Pushkin Hills Read Online Free PDF

pernickety. Personal effects, personal effects… It strikes me as an unhealthy interest…”
    I felt like a burglar, caught in someone else’s apartment.
    “Well, what kind of a museum,” I said, “is without it – without the unhealthy interest? A healthy interest is reserved strictly for bacon…”
    “Is nature not enough for you? Is it not enough that he wandered around this hillside? Swam in this river? Delighted in these scenic views…”
    Why am I bothering her, I thought.
    “I see,” I said. “Thank you, Vika.”
    Suddenly she bent down, plucked up some weed, pointedly slapped my face with it and let out a short nervous laugh before walking off, gathering her maxiskirt with flounces.
    I joined a group headed for Trigorskoye.
    To my surprise, I liked the estate curators, a husband and wife. Being married, they could afford the luxury of being friendly. Polina Fyodorovna appeared to be bossy, energetic and a little conceited. Kolya looked like a bemused slouch and kept to the background.
    Trigorskoye was in the middle of nowhere and the management rarely came to visit. The exhibition’s layout was beautiful and logical. Pushkin as a youth, charming young ladies in love, an atmosphere of elegant summer romance…
    I walked around the park and then down to the river. It was green with upside-down trees. Delicate clouds floated by.
    I had an urge to take a dip, but a tour bus had pulled up just then.
    I went to the Svyatogorsky Monastery. Old ladies were selling flowers by the gate. I bought a bunch of tulips and walked up to the grave. Tourists were taking photographs by the barrier. Their smiling faces were repugnant. Two sad saps with easels arranged themselves nearby.
    I laid down the flowers at the grave and left. I needed to see the layout of the Uspensky Monastery. An echo rolled through the cool stone alcoves. Pigeons slumbered under the domes. The cathedral was real, substantial and graceful. A cracked bell glimmered from the corner of the central chamber. One touristdrummed noisily on it with a key.
    In the southern chapel I sawthe famous drawing by Bruni.* Also in there glared Pushkin’s white death mask. Two enormous paintings reproducedthe secret removal and funeral. Alexander Turgenev* looked like a matron…
    A group of tourists entered. I went to the exit. I could hear from the back:
    “Cultural history knows no other event as tragic… Tsarist rule carried out by the hand of a high-society rascal…”
    And so I settled in at Mikhail Ivanych’s. He drank without pause. He drank to the point of amazement, paralysis and delirium. Moreover, his delirium expressed itself strictly in obscenities. He swore with the same feeling a dignified older man might have while softly humming a tune – in other words, to himself, without any expectation of approval or protest.
    I had seen him sober twice. On these paradoxical days, Mikhail Ivanych had the TV and radio going simultaneously. He would lie down on the bed in his trousers, pull out a box marked “Fairy Cake” and read out loud postcards received over the course of his life. He read and expounded:
    “ Hello Godfather! … Well, hello, hello, you ovine spermatoid… I’d like to wish you success at work … He’d like to wish me success… Well, fuck your mama in the ear! Always yours, Radik … Always yours, always yours… The hell I need you for?”
    Mikhail Ivanych was not liked in the village. People envied him. I’d drink, too, they thought. I’d drink and how, my friends! I’d drink myself into a motherfuckin’ grave, I would!But I got a household to run… What’s he got? Mikhail Ivanych had no household. Just the two bony dogs that occasionally disappeared for long stretches of time, a scraggy apple tree and a patch of spring onions.
    One rainy evening he and I got talking:
    “Misha, did you love your wife?”
    “Whatsa?! My wife?! As in my woman?! Lizka, you mean?” Mikhail Ivanych was startled.
    “Liza. Yelizaveta