side
and asking myself
why I am like that?
And I don't knowthe answer.
I woke up one morning...
There was a tree outside my window.
It probably had been there
five hundred years or more,
and still had a thousand years
to live.
So many leaves had opened, withered
and fell off in that time...
and so many had still to open and
fall off.
And yet, each leaf, while growing,
lives one life with the tree,
with its roots and branches.
It probably feels them,
it's needed by them.
It means that part of that leaf
will be preserved for years to come...
as it was there in the preceding
years...
The same goes for us, whoever we are...
Since we live,
there must be some sense in it.
This thought made me very happy,
I even cried.
But if you ask me why,
I won't be able to explain it.
Afterwards I flipped through
an old botany text-book
and found out from it
that trees don't live that long.
I felt ashamed at not remembering
anything I had been taught.
My head is like some kind of archive
of past deeds,
figures, epochs, religions.
Nothing is connected.
Like a library consisting throughout
of stray volumes only.
I don't remember botany
but somehow I didn't forget
that in 306 B.C.
Seleucus I
won a victory over some Chandragupta.
You're a very lucky man, Ilya.
Others finish three universities
and still seek more knowledge.
Notyou, such torments are unknown
to you.
You're sighing over the fact
thatyou haven't forgotten everything.
Stolz was only half German,
on his father's side.
His mother was Russian,
from an impoverished noble family.
He belonged to the Orthodox Church,
Russian was his native tongue.
From eightyears he had been sitting
over a map with his father,
checking the badly written accounts
presented by peasants and artisans,
and the father paid him a salary,
just as to an artisan,
in regular German style:
ten rubles a month,
for which he made him sign in a book.
Andrei's mother was suffering.
She was not pleased with this
workmanlike, practical education.
But being a shy person,
she did not argue with her husband.
Ivan Bogdanovich Stolz could not
conceive of any path in life
other than his own.
When he had finished his course of
studies, his father had sent him away.
And so he did the same - after his son
finished studies, he sent him away.
Such was the custom in Germany.
Andrei's mother was dead then and
there was no one to cry over it.
On the day of his departure, only
a group of neighbors had assembled
to gaze at the steward
taking leave of his son.
Ivan Bogdanovich gave his son
150 paper rubles.
Two bags were tied to the saddle.
One contained an oilskin cape
and thick hob-nailed boots -
things he had taken at his father's
insistence.
The other had in it an elegant
dress-coat, a dozen fine shirts
and shoes ordered in Moscow in
remembrance of his mother's teaching.
It will costyou forty rubles
to go to Moscow,
and seventy-five to go from there to
Petersburg. You will have enough money left.
You have had a good education -
all the roads are open before you.
You can go into Government service,
or in for business, or be a writer.
I don't know
which you will choose.
All right.
And if you are not clever enough,
call on Reinhold, he will teach you.
He is my friend,
we came together from Saxony.
He has a house of four stories in
Petersburg. I'll give you his address.
Don't trouble.
I'll go to him when I, too,
have a house of four stories.
Well, that's all.
That's all!
Just think of it,
the puppy hasn't shed a tear!
The old infidel is a nice one too.
He chucked him out like a kitten.
Stop, Andrei!
The saddle-strap is loose,
you might tighten it.
I'll do it when I get to Shamshovka.
I want to be there before dark.
God's speed!
Andrei, darling boy!
Wait, my poor little orphan.
There is no one to bless you.
Let me, at least, give you a blessing.
Andrei, our darling,
our beauty!
I talk to her oftener and more