Then one guy from Vladivostok ended up in Chukotka. For a month. Based on the results of the trip, he shared his thoughts about the concept of “city” and the life values ​​of a city person with TVR. And we simply could not help but retell them to you.

P.S. Dedicated to civilized haters of civilization and indoor hermits.

My agreement to a month-long business trip to Chukotka was from the “Always say “Yes”” series. Everything in Vladivostok was wildly boring, and I decided to go.

This is the capital of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug - Anadyr.

Small 2-engine aircraft landed on the unpaved runway of the Bay of the Cross airport. That's why I woke up. For five days we waited for this difficult flight to get on, and now, after just an hour of flying over 250 kilometers of swampy tundra and the waters of the Gulf of the Cross, we are at our destination - in the distant Chukotka urban village - “Egvekinot” ...

Egvekinot translated from Chukotka means either “sharp stone ground”, or “high stone ground”, or – which is very suitable – “stone bag”.

My eyes lost focus from the unreality of the landscape, which was so unusual for me. Blue, clear sky with rare, small and sharply defined cumulus clouds, and these hills... Ah. They are approximately the same height as the hills of the suburbs of Vladivostok, with the difference that the Egvekinotsky hills are steeper - they have a slope of 40-45 degrees and consist entirely of rock. Yes, yes, from rock, a fraction of approximately 200-400 mm, which can be safely poured into the base of almost any foundation - and it will be great.

The village is located on a small elongated flat lowland on the shore of the Bay of the Holy Cross. On the western side it is surrounded by sharply rising hills. On the eastern side is the bay of the same name, which enters the bay. Behind the bay there are again the same steep rocky hills. And a low, clear sky with clouds. The landscape is simply unearthly. Very contrasting. The place is magical. As one of his contemporaries wrote: “The appearance of Chukotka, permeated with clarity, directness and nakedness, seems to breathe eternity,” very accurately.

These hills reminded me"Gloomy Mountains" from The Lord of the Rings. In their group ridges, they can also resemble heaps of soil dumped out of nowhere by giant dump trucks. . . They seem to be looking at you intently, not in an evil way and very carefully, like kind, ancient and wise, mysterious giants. These hills are definitely full of energetic and semantic content. There is something animated about them. That's for sure.

I had a chance to see the northern lights once. It's like an outright computer-generated special effect for a movie that has burst into reality. Pillars of ghostly green light in the sky... They quickly changed shape and intensity, illuminating the clouds. It was something. Just a touch of space. In general, I was lucky.

It’s difficult to get here, and even more difficult to get out of here. The only means of transport here during the summer navigation period are passing ships - mainly those transporting coal, and year-round aircraft. It is difficult to get tickets for both - in a queue that lasts several days, privileges go to those with children or who have garters and blat. Planes do not take off if the wind is at least 1 meter per second greater than the 16 meters per second allowed for takeoff... And the winds here are nice. There are also sporadic helicopters, and in winter sporadic all-terrain vehicles, delivering food in caravans across the ice to local stores.

Egvekinot - behind the scenes - something like a special border zone- you can’t fly here, and you can’t fly out of here, without having in your hands - attention! – a special super document called “Travel Certificate”. In which, by and large, only the name of the organization, the date of arrival and departure, the seal and signature of the responsible person are indicated. Of course, a very “difficult” document to forge...

By the number and diversity of flora and fauna Chukotka is inferior in its positions to Primorye, but its positions are solid. Polar and brown bears, foxes, snow-white fat polar hares with small ears and large butts, agile and endearing ground squirrels.

And deer. Many, infinitely many deer.

There are no trees at all. But there is a low-growing bush. Great abundance of blueberries and lingonberries. The weather changes as dynamically as in Vladivostok. Fog – clear – drizzle – sleet – haze – sparse clouds.

The population of Egvekinot is approximately 2,500 inhabitants. 70 percent are Russians, or better yet, people of the Caucasian race, the rest are Chukchi, Eskimos, Evenks, and other indigenous peoples, who differ from each other and are not the same thing, as we see it. As I heard later, we also look the same to them. Big eyes.

Egvekinot is a model of a city. Only here everything is smaller and simpler. There is one small port, in comparison with Vladivostok, one small airport with a dirt road, a police station, a Sberbank branch, one small cemetery, one GRES, a church and a small church, grocery and hardware stores with - as often happens in small towns - cute names - “Smile”, “Fairy Tale”, “Galina”, “Svetlana”, “Katyusha”, “Katyusha 2”, “Moon”, “Pole”. There are 4 taxi drivers and, it seems, 2 taverns in the village. In 7-10 minutes Egvekinot can be crossed diagonally on foot.

As we later learned, Egvekinot is considered the Chukotka Sochi, and under Abramovich there were ideas to move the capital of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug here. This, however, did not happen.

This village reminds me of a small village from some RPG, where there is one blacksmith, one tavern, squad, healer, town hall, guild of magicians. Something so cute and small...

In Egvekinot, life is simpler and calmer, everything is closer to the basics of life, to traditions. There is no such thing as “madness and fat”. There are no lookbooks and workshops of yours, no fashionable nightclubs, no eye-raping outdoor advertising and dazzling abundance. Although, the local people there are the same - they wear smartphones, young people show off and dress pretentiously. But there is no such madness in them as here. There is no racism, no hostility towards visitors, no subcultures - even the very idea of ​​​​the emergence of such in Egvekinot is ridiculous. What the hell are skinheads, punks, fascists, antifa or goths, when in winter the frost is minus 30 and there are stormy winds! There such entertainment is a waste of time. It would seem that there are much fewer attributes of modern civilization there - but there is some kind of freedom in this.

In Egvekinot there is no direct visibility to any satellite, Internet is extremely slow and difficult. In bad weather, it’s simply not there (then even ATMs stop working, LOL). There is no cable television with a million channels. Due to intense work and lack of Internet, I didn’t stick to Vkontakte. And soon I caught myself thinking: how much easier it is for me without this unnecessary communication that leads to nothing...

There is no abundance of information that distorts the real picture of the world, or other people’s interpretations of this picture of the world. But there is affability and friendliness, there is real life with real values ​​and greater closeness to nature. After all, man is originally a natural being, right?

And what seems surprising here?

Through such a miniature model of the city, you better understand what a city is in principle. Offhand, I would define a city as a location that, due to geographic, political, religious and other reasons, has become densely populated by people exchanging services and resources.

The city is not at all a place of concentration of absolute evil, not “Babylon,” where people, like gears and a giant mechanism, constantly rotate a huge colossus that sucks out their energy, as many poets sing about it or some schizoterics write about it.

Someone bakes bread, someone builds houses, someone sews T-shirts, someone lights stoves, someone looks after children, someone protects them from enemies, someone arranges fun, someone heals, someone -keeps records, etc. Who is good at what. And they also live nearby - because here is a convenient place to draw natural resources. Here's the city for you. And also, for convenience, they came up with such an incredible and super-liquid thing as money (of course, then such monstrous tricks began to be stirred up with it that “wow”). Will a modern yogi be able to do without housing, heat, light, clothing and those products that were grown and imported to his city? No.

Everything that exists has a reason that can be theoretically understood. Nothing exists “just like that.” “Everything has orders from higher authorities.”

Living inside a big city for a long time, the concept of a city becomes distorted, a person ceases to see this object of the economic system as a whole, simply because the city is large and difficult to take in at a glance.

In the end, Cities occupy much less land area than uninhabited areas. But the system doesn’t hold anyone, if you want, leave...

Despite the fact that this is a remote settlement in a harsh region with an extreme climate, Egvekinot not only did not cause rejection, but was somehow subtly pleasant in its own way. And one local correctly said, expressing this paradox:

“The North is addictive”...

Having met the dawn, he went to the cabin to sleep. At nine o'clock in the morning we woke up to the engines running. We didn’t have breakfast, because in a couple of hours a homemade breakfast, a shower and a trip to the hills were already waiting for us. It is absolutely forbidden to sleep. Otherwise Moscow time will not let me go :) By the end of this day I was like a zombie.

The weather was fabulous and, having collected our things, we went to the bridge. I didn't know that the captain was not on watch. He does more complex things, such as mooring, together with the first mate. The second mate is at the stern at this time, and the third is at the bow.

We moored using a port crane. Mooring ropes were thrown onto the hook, the ship was dragged to the shore and secured on bollards. It’s simply amazing how smoothly and quickly everything happened.

The captain periodically came out to the bridge and demanded information from his assistants. Due to the fact that our girls were hanging out on the bridge, he had to choose softer expressions. And, in order not to interfere with his work at full capacity, we decided to retire :)

Bay of the Cross. The water is blue and clear, not like in Anadyr.

And a policeman and a border guard are already rushing to the ship to check the documents, which, by the way, are kept by the second mate throughout the trip.

Egvekinot is the administrative center of the Iultinsky district. As Wikipedia says, there are two versions of the origin of the name of the village: from the Chukchi Ervykynnot - “sharp hard land” or Ekvykynnot - “high hard land”. The Arctic Circle is just 30 kilometers away, and the village itself is surrounded by high hills.

Almost 3,000 people live in the village. This is a fairly large village by Chukotka standards. I even heard that it is called the Switzerland of Chukotka due to the fact that there is a ski slope here.

In Egvekinot there is a very, very good ethnographic museum, with very interesting guides. We were so stupid that we put off visiting him until the very last days. As a result, due to an urgent departure, we galloped through the exhibition half an hour before departure. I can say one thing: the Egvekinot Museum is many times more interesting than the Anadyr Museum.

The village was founded in 1946. In connection with the discovery of the Iultinskoye deposit of tin, tungsten and molybdenum (one of the largest in the world), a problem arose with transporting the metal. With the help of prisoners, Egvekinot, Ozerny and Iultin, as well as the Egvekinot - Iultin highway with a length of 270 kilometers, were built in the shortest possible time. The conditions were extremely difficult. According to some data, from 1947 to 1957, 40,000 prisoners passed through Chukotlag. Now on this route there are many crosses installed at the places where entire units died. Many simply did not reach the shelters and froze. You can see the prisoners' dugouts (in one of them, restored, I spent the night) and the stone houses of the convoy. But more on that another time.

The museum guide said that the first ship with 1,500 prisoners left them on the shore with nothing. We slept on practically bare ground, covered with tarpaulins. Only a couple of days later a ship arrived with timber and building materials. With the help of which the barracks still had to be built.

Now the village looks like this. And a few years ago these were houses smoky from the smoke of small boiler houses. They heat in Chukotka all year round. Local residents say that it smoked so much that the snow in the village was black. And the children answered the question: “What color is the snow? - they said: “Black.”

On the ends of many houses there are drawings originally from the Soviet Union. On one you can see the Hulk :) There are artificial sakura trees with lighting on the streets.

By the way, this is the only real tree in the entire village.

Containers can be seen in any yard. They come with them, and they leave with them. In general, it’s a convenient thing. You can store something or, for example, build something. Many people turn them into a garage or shed.

There are several Canadian houses on stilts. By the way, even the legs of street lamps glow.

They stand on these adjustable legs. They say that when a strong wind blows, it feels like Ellie's house from the fairy tale Oz :)

In the ruins is a monument to the AlSib pilots who died in 1942, ferrying planes from Alaska to Siberia during the war.

The building with a glass extension is a hotel. They even say there is a swimming pool there :) Just luxury. And in general, I read that this is almost the best hotel in Chukotka. If you don’t take Anadyr into account.

American bucket

When people in Chukotka say “American bucket,” they mean a 20-liter plastic ice cream bucket. It was brought from America in such buckets. We can say that this is an established measure of volume in Chukotka.

____________________________________________________________________

And today, by the way, we are not even changing the district. We continue to read, remember, make friends.

Egvekinot. Cities and towns.
Iultinsky district.

Egvekinot is an urban-type settlement, like most settlements in Chukotka.

Its location is quite interesting: In the Bering Sea, near the Bay of Cross, among the mountains.

The Bay of the Cross really looks like a cross: its length from north to south is more than 16 kilometers, and there are small bays on the sides, which gives the main bay a resemblance to a cross.

At the same time, the village is located among high mountains, their height reaches 800 meters. And the highest mountain is called Matachingay, its height is 1750 meters. The village got its name because of the surrounding high hills.

Nilhikan'ev translated from Chukchi means high hills. But for the Russian-speaking population, Chukchi names are very difficult to pronounce, and the village was called Ekvakinot. And then geologists named it Egvekinot. The village is located in a “stone bag” of the mountains.

Egvekinot is a port settlement. The village has the Egvekinot Seaport. And, of course, fishing is very developed here. In the bay you can meet walrus, seal, killer whale or whale. Deer graze in the tundra, sheep graze in the mountains, but as in many Chukotka villages, there are also hares, foxes, wolves, wolverines, and bears. And there are also a lot of Eurasians, or Parry's ground squirrel. In general, as throughout Chukotka, the nature in the vicinity of Egvekinot is diverse.

In the village itself there is a local history museum and an art school founded in 1974.

It is also believed that the discovery of the Bay of the Cross belongs not to V. Bering, but to a certain Kurbat Ivanov, who in 1660, having organized an expedition to the north-eastern shores of Chukotka, visited the bay and put it on the map under the name “Big Lip”.

You can see a photo of the village here http://world.lib.ru/s/spiridonow_a_s/airport-1.shtml

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The most comfortable place to live in Chukotka is the village of Egvekinot. Why? Here, like nowhere else in the Territory, three factors that determine our daily life in the category of “comfortable living” are organically intertwined.

The first factor is location. The Bay of the Cross, on the shore of one of the bays of which Egvekinot is located, is one of the most beautiful places in Chukotka. Probably the Gulf would have been the “most” if there had been no Providence.
The village is surrounded by majestic and incredibly picturesque hills, especially in sunny weather. The Chinese wisdom - “Look at the mountains in the morning, look at the water in the evening” is one hundred percent embodied in reality here.

The weather here is not bad either. The village is located at the latitude of the Arctic Circle, but the proximity of the sea smoothes out sharp fluctuations in negative temperatures in winter. Sometimes Egvekinot is called the Chukchi Sochi, but this thesis is fundamentally incorrect, since, in the same Providence, And we are much warmer. But even despite this, in terms of climate, Egvekinot is one of the three most comfortable settlements in Chukotka.

2. All the bushes in the village are imported. The Egvekinot landscaping program began to be implemented back in Soviet times.

3. One of the oldest buildings in Egvekinot. "In line for cladding." But as for me, such buildings add color to the villages of Chukotka. Brick today is an artifact of the distant Soviet past. It will no longer be brought to Chukotka.

4. I have not seen such signs in Chukotka. I don't agree, but I have the right to be.

5. And this, in turn, is the only bike path in the area. Although small, the main attention is to cyclists

6. "Demobilization Hill of Graduates"

7. There was no summer in Egvekinot until mid-July. Gloom and fog.

The second factor is “power”. I don’t know for sure, but I think that it is unlikely that anywhere else in Russia there will be a head of a municipal entity who has been managing the district for 25 years. The Iultinsky district, the administrative center of which is Egvekinot, has been led by Alexander Goergevich Maksimov since 1989! This is a rare, I would even say an isolated case in our district when the authorities are in their place and are engaged in governing, and not reigning or throwing their hands to the sides. If in other regional centers life is barely getting back to normal after the economic whirlwind and political fever of the 1990s and one gets the feeling that the settlement took part in some kind of military action and a couple of years ago began to restore the economy (Anadyr, of course, does not count), then in Egvekinot there is no such feeling. A progressive, stylish village, with good infrastructure and roads. Roads are a separate issue for Chukotka. If for the central regions of the country a good road is a road without potholes, then in Chukotka, a good road is a road with a hard surface (concrete), and if it is also flat... There is the same road as in Egvekinot only in Anadyr. But Anadyr is the capital in which considerable funds were invested during Abramovich’s “golden era”.

Power, first of all, is the head, and secondly, the team. His team, his deputies, are also professional and proactive people. Among them, Natalya Mikhailovna Zelenskaya, Deputy for Social Policy, especially stands out. Professional and very responsive person. Most of the officials in the district are good people, but professionalism is measured by deeds: a school, a hospital, a Sports House, a ski resort, a House of Culture, an Art School, a library, a museum - these are institutions within the competence of Zelenskaya and many of them are among the best in terms of the quality of work best in O circle. The average person, no matter where he lives, will always be primarily concerned about social issues, which are mainly related to children: what kind of kindergarten the child will go to, whether the teachers at the school are good, additional education for children and a hospital that, in addition to bandages and activated carbon, , there must also be good specialists. The cultural component of life is the second order of priority, however, it is also important for Chukotka, with its closed, autonomous organization of life of the population.

In Egvekinot this has been successful so far.

Of course, there are problems in the village. The work of housing and communal services is not ideal, especially in winter, when mountains of garbage do not fit into garbage cans, the wind carries it around the village and power outages sometimes occur (but this is a question rather not for the local administration, but for Chukotenergo) and a number of other problems, but Compared to other villages, these problems are not significant.

8. Administration of Iultinsky district

9. Original street decor

10. Egvekinot publishes its own newspaper, “Bay of the Cross”. Interestingly, it is recommended for children over 12 years of age to read it.

11. Office of the Chukotka Trading Company

12. Bridge on the bypass road

13. In the background is a school

Let's very loosely call the third factor “Business factor”. The number of shops in Egvekinot per capita is surprising to those who come to the village for the first time. Almost in every entrance! Competition is the engine of progress and the executioner of high prices. Price tags in stores are not much higher than in Anadyr, or even the same. A comfortable environment for entrepreneurs is a condition created by the authorities. At least in matters related to rent. And this, in turn, is additional taxes, which replenish the small but always deficit budget.

But the Egvekinot phenomenon is not a small business. And the business is big. And here a man comes onto the stage, whom not only every resident of Egvekinot, but also the majority of residents of Chukotka knows well - Igor Pavlovich Ivanov, general director of the Chukotka Trading Company (CHTK). The "Trading" in the company's name refers to the beginning of its activities in the mid-1990s. Currently, he is engaged not only in trade, but also in construction and transportation of fuel to villages (the company owns several dry cargo ships). It is surprising to me that having risen to the “Olympus” of the elite of Chukotka business, he did not “emigrate” to Anadyr, but remained faithful to Egvekinot, where his three-story office is located. But even more surprising is the fact of his philanthropy. He erected a stone church at his own expense, built a monument to the “Builders of the Iultinskaya Highway,” was involved in the improvement of the village, participated in many social and charitable projects of the Chukotka Red Cross, and simply provided financial and material assistance to many residents and entrepreneurs of Egvekinot.
This is a rare, but very effective type of cooperation between “government” and “business”, in my opinion, an ideal model for the development of settlements in Chukotka.

14. "Ivanov's House"

15. Golden domes

16. The only stone church in Chukotka. It fits very organically into the landscape of Egvekinot Bay.

17. Monument to the builders of the Iultinskaya highway

18. People humorously, but aptly dubbed the monument “Maksimov and Ivanov are working for the benefit of the region”

19. Local cafe. Not very expensive, not very tasty.

20. Poster

21. Most shops in Egvekinot are named after women. This is the most original name

22. By the beginning of summer, grocery stores are running out. Everyone is waiting for the ship. This year, navigation opened extremely late due to ice conditions, on July 6.

23. Everyone is waiting for the ship

The only problem that concerns all settlements of Chukotka (with the exception of Anadyr and Pevek) is the lack of direct flights with the central regions of the country. Transshipment of passengers and cargo through Anadyr is another story. However, one could turn a blind eye to this problem if one could freely buy a ticket to Anadyr and back. But this is also a real problem. In all other respects, Egvekinot is good! Well, very good. Come and see for yourself.

: 66°19′00″ n. w. 179°07′00″ W. d. /  66.31667° s. w. 179.11667° W d. / 66.31667; -179.11667(G) (I)

Head of Administration

Grishilo Oksana Vladimirovna

Based PGT with Population National composition

Russians, Ukrainians

Timezone Telephone code Postcode Vehicle code OKATO code Official site K: Settlements founded in 1946

The nearby settlement of power engineers Ozerny is under administrative control.

Origin of the toponym

There are two versions of the origin of the name of the village: from Chukotka. Ervykinnot- “sharp hard earth” or Ekvykynnot- “high, solid ground.”

Geographical position

Connection

The village is located at the foot of a high mountain, which blocks the horizon to the south and southwest. Because of this, there is no direct visibility to any communication satellite in the village and all satellite communication stations are located only in one place, 13 km from the village. Next, the signal is transmitted to the populated area via local radio relay lines (services are provided by Chukotkasvyazinform OJSC).

see also

• Chukotka ITL Dalstroy 1949-1956 (tungsten mine)

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Notes

1. www.gks.ru/free_doc/doc_2016/bul_dr/mun_obr2016.rar Population of the Russian Federation by municipalities as of January 1, 2016
2. Egvekinot- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
3. Leontiev V.V., Novikova K. A. Toponymic Dictionary of the North-East of the USSR / scientific. ed. G. A. Menovshchikov; Far Eastern Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. North-East complex. Research Institute Lab. archaeology, history and ethnography. - Magadan: Magad. book publishing house, 1989. - P. 71. - 456 p. - 15,000 copies. - ISBN 5-7581-0044-7.
4. (Russian) . Demoscope Weekly. Retrieved September 25, 2013. .
5. (Russian) . Demoscope Weekly. Retrieved September 25, 2013. .
6. (Russian) . Demoscope Weekly. Retrieved September 25, 2013. .
7. . .
8. . .
9. . Retrieved March 26, 2015. .
10. . Retrieved November 25, 2014. .
11. . Retrieved May 31, 2014. .
12. . Retrieved November 16, 2013. .
13. . Retrieved August 2, 2014. .
14. . Retrieved August 6, 2015. .

Links

• , ruschudo.ru
• Valeria Khvashchevskaya.. Evening Chelyabinsk (No. 208 (11090), October 30, 2008). Retrieved July 4, 2013. .

Excerpt characterizing Egvekinot

Previously, Pierre, in the presence of Anna Pavlovna, constantly felt that what he was saying was indecent, tactless, and not what was needed; that his speeches, which seem smart to him while he prepares them in his imagination, become stupid as soon as he speaks loudly, and that, on the contrary, the stupidest speeches of Hippolytus come out smart and sweet. Now everything he said came out charmant. If even Anna Pavlovna did not say this, then he saw that she wanted to say it, and she only, in respect of his modesty, refrained from doing so.
At the beginning of the winter from 1805 to 1806, Pierre received from Anna Pavlovna the usual pink note with an invitation, which added: “Vous trouverez chez moi la belle Helene, qu"on ne se lasse jamais de voir.” [I will have a beautiful Helene , which you will never get tired of admiring.]
Reading this passage, Pierre felt for the first time that some kind of connection had formed between him and Helene, recognized by other people, and this thought at the same time frightened him, as if an obligation was being imposed on him that he could not keep. and together he liked it as a funny guess.
Anna Pavlovna's evening was the same as the first, only the novelty that Anna Pavlovna treated her guests to was now not Mortemart, but a diplomat who had arrived from Berlin and brought the latest details about the stay of Emperor Alexander in Potsdam and how the two highest each other swore there in an indissoluble alliance to defend the just cause against the enemy of the human race. Pierre was received by Anna Pavlovna with a tinge of sadness, which obviously related to the fresh loss that befell the young man, to the death of Count Bezukhy (everyone constantly considered it their duty to assure Pierre that he was very upset by the death of his father, whom he hardly knew) - and sadness exactly the same as the highest sadness that was expressed at the mention of the august Empress Maria Feodorovna. Pierre felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna, with her usual skill, arranged circles in her living room. The large circle, where Prince Vasily and the generals were, used a diplomat. Another mug was at the tea table. Pierre wanted to join the first, but Anna Pavlovna, who was in the irritated state of a commander on the battlefield, when thousands of new brilliant thoughts come that you barely have time to put into execution, Anna Pavlovna, seeing Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger.
- Attendez, j "ai des vues sur vous pour ce soir. [I have plans for you this evening.] She looked at Helene and smiled at her. - Ma bonne Helene, il faut, que vous soyez charitable pour ma pauvre tante , qui a une adoration pour vous. Allez lui tenir compagnie pour 10 minutes. [My dear Helen, you need to be compassionate towards my poor aunt, who has adoration for you. Stay with her for 10 minutes.] But don’t worry. it was boring, here’s a dear count who won’t refuse to follow you.
The beauty went to her aunt, but Anna Pavlovna still kept Pierre close to her, appearing as if she had one last necessary order to make.
– Isn’t she amazing? - she said to Pierre, pointing to the majestic beauty sailing away. - Et quelle tenue! [And how she holds herself!] For such a young girl and such tact, such a masterful ability to hold herself! It comes from the heart! Happy will be the one whose it will be! With her, the most unsecular husband will involuntarily occupy the most brilliant place in the world. Is not it? I just wanted to know your opinion,” and Anna Pavlovna released Pierre.
Pierre sincerely answered Anna Pavlovna in the affirmative to her question about Helen’s art of holding herself. If he ever thought about Helen, he thought specifically about her beauty and about her unusual calm ability to be silently worthy in the world.
Auntie accepted two young people into her corner, but it seemed that she wanted to hide her adoration for Helen and wanted to more express her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if asking what she should do with these people. Moving away from them, Anna Pavlovna again touched Pierre’s sleeve with her finger and said:
- J"espere, que vous ne direz plus qu"on s"ennuie chez moi, [I hope you won’t say another time that I’m bored] - and looked at Helen.
Helen smiled with an expression that said that she did not admit the possibility that anyone could see her and not be admired. Auntie cleared her throat, swallowed her drool and said in French that she was very glad to see Helen; then she turned to Pierre with the same greeting and with the same mien. In the middle of a boring and stumbling conversation, Helen looked back at Pierre and smiled at him with that clear, beautiful smile with which she smiled at everyone. Pierre was so used to this smile, it expressed so little for him that he did not pay any attention to it. Auntie was talking at this time about the collection of snuff boxes that Pierre’s late father, Count Bezukhy, had, and showed her snuff box. Princess Helen asked to see the portrait of her aunt's husband, which was made on this snuff box.
“This was probably done by Vines,” said Pierre, naming the famous miniaturist, bending over to the table to pick up a snuffbox, and listening to the conversation at another table.
He stood up, wanting to go around, but the aunt handed the snuff box right across Helen, behind her. Helen leaned forward to make room and looked back, smiling. She was, as always at evenings, in a dress that was very open in front and back, according to the fashion of that time. Her bust, which always seemed marble to Pierre, was at such a close distance from his eyes that with his myopic eyes he involuntarily discerned the living beauty of her shoulders and neck, and so close to his lips that he had to bend down a little to touch her. He heard the warmth of her body, the smell of perfume and the creak of her corset as she moved. He did not see her marble beauty, which was one with her dress, he saw and felt all the charm of her body, which was covered only by clothes. And, once he saw this, he could not see otherwise, just as we cannot return to a deception once explained.
“So you haven’t noticed how beautiful I am until now? – Helen seemed to say. “Have you noticed that I’m a woman?” Yes, I am a woman who can belong to anyone and you too,” said her look. And at that very moment Pierre felt that Helen not only could, but had to be his wife, that it could not be otherwise.
He knew it at that moment as surely as he would have known it standing under the aisle with her. As it will be? and when? he did not know; he didn’t even know whether it would be good (he even felt that it was not good for some reason), but he knew that it would be.
Pierre lowered his eyes, raised them again and again wanted to see her as such a distant, alien beauty as he had seen her every day before; but he could no longer do this. He could not, just as a person who had previously looked in the fog at a blade of weeds in the fog and saw a tree in it cannot, after seeing the blade of grass, again see a tree in it. She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him. And between him and her there were no longer any barriers, except for the barriers of his own will.
- Bon, je vous laisse dans votre petit coin. Je vois, que vous y etes tres bien, [Okay, I'll leave you in your corner. I see you feel good there,” said Anna Pavlovna’s voice.
And Pierre, with fear remembering whether he had done something reprehensible, blushing, looked around him. It seemed to him that everyone knew, just like him, about what happened to him.
After a while, when he approached the large circle, Anna Pavlovna said to him:
– On dit que vous embellissez votre maison de Petersbourg. [They say you are decorating your St. Petersburg house.]