"Valentin Katayev. The Cottage in the Steppe (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

His Excellency demanded, without offering the caller a seat or getting up
himself.
Vasily Petrovich was taken aback, but when he tried to picture his old
uniform with the rows of holes where Petya had once yanked the buttons off
together with the cloth, he smiled good-naturedly, to his own surprise, and
even waved his hands somewhat humorously.
"I would request you not to act the clown. Don't wave your arms about:
you are in an office, not on the stage."
"My dear sir!" Vasily Petrovich said as the blood rushed to his face.
"Silence!" barked the official in the best departmental manner, as he
crashed his fist down on a pile of papers. "I am a member of the Privy
Council, 'Your Excellency' to you, not 'my dear sir'! Be good enough to
remember where you are and sta-a-and to attention! I summoned you here to
present you with an alternative," he continued, pronouncing the word
"alternative" with evident relish, "to present you with an alternative:
either publicly recant your baleful errors in the presence of the School
Inspector and the students at one of the next lessons, and explain the
demoralizing effects of Count Tolstoi's teachings on Russian society, or
hand in your resignation. Should you refuse to do so, you will be discharged
under Article 3 with no explanation and with all the unfortunate
consequences as far as you are concerned. I will not tolerate
anti-government propaganda in my district. I will mercilessly and
unhesitatingly suppress every instance of it."
"Allow me, Your Excellency!" Vasily Petrovich said in a trembling
voice. "Lev Tolstoi, our famous man of letters, is the pride and glory of
all Russia. I don't understand. What have politics got to do with it?"
"First of all, Count Tolstoi is an apostate, excommunicated from the
Orthodox Church by the Holy Synod. He is a man who dared to encroach upon
the most sacred principles of the Russian Empire and its fundamental laws.
If you cannot grasp this, then government service is not the place for you!"
"I regard that as an insult," Vasily Petrovich said with great
difficulty, as he felt his jaw begin to tremble.
"Get out!" roared the official, rising.
Vasily Petrovich left the office with his knees shaking, a shaking that
he could not control either on the marble staircase, where in two white
niches there were two gypsum busts of the tsar and tsarina in la pearl
tiara, or in the cloak-room, where a massive attendant threw his coat to him
over the barrier, or even later, in the cab, a luxury the Bachei family
indulged in only on very special occasions.
And so here he was, lying on the bed-clothes with his feet tucked up
under him, deeply insulted, powerless, humiliated, and overwhelmed by the
misfortune that had befallen not only him personally but, as he now
realized, his whole family as well. To be discharged under Article 3 with no
grounds stated meant more than the black list and social ostracism, it
signified in all probability an administrative exile, i.e., utter ruin,
poverty, and the end of the family. There was only one way out-a public
recantation.
By nature Vasily Petrovich was neither hero nor martyr. He was an
ordinary kind-hearted, intelligent man, a decent, honest intellectual, the
kind known as an "idealist," and a "pure soul." His university tradition