"Petya at the dacha": a short summary of the story of Leonid Andreev

Dreams ... Every person, from young to old, has a dream. She, like two-faced Janus, torments, tortures, tearing apart, and at the same time fills life with meaning. It can not be abandoned, but it's impossible even to get close to it. The story of Leonid Andreev "Petya at the dacha" (the summary follows further) narrates exactly about such a dream ...

Free prison

In the barber's shop a shout is heard, abrupt and loud: "Boy, water!" To Petipa, a boy of ten, runs up to Osip Abramovich, a hairdresser, and with thin, awkward little hands he holds out a tin can with hot water. Around the boring smell of cheap perfume, flies, dirt. The visitor, as a rule, is undemanding: shop assistants, porters, workers, petty officials, old and young, clumsily dressed, with ruddy cheeks and oily, impudent eyes. Outside the window are gray, dust-free trees, the same gray, uncooled shadows from them. Not far off are the houses of "cheap debauchery". On the benches are sitting men, women, strangely dressed, with evil, and often completely indifferent persons. They drink vodka, laugh, they say hoarse voices, hug, sometimes they swear and even fight, which does not cause fear or pity, but on the contrary - general animation and fun ... Petya did not know whether he lived so much or not. The endless series of days and nights merged into one long, unpleasant dream with constant screams: "Boy, water!" - with the narrative stories of his friend Nikolka about drunken women and men, and with never-ending offerings of hot water, again and again ... Andreev's story "Petya at the dacha" does not end there.

The elusive dream

Continuing the story "Petka at the dacha", we return to the main character. Petka was the youngest of all employees in the barbershop. Once his mother, the cook Hope, gave the boy as an apprentice to Osip Abramovich. Since then he ate there, slept and served, in winter and summer, without days off and holidays, not knowing about other edges, or even about other quarters and streets. From time to time his mother visited him, brought refreshments and sweets. He ate lazily, spoke little, did not complain, and only asked to take him away from here. Where? He himself did not know. He just wanted somewhere far away, to a completely different place. Really like. But what kind of place should this be? And this was unreasonable for him. So he quickly forgot about his request, listlessly, detachedly said goodbye to his mother, without asking when she would come again. Petya did not know whether he was living badly in a hairdresser's, or well, boringly or cheerfully, but with every new day he grew thiner, covered with bad scabs, and more and more often poured water. Visitors every now and then with disgust looked at the dirty, freckled, lean boy who, with sharp wrinkles near his eyes and under his nose, was more like an old dwarf.

Country house

The story "Petka at the cottage", the summary of which is set out in this article, does not end there. One day, unexpectedly, Nadezhda came to dinner and told Petka that he and her were allowed to stay at a dacha in Tsaritsyno, where her gentlemen lived. The boy vaguely imagined what a dacha was, but inside he felt an inexplicable joy. What happened, he dreamed of. He will go to the place where he was unconsciously striving. I wonder what it is? The station with its rumbling, hustle and hurry passengers; The train car, bright landscapes fluttering out of the window; An endless brooding forest, a clear, wide sky that can not be seen in the city; Glades, merry, light, green - new impressions were frightening, disturbing, and at the same time filling his soul with unprecedented enthusiasm. He looked and was afraid to miss, to lose the slightest detail of this new world for him.

Two days passed. Petya, just pissed off from the "stone embrace of city communities", pale, agitated, fearing like a puppy, the blue smoothness of the lake, already felt at home and completely forgot that there is a hairdresser, Osip Abramovich and the eternal cry: "Boy, water He got fat, although he ate very little. Imperceptibly, and somehow, the wrinkles suddenly disappeared from his face, like someone was walking on them with a hot iron. He learned to cut a rod in a hazel, dig worms and fish.

Return to reality: the end of a dream

At the end of the story "Petka at the dacha", whose brief content misses many details, the gentleman brings a letter from the city of Nadezhda: Osip Abramovich urgently calls Petka back to work. The cook burst into tears and went to her son with a heavy heart. Unconscious Petya played in the backyard in the "classics". Mother's words: "We must go, son!" - nothing for him did not mean. He smiled and was surprised. For him, there was no longer a city, a hairdresser with chopped mirrors and eternally displeased Osip Abramovich. They became ghosts for him, faceless phantoms, and the dacha, fishing rod and fishing planned for tomorrow are facts, his new reality. But gradually his thoughts began to clear up, and there was an amazing reshuffle: Osip Abramovich became the most that neither is an objective reality, a real fact, and the fishing pole turned into a ghost. The boy did not just cry, but began to yell violently, fell to the ground, and began to roll on the ground.

The next day Petya went back to the city. And again there was a sharp one: "Boy, water!" - and again sleepy, apathetic eyes did not see how the hot water splashed here and there. And at night a low voice was heard, and Nikolka eagerly caught every word about the dacha, about what no one had ever heard or seen, and peered at a small, thin face, dotted with fine wrinkles near the eyes and under his nose ...

Once again I want to recall that the story of Leonid Andreev is called "Petya at the dacha". The summary can not convey the subtlety and depth of the main character's feelings, so reading the work is simply necessary.