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

Even before he reached the familiar corner he saw a small crowd
gathered around the news-stand. Stacks of overdue papers had just been
dropped off and were being snatched up eagerly. The unfolded pages fluttered
in the wind and were instantly spotted by the rain. Some of the men in the
crowd removed their hats, and a woman sobbed loudly, dabbing a handkerchief
at her eyes and nose.
"So he is dead," Petya thought. He was near enough now to see the wide
black mourning border around the pages and a dark portrait of Lev Tolstoi
with his familiar white beard.
Petya was thirteen and, like all young boys, he was terrified by
thoughts of death. Whenever someone he knew died, Petya's heart would be
gripped by fear and he would recover slowly as after a serious illness. Now,
however, his fear of death was of an entirely different mature. Tolstoi had
not been an acquaintance of theirs. Petya could not conceive of the great
man as living the life of an ordinary mortal. Lev Tolstoi was a famous
writer, just like Pushkin, Gogol, or Turgenev. In the boy's imagination he
was a phenomenon, not a human being. And now he was on his deathbed at
Astapovo Station, and the whole world waited with bated breath for the
announcement of his death. Petya as caught up in the universal anticipation
of an event that seemed incredible and impossible where the immortal known
as "Lev Tolstoi" was concerned. And when the event had become a reality,
Petya was so crushed by the news that he stood motionless, leaning against
the slimy, wet trunk of an acacia.
It was just as mournful and depressing at the gymnasium as in the
streets. The boys were hushed, there was no running up and down the stairs,
and they spoke in whispers, as in church at a requiem mass. During recesses
they sat around in silence on the window-sills. The older boys of the
seventh and eighth forms gathered in small groups on the landings and near
the cloak-room where they furtively rustled the pages of their newspapers,
since it was against the rules to bring them to school. Lessons dragged on
stiffly and quietly with maddening monotony. The inspector or one of the
assistant teachers would look in through the panes of the classroom door,
their faces bearing an identical expression of cold vigilance. Petya felt
that this familiar world of the gymnasium, with the official uniforms and
frock-coats of the teachers, the light-blue stand-up collars of the ushers,
the silent corridors where the tiled floor resounded to the click of the
inspector's heels, the faint odour of incense near the carved oaken doors of
the school chapel on the fourth floor, the occasional jangling of a
telephone in the office downstairs, and the* tinkling of test-tubes in the
physics laboratory-this was a world utterly remote from the great and
terrible thing that, according to Petya, was taking place beyond the walls
of the gymnasium, in the city, in Russia, throughout the world.
What actually was taking place outside?
Petya would look out of the window from time to time, but could see
only the familiar uninteresting scene of the streets leading to the railway.
He saw the wet roof of the law-court, a beautiful structure with a statue of
the blind Themis in front. Beyond was the cupola of the St. Panteleimon
Church, the Alexandrovsky district fire-tower and, in the distance, the
damp, gloomy haze of the workers' quarter with its factory chimneys,
warehouses and a certain leaden darkness on the horizon which reminded him