten days after our meeting. He was ninety-two years old.<\/p>\n
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