Last page
Summary works
Two young artists, Sue and Jonesy, rent an apartment on the top floor of a building in New York's Greenwich Village, where artists have long settled. In November, Jonesy falls ill with pneumonia. The doctor’s verdict is disappointing: “She has a one in ten chance. And only if she herself wants to live.” But Jonesy had just lost interest in life. She lies in bed, looks out the window and counts how many leaves are left on the old ivy, which has entwined its shoots around the wall opposite. Jonesy is convinced that when the last leaf falls, she will die.
Sue talks about her friend's dark thoughts to the old artist Berman, who lives downstairs. He has been planning to create a masterpiece for a long time, but so far something has not come together. Having heard about Jonesy, old man Berman was terribly upset and did not want to pose for Sue, who painted him as a hermit gold miner.
The next morning it turns out that there is only one leaf left on the ivy. Jonesy watches how he resists the gusts of wind. It got dark, it began to rain, the wind blew even stronger, and Johnsy has no doubt that in the morning she will no longer see this leaf. But she is wrong: to her great surprise, the brave leaf continues to fight the bad weather. This makes a strong impression on Jonesy. She becomes ashamed of her cowardice, and she gains the desire to live. The doctor who visited her notes an improvement. In his opinion, the chances of surviving and dying are already equal. He adds that the neighbor downstairs also caught pneumonia, but the poor fellow has no chance of recovery. A day later, the doctor declares that Jonesy’s life is now out of danger. In the evening, Sue tells her friend the sad news: old man Berman has died in the hospital. He caught a cold that stormy night when the ivy lost its last leaf and the artist drew a new one and, under the pouring rain and icy wind, attached it to the branch. Berman still created his masterpiece.
"...this is Berman's masterpiece - he wrote it that night,
when the last leaf fell."
O. HENRY THE LAST LEAF
(from the collection "The Burning Lamp" 1907)
In a small block west of Washington Square, the streets became confused and broke into short strips called driveways. These passages form strange angles and crooked lines. One street there even crosses itself twice. A certain artist managed to discover a very valuable property of this street. Suppose a collector from a store with a bill for paints, paper and canvas meets himself there, going home, without having received a single cent of the bill!
And so people of art came across a peculiar quarter of Greenwich Village in search of north-facing windows, 18th-century roofs, Dutch attics and cheap rent. Then they moved a few pewter mugs and a brazier or two there from Sixth Avenue and founded a “colony.”
Sue and Jonesy's studio was located at the top of a three-story brick house. Jonesy is a diminutive of Joanna. One came from Maine, the other from California. They met at the table d'hote of a restaurant on Volmaya Street and found that their views on art, endive salad and fashionable sleeves completely coincided. As a result, a common studio emerged.
This was in May. In November, an inhospitable stranger, whom doctors call Pneumonia, walked invisibly around the colony, touching first one or the other with his icy fingers. Along the Eastern side, this murderer walked boldly, killing dozens of victims, but here, in the labyrinth of narrow, moss-covered alleys, he trudged along, foot after naked.
Mr. Pneumonia could not be called a gallant old gentleman. A miniature girl, anemic from California marshmallows, could hardly be considered a worthy opponent for the burly old fool with red fists and shortness of breath. However, he knocked her down, and Jonesy lay motionless on the painted iron bed, looking through the small frame of the Dutch window at the blank wall of the neighboring brick house.
One morning, a preoccupied doctor with one movement of his shaggy gray eyebrows called Sue into the corridor.
“She has one chance... well, let’s say, against ten,” he said, shaking off the mercury in the thermometer. - And only if she herself wants to live. Our entire pharmacopoeia loses its meaning when people begin to act in the interests of the undertaker. Your little lady decided that she would never get better. What is she thinking about?
- She... she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples.
- With paints? Nonsense! Doesn't she have something on her soul that is really worth thinking about, for example, a man?
- Men? - Sue asked, and her voice sounded sharp, like a harmonica. - Is the man really standing... No, doctor, there is nothing like that.
“Well, then she’s just weakened,” the doctor decided. - I will do everything I can do as a representative of science. But when my patient begins to count the carriages in his funeral procession, I'm discounting fifty percent of the healing power of medicines. If you can get her to ask at least once what style of sleeves they will wear this winter, I guarantee you that she will have a one in five chance instead of one in ten.
After the doctor left, Sue ran into the workshop and cried into a Japanese paper napkin until it was completely wet. Then she bravely entered Jonesy's room with a drawing board, whistling ragtime.
Johnsy lay with her face turned to the window, barely visible under the blankets. Sue stopped whistling, thinking that Jonesy had fallen asleep.
She set up the board and began an ink drawing of the magazine story. For young artists, the path to Art is paved with illustrations for magazine stories, with which young authors pave their way to Literature.
While sketching for the story the figure of an Idaho cowboy in elegant breeches and with a monocle in his eye, Sue heard a quiet whisper, repeated several times. She hurriedly approached the bed. Jonesy's eyes were wide open. She looked out the window and counted - counted in reverse order.
“Twelve,” she said, and a little later: “eleven,” and then: “ten” and “nine,” and then: “eight” and “seven,” almost simultaneously.
Sue looked out the window. What was there to count? All that was visible was an empty, dull courtyard and the blank wall of a brick house twenty steps away. An old, old ivy with a gnarled trunk, rotten at the roots, wove half of the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn tore the leaves from the vine, and the bare skeletons of the branches clung to the crumbling bricks.
- What is it, honey? - asked Sue.
“Six,” Jonesy answered barely audibly. - Now they fly around much faster. Three days ago there were almost a hundred of them. My head was spinning to count. And now it's easy. Another one has flown. Now there are only five left.
- What's five, honey? Tell your Sudie.
Listyev. On the ivy. When the last leaf falls, I will die. I've known this for three days now. Didn't the doctor tell you?
- This is the first time I’ve heard such nonsense! - Sue retorted with magnificent contempt. - What can the leaves on the old ivy have to do with the fact that you will get better? And you still loved this ivy so much, ugly girl! Don't be stupid. But even today the doctor told me that you will soon recover...excuse me, how did he say that?..that you have ten chances against one. But this is no less than what each of us has here in New York when you ride a tram or walk past a new house. Try to eat a little broth and let your Sudie finish the drawing so that she can sell it to the editor and buy wine for her sick girl and pork cutlets for herself.
“You don’t need to buy any more wine,” answered Jonesy, looking intently out the window. - Another one has flown. No, I don't want any broth. That means there are only four left. I want to see the last leaf fall. Then I will die too.
Jonesy, honey,” said Sue, leaning over her, “will you promise me not to open your eyes and not look out the window until I finish working?” I have to hand in the illustration tomorrow. I need light, otherwise I would pull down the curtain.
-Can't you draw in another room? - Jonesy asked coldly.
“I’d like to sit with you,” Sue said. - And besides, I don’t want you to look at these stupid leaves.
Tell me when you finish,” said Jonesy, closing her eyes, pale and motionless, like a fallen statue, “because I want to see the last leaf fall.” I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to free myself from everything that holds me - to fly, fly lower and lower, like one of these poor, tired leaves.
“Try to sleep,” said Sue. - I need to call Berman, I want to paint him as a hermit gold miner. I'll be there for a minute at most. Look, don't move until I come.
Old man Berman was an artist who lived on the ground floor under their studio. He was already over sixty, and his beard, all in curls, like Michelangelo’s Moses, descended from his satyr’s head onto the body of a dwarf. In art, Berman was a failure. He was still going to write a masterpiece, but he didn’t even start it. For several years now he had not written anything except signs, advertisements and the like for the sake of a piece of bread. He earned some money by posing for young artists who couldn’t afford professional models. He drank heavily, but still talked about his future masterpiece. But otherwise he was a feisty old man who scoffed at all sentimentality and looked at himself as a watchdog specially assigned to protect two young artists.
Sue found Berman, smelling strongly of juniper berries, in his darkened downstairs closet. In one corner, an untouched canvas stood on an easel for twenty-five years, ready to receive the first touches of a masterpiece. Sue told the old man about Jonesy's fantasy and about her fears that she, light and fragile as a leaf, would fly away from them when her fragile connection with the world weakened. Old man Berman, whose red eyes were very noticeably watery, shouted, mocking such idiotic fantasies.
What! - he shouted. - Is such stupidity possible - to die because the leaves are falling from the damned ivy! First time I hear it. No, I don’t want to pose for your idiot hermit. How do you let her fill her head with such nonsense? Oh, poor little Miss Jonesy!
“She is very sick and weak,” said Sue, “and from the fever all sorts of morbid fantasies come into her head. Very good, Mr. Berman - if you don’t want to pose for me, then don’t. But I still think that you are a nasty old man... a nasty old chatterbox.
This is a real woman! - Berman shouted. - Who said that I don’t want to pose? Let's go. I'm coming with you. For half an hour I say that I want to pose. My God! This is not the place for a good girl like Miss Jonesy to be sick. Someday I will write a masterpiece, and we will all leave here. Yes, yes!
Jonesy was dozing when they went upstairs. Sue lowered the curtain all the way to the windowsill and motioned for Berman to go into the other room. There they went to the window and looked with fear at the old ivy. Then they looked at each other without saying a word. It was cold, persistent rain mixed with snow. Berman, wearing an old blue shirt, sat down in the pose of a gold digger-hermit on an overturned kettle instead of a rock.
The next morning, Sue woke up from a short nap to find Jonesy staring at the lowered green curtain with his dull, wide eyes.
“Pick it up, I want to look,” Jonesy commanded in a whisper.
Sue obeyed wearily.
And what? After pouring rain and sharp gusts of wind that did not subside all night, one last ivy leaf was still visible on the brick wall! Still dark green at the stem, but touched along the jagged edges with the yellow of decay and decay, it stood bravely on a branch twenty feet above the ground.
This is the last one,” said Jonesy. - I thought that he would certainly fall at night. I heard the wind. He falls today, then I will die too.
- God bless you! - said Sue, leaning her tired head towards the pillow. - At least think about me if you don’t want to think about yourself! What will happen to me?
But Jonesy did not answer. The soul, preparing to set off on a mysterious, distant journey, becomes alien to everything in the world. A painful fantasy took possession of Jonesy more and more, as one after another all the threads that connected her with life and people were torn.
The day passed, and even at dusk they saw a single ivy leaf hanging on its stem in the background brick wall. And then, with the onset of darkness, the north wind rose again, and the rain continuously knocked on the windows, rolling down from the low Dutch roof.
As soon as it was dawn, the merciless Jonesy ordered the curtains to be raised again.
The ivy leaf still remained in place.
Jonesy lay there for a long time, looking at him. Then she called Sue, who warmed up for her chicken bouillon on a gas burner.
“I was a bad girl, Sudie,” said Jonesy. - This last leaf must have remained on the branch to show me how nasty I was. It is a sin to wish oneself death. Now you can give me some broth, and then milk and port... Although no: bring me a mirror first, and then cover me with pillows, and I will sit and watch you cook.
An hour later she said:
- Sudie, I hope to paint the Bay of Naples someday.
In the afternoon the doctor came, and Sue, under some pretext, followed him into the hallway.
“The chances are equal,” said the doctor, shaking Sue’s thin, trembling hand. - At good care you will be victorious. And now I have to visit another patient downstairs. His last name is Berman. It seems he is an artist. Also pneumonia. He is already an old man and very weak, and the form of the disease is severe. There is no hope, but today he will be sent to the hospital, where he will be calmer.
The next day the doctor said to Sue:
- She is out of danger. You won. Now nutrition and care - and nothing else is needed.
That same evening, Sue walked up to the bed where Jonesy was lying, happily knitting a bright blue, completely useless scarf, and hugged her with one arm - along with the pillow.
“I need to tell you something, white mouse,” she began. - Mr. Berman died today in the hospital from pneumonia. He was only sick for two days. On the morning of the first day, the doorman found the poor old man on the floor of his room. He was unconscious. His shoes and all his clothes were wet through and were cold as ice. No one could understand where he went out on such a terrible night. Then they found a lantern that was still burning, a ladder that had been moved from its place, several abandoned brushes and a palette with yellow and green paints. Look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf. Weren't you surprised that he doesn't tremble or move from the wind? Yes, honey, this is Berman’s masterpiece - he wrote it that night when the last leaf fell off.
Loading...
