It was early spring and harsh as winter. The Tale of Scarlet Sails - Alexander Grin

I PREDICTION

Longren, a sailor of the Orion, a strong three-hundred-ton brig, on which he served for ten years and to which he was more attached than any son to his own mother, was finally to leave the service.
It happened like this. On one of his rare returns home, he did not see, as always from a distance, on the threshold of the house his wife Mary, clasping her hands, and then running towards him until she lost her breath. Instead, by the crib, a new item in Longren's little house, stood an excited neighbor.
“I followed her for three months, old man,” she said, “look at your daughter.
Dead, Longren leaned over and saw an eight-month-old creature staring intently at his long beard, then sat down, looked down and began to twist his mustache. The mustache was wet, as from rain.
When did Mary die? -- he asked.
The woman told a sad story, interrupting the story with a touching gurgle to the girl and assurances that Mary was in paradise. When Longren found out the details, paradise seemed to him a little brighter than a woodshed, and he thought that the fire of a simple lamp - if now they were all together, the three of them - would be an irreplaceable joy for a woman who had gone to an unknown country.
About three months ago, the economic affairs of the young mother were very bad. Of the money left by Longren, a good half was spent on treatment after a difficult birth, on caring for the health of the newborn; finally, the loss of a small but necessary amount of money forced Mary to ask for a loan of money from Menners. Menners kept a tavern, a shop and was considered a wealthy man.
Mary went to him at six o'clock in the evening. About seven the narrator met her on the road to Liss. Tearful and upset, Mary said that she was going to the city to pawn wedding ring. She added that Menners agreed to give money, but demanded love in return. Mary got nowhere.
“We don’t even have a crumb of food in the house,” she said to her neighbor. "I'll go into town and the girl and I will make ends meet sometime before her husband returns."
It was cold, windy weather that evening; the narrator tried in vain to persuade the young woman not to go to Lisa by nightfall. "You'll get wet, Mary, it's drizzling, and the wind is about to bring downpour."
Back and forth from the seaside village to the city was at least three hours of fast walking, but Mary did not heed the advice of the narrator. “It’s enough for me to prick your eyes,” she said, “and there is almost no family where I would not borrow bread, tea or flour. I’ll pawn the ring, and it’s over.” She went, returned, and the next day she took to her bed with a fever and delirium; bad weather and evening drizzle struck her with bilateral pneumonia, as the city doctor said, called by a kind-hearted narrator. A week later, an empty space remained on Longren's double bed, and a neighbor moved into his house to nurse and feed the girl. It was not difficult for her, a lonely widow. Besides," she added, "it's boring without such a fool.
Longren went to the city, took the calculation, said goodbye to his comrades and began to raise little Assol. Until the girl learned to walk firmly, the widow lived with the sailor, replacing the orphan's mother, but as soon as Assol stopped falling, bringing her leg over the threshold, Longren decisively announced that now he would do everything for the girl himself, and, thanking the widow for her active sympathy, lived the lonely life of a widower, focusing all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories on a small creature.
Ten years of wandering life left very little money in his hands. He began to work. Soon his toys appeared in city stores - skillfully made small models of boats, cutters, single-deck and double-deck sailboats, cruisers, steamers - in a word, what he knew intimately, which, due to the nature of the work, partly replaced for him the roar of port life and picturesque work of voyages. In this way, Longren produced enough to live within the limits of moderate economy. Uncommunicative by nature, after the death of his wife, he became even more withdrawn and unsociable. On holidays, he was sometimes seen in a tavern, but he never sat down, but hurriedly drank a glass of vodka at the counter and left, briefly throwing "yes", "no", "hello", "farewell", "little by little" - on all the appeals and nods of the neighbors. He could not stand the guests, quietly sending them away not by force, but by such hints and fictitious circumstances that the visitor had no choice but to invent a reason for not allowing him to stay longer.
He himself did not visit anyone either; thus a cold alienation lay between him and his countrymen, and had Longren's work - toys - been less independent of the affairs of the village, he would have had to experience the consequences of such relations more tangibly. He bought goods and food in the city - Menners could not even boast of a box of matches that Longren bought from him. He also did all the housework himself and patiently went through the complex art of raising a girl, unusual for a man.
Assol was already five years old, and her father began to smile softer and softer, looking at her nervous, kind face, when, sitting on his knees, she was working on the secret of a buttoned waistcoat or amusingly singing sailor songs - wild rhymes. In the transmission in a child's voice and not everywhere with the letter "r" these songs gave the impression of a dancing bear, decorated with a blue ribbon. At this time, an event occurred, the shadow of which, falling on the father, covered the daughter as well.
It was spring, early and harsh, like winter, but in a different way. For three weeks, a sharp coastal north crouched on the cold earth.
Fishing boats pulled ashore formed a long row of dark keels on the white sand, resembling the ridges of huge fish. No one dared to fish in such weather. In the village's only street, it was rare to see a man leave his house; a cold whirlwind rushing from the coastal hills into the emptiness of the horizon made "open air" a severe torture. All the chimneys of Caperna smoked from morning to evening, blowing smoke over the steep roofs.
But these days of the north lured Longren out of his small warm house more often than the sun, throwing blankets of airy gold over the sea and Kaperna in clear weather. Longren went out to the bridge, laid on long rows of piles, where, at the very end of this wooden pier, he smoked a pipe blown by the wind for a long time, watching how the bottom, bare by the coast, smoked with gray foam, barely keeping up with the ramparts, the roaring run of which to the black, stormy horizon filled space with herds of fantastic maned creatures, rushing in unbridled ferocious despair to distant consolation. Moans and noises, the howling firing of huge surges of water and, it seemed, a visible stream of wind slashing the surroundings - so strong was its even run - gave Longren's tormented soul that dullness, deafness, which, reducing grief to vague sadness, is equal to action deep sleep.
On one of these days, the twelve-year-old son of Menners, Khin, noticing that his father's boat was beating against the piles under the walkways, breaking the sides, went and told his father about it. The storm has just begun; Menners forgot to put the boat on the sand. He immediately went to the water, where he saw at the end of the pier, standing with his back to him, smoking, Longren. There was no one else on the beach except for the two of them. Menners walked along the bridge to the middle, went down into the wildly splashing water and untied the sheet; standing in the boat, he began to make his way to the shore, clutching the piles with his hands. He did not take the oars, and at that moment, when, staggering, he missed grabbing another pile, a strong blow of the wind threw the bow of the boat from the bridge towards the ocean. Now, even the entire length of Menners' body could not reach the nearest pile. The wind and waves, rocking, carried the boat into the disastrous expanse. Realizing the situation, Menners wanted to throw himself into the water in order to swim to the shore, but his decision was too late, since the boat was already spinning not far from the end of the pier, where a significant depth of water and the fury of the waves promised certain death. Between Longren and Menners, carried away into the stormy distance, there was no more than ten sazhens of still saving distance, since on the walkways at hand Longren hung a bundle of rope with a load woven into one end. This rope hung in case of a berth in stormy weather and was thrown from the bridges.
- Longren! shouted Menners, mortally frightened. - What have you become like a stump? You see, I'm being carried away; leave the dock!
Longren was silent, calmly looking at Menners, who was tossing about in the boat, only his pipe began to smoke more strongly, and he, after a pause, took it out of his mouth in order to better see what was happening.
- Longren! called Menners. "You hear me, I'm dying, save me!"
But Longren did not say a single word to him; he did not seem to hear the desperate cry. Until the boat was carried so far that the words-cries of Menners could barely reach, he did not even step from foot to foot. Menners sobbed in horror, conjured the sailor to run to the fishermen, call for help, promised money, threatened and cursed, but Longren only came closer to the very edge of the pier, so as not to immediately lose sight of the throwing and jumping of the boat. "Longren," came a dull voice, as if from a rooftop, sitting inside the house, "save me!" Then, taking a breath and taking a deep breath so that not a single word would be lost in the wind, Longren shouted: - She also asked you! Think about it while you're still alive, Manners, and don't forget!
Then the cries ceased, and Longren went home. Assol, waking up, saw that her father was sitting before the dying lamp in deep thought. Hearing the voice of the girl calling him, he went up to her, kissed her tightly and covered her with a tangled blanket.
“Sleep, my dear,” he said, “till morning is still a long way off.
-- What are you doing?
- I made a black toy, Assol, - sleep!
The next day, the inhabitants of Kaperna had only conversations about the missing Menners, and on the sixth day they brought him himself, dying and vicious. His story quickly spread around the surrounding villages. Menners wore until evening; shattered by concussions against the sides and bottom of the boat, during a terrible struggle with the ferocity of the waves, which threatened to tirelessly throw the distraught shopkeeper into the sea, he was picked up by the steamer Lucretia, which was going to Kasset. A cold and a shock of terror ended Menners' days. He lived a little less than forty-eight hours, calling on Longren all the disasters possible on earth and in the imagination. The story of Menners, how the sailor watched his death, refusing to help, is eloquent, all the more so because the dying man breathed with difficulty and groaned, struck the inhabitants of Kaperna. Not to mention the fact that a rare of them was able to remember an insult and more serious than that suffered by Longren, and mourn as much as he grieved for Mary until the end of his life - they were disgusted, incomprehensible, struck them that Longren was silent . In silence, until his last words, sent after Menners, Longren stood; he stood motionless, stern and quiet, like a judge, showing deep contempt for Menners - there was more than hatred in his silence, and everyone felt it. If he had shouted, expressing with gestures or fussiness of gloating, or something else, his triumph at the sight of Menners' despair, the fishermen would have understood him, but he acted differently than they acted - he acted impressively, incomprehensibly and thereby set himself above others, in a word, did something unforgivable. No one bowed to him anymore, held out his hand, cast a recognizing, greeting look. He remained forever aloof from village affairs; the boys, seeing him, shouted after him: "Longren drowned Menners!" He paid no attention to it. He also did not seem to notice that in the tavern or on the shore, among the boats, the fishermen fell silent in his presence, stepping aside, as if from the plague. The Menners case cemented a previously incomplete alienation. Having become complete, it caused a strong mutual hatred, the shadow of which fell on Assol.
The girl grew up without friends. Two or three dozen children of her age, who lived in Kaperna, soaked like a sponge with water, rough family beginning, the basis of which was the unshakable authority of mother and father, receptive, like all children in the world, crossed out once and for all little Assol from the sphere of their patronage and attention. This happened, of course, gradually, through the suggestion and shouting of adults, it acquired the character of a terrible prohibition, and then, reinforced by gossip and rumors, it grew in the children's minds with fear of the sailor's house.
Moreover, Longren's secluded way of life now freed the hysterical language of gossip; it was said about the sailor that he killed someone somewhere, because, they say, they no longer take him to serve on ships, and he himself is gloomy and unsociable, because "he is tormented by remorse of a criminal conscience." While playing, the children chased Assol if she approached them, threw mud and teased her that her father ate human meat, and now he was making counterfeit money. One after another, her naive attempts at rapprochement ended in bitter weeping, bruises, scratches and other manifestations of public opinion; she finally stopped being offended, but still sometimes asked her father: "Tell me, why don't they like us?" “Hey, Assol,” said Longren, “do they know how to love? You have to know how to love, but that’s something they can’t do.” - "How is it to be able to?" -- "But like this!" He took the girl in his arms and kissed her sad eyes, squinting with tender pleasure.
Assol's favorite entertainment was in the evenings or on a holiday, when his father, putting aside jars of paste, tools and unfinished work, sat down, taking off his apron, to rest, with a pipe in his teeth, to climb onto his knees and, spinning in the gentle ring of his father's hand , touch various parts of toys, asking about their purpose. Thus began a kind of fantastic lecture on life and people - a lecture in which, thanks to Longren's former way of life, accidents, chance in general, outlandish, amazing and unusual events were given the main place. Longren, naming the girl the names of gear, sails, marine items, gradually got carried away, moving from explanations to various episodes in which either the windlass, the steering wheel, the mast or some type of boat, etc. played a role, and from individual illustrations of these, he moved on to broad pictures of sea wanderings, weaving superstition into reality, and reality into images of his fantasy. Here appeared the tiger cat, the messenger of the shipwreck, and the talking flying fish, whose orders meant to go astray, and the Flying Dutchman with his furious crew; signs, ghosts, mermaids, pirates - in a word, all the fables that while away the leisure of a sailor in a calm or favorite tavern. Longren also told about the wrecked, about people who had gone wild and forgot how to speak, about mysterious treasures, riots of convicts, and much more, which the girl listened to more attentively than Columbus's story about the new continent could be listened to for the first time. - "Well, say more," Assol asked when Longren, lost in thought, fell silent, and fell asleep on his chest with a head full of wonderful dreams.
It also served her as a great, always materially significant pleasure, the appearance of the clerk of the city toy shop, who willingly bought the work of Longren. To appease the father and bargain for the excess, the clerk took with him a couple of apples, a sweet pie, a handful of nuts for the girl. Longren usually asked for the real value out of dislike for bargaining, and the clerk slowed down. - "Oh, you," Longren said, "yes, I sat on this boat for a week. - The boat was five-vershoy. - Look, what kind of strength, and draft, and kindness? This boat of fifteen people will withstand in any weather ". In the end, the quiet fuss of the girl, purring over her apple, deprived Longren of his stamina and the desire to argue; he yielded, and the clerk, having filled the basket with excellent, durable toys, went away, laughing in his mustache. Longren did all the household work himself: he chopped wood, carried water, stoked the stove, cooked, washed, ironed linen and, in addition to all this, managed to work for money. When Assol was eight years old, her father taught her to read and write. He began occasionally taking it with him to the city, and then even sending one if there was a need to intercept money in a store or demolish goods. This did not happen often, although Lise lay only four versts from Kaperna, but the road to it went through the forest, and in the forest there are many things that can frighten children, in addition to physical danger, which, it is true, is difficult to meet at such a close distance from the city, but still still doesn't hurt to keep in mind. Therefore, only on good days, in the morning, when the thicket surrounding the road is full of sunny showers, flowers and silence, so that Assol's impressionability was not threatened by phantoms of the imagination, Longren let her go to the city.
One day, in the middle of such a journey to the city, the girl sat down by the road to eat a piece of cake, put in a basket for breakfast. As she nibbled, she sorted through the toys; two or three of them were new to her: Longren had made them at night. One such novelty was a miniature racing yacht; the white ship raised scarlet sails made from scraps of silk used by Longren for pasting steamer cabins - toys of a wealthy buyer. Here, apparently, having made a yacht, he did not find a suitable material for the sail, using what was available - shreds of scarlet silk. Assol was delighted. The fiery cheerful color burned so brightly in her hand, as if she were holding a fire. The road was crossed by a stream, with a pole bridge thrown over it; the stream to the right and left went into the forest. “If I let her swim a little, Assol thought, she won’t get wet, I’ll wipe her off later.” Having moved into the forest behind the bridge, along the course of the stream, the girl carefully launched the ship that captivated her into the water near the shore; the sails immediately sparkled with a scarlet reflection in the transparent water: the light, penetrating matter, lay down in a trembling pink radiation on the white stones of the bottom. “Where did you come from, captain?” Assol asked the imaginary face importantly and, answering herself, said: “I came, I came ... I came from China. - What did you bring? “What I brought, I won’t say. “Oh, you are, Captain! Well, then I'll put you back in the basket." Just as the captain was preparing to humbly answer that he was joking and that he was ready to show the elephant, when suddenly a quiet run-off of the coastal stream turned the yacht with its bow to the middle of the stream, and, like a real one, leaving the shore at full speed, she swam evenly down. The scale of the visible instantly changed: the stream seemed to the girl a huge river, and the yacht seemed like a distant, large ship, to which, almost falling into the water, frightened and dumbfounded, she held out her hands. "The captain was frightened," thought she ran after the floating toy, hoping that it would be washed ashore somewhere. After all, if it happens ... "- She tried not to lose sight of the beautiful, smoothly escaping triangle of sails, stumbled, fell and ran again.
Assol has never been as deep in the forest as she is now. She, absorbed in an impatient desire to catch a toy, did not look around; near the shore, where she fussed, there were enough obstacles to occupy her attention. Mossy trunks of fallen trees, pits, tall ferns, wild roses, jasmine and hazel hindered her at every step; overcoming them, she gradually lost her strength, stopping more and more often to rest or brush off the sticky cobwebs from her face. When sedge and reed thickets stretched out in wider places, Assol completely lost sight of the scarlet sparkle of the sails, but, having run around the bend of the current, she again saw them, sedately and steadily running away. Once she looked back, and the vastness of the forest, with its variegation, passing from the smoky columns of light in the foliage to the dark clefts of the dense twilight, deeply struck the girl. For a moment, shy, she remembered again about the toy and, after releasing a deep "f-f-w-w" several times, she ran with all her might.
In such an unsuccessful and anxious pursuit, about an hour passed, when, with surprise, but also with relief, Assol saw that the trees ahead parted freely, letting in the blue overflow of the sea, the clouds and the edge of the yellow sandy cliff, to which she ran out, almost falling from fatigue. Here was the mouth of the stream; spilling narrowly and shallowly, so that the flowing blueness of the stones could be seen, it disappeared in the oncoming sea wave. From a low cliff, pitted with roots, Assol saw that by the stream, on a large flat stone, with his back to her, a man was sitting, holding a runaway yacht in his hands, and comprehensively examining it with the curiosity of an elephant that had caught a butterfly. Somewhat reassured by the fact that the toy was intact, Assol slid down the cliff and, coming close to the stranger, looked at him with a studying look, waiting for him to raise his head. But the stranger was so immersed in the contemplation of the forest surprise that the girl managed to examine him from head to toe, establishing that she had never seen people like this stranger before.
But in front of her was none other than Aigle, a well-known collector of songs, legends, traditions and fairy tales, traveling on foot. Gray curls fell out in folds from under his straw hat; a gray blouse tucked into blue trousers and high boots gave him the look of a hunter; a white collar, a tie, a belt studded with silver badges, a cane, and a bag with a brand new nickel clasp - showed a city dweller. His face, if one can call it a face, is his nose, his lips and his eyes, which peeped out of a vigorously overgrown radiant beard and a magnificent, ferociously upturned mustache, would have seemed sluggishly transparent, if it were not for his eyes, gray as sand, and shining like pure steel, with a glance bold and strong.
“Now give it to me,” the girl said timidly. - You've already played. How did you catch her?
Aigl raised his head, dropping the yacht, - so suddenly Assol's excited voice sounded. The old man looked at her for a minute, smiling and slowly letting his beard pass through a large, sinewy handful. Washed many times, the cotton dress barely covered the girl's thin, tanned legs to the knees. Her dark thick hair, pulled back in a lace scarf, was tangled, touching her shoulders. Every feature of Assol was expressively light and pure, like the flight of a swallow. The dark eyes, tinged with a sad question, seemed somewhat older than the face; his irregular soft oval was covered with that kind of lovely tan that is characteristic of a healthy whiteness of the skin. The half-open little mouth gleamed with a meek smile.
“I swear by the Grimms, Aesop and Andersen,” said Aigle, looking first at the girl, then at the yacht. -- It's something special. Listen, you plant! Is this your thing?
- Yes, I ran after her all over the stream; I thought I would die. Was she here?
“At my very feet.” The shipwreck is the reason I, in my capacity as a coastal pirate, can give you this prize. The yacht, abandoned by the crew, was thrown onto the sand by a three-inch shaft - between my left heel and the tip of the stick. He tapped his cane. "What's your name, little one?"
"Assol," said the girl, putting the toy Egle had given her into the basket.
"Very well," the old man continued in an incomprehensible speech, without taking his eyes off, in the depths of which a grin of friendly disposition gleamed. "I really shouldn't have asked your name." It is good that it is so strange, so monotonous, musical, like the whistle of an arrow or the sound of a seashell: what would I do if you called yourself one of those euphonious, but unbearably familiar names that are alien to the Beautiful Unknown? Moreover, I do not want to know who you are, who your parents are and how you live. Why break the charm? Sitting on this stone, I was engaged in a comparative study of Finnish and Japanese stories ... when suddenly the stream splashed out this yacht, and then you appeared ... Just the way you are. I, my dear, am a poet at heart - though I have never composed myself. What's in your basket?
“Boats,” said Assol, shaking her basket, “then a steamboat and three more of these houses with flags. Soldiers live there.
-- Excellent. You were sent to sell. On the way, you took up the game. You let the yacht float, and she ran away - right?
- Have you seen it? Assol asked doubtfully, trying to remember if she had told it herself. - Did someone tell you? Or did you guess?
“I knew it. - And how?
“Because I am the most important magician. Assol was embarrassed: her tension at these words of Egle crossed the border of fright. The deserted seashore, the silence, the tedious adventure with the yacht, the incomprehensible speech of the old man with sparkling eyes, the majesty of his beard and hair began to seem to the girl a mixture of the supernatural and reality. Now make Aigle a grimace or shout something - the girl would rush away, crying and exhausted with fear. But Aigle, noticing how wide her eyes opened, made a sharp volt.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said seriously. “On the contrary, I want to talk to you to my heart’s content. It was only then that he realized to himself that in the face of the girl his impression had been so intently marked. "An involuntary expectation of a beautiful, blissful fate," he decided. "Ah, why wasn't I born a writer? What a glorious plot."
“Come on,” Egle continued, trying to round off the original position (the tendency to myth-making - a consequence of constant work - was stronger than the fear of throwing the seeds of a big dream on unknown soil), “come on, Assol, listen to me carefully. I was in that village - where you must be coming from, in a word, in Kaperna. I love fairy tales and songs, and I sat in that village all day, trying to hear something no one heard. But you don't tell fairy tales. You don't sing songs. And if they tell and sing, then, you know, these stories about cunning peasants and soldiers, with eternal praise of swindle, these dirty, like unwashed feet, rough, like rumbling in the stomach, short quatrains with a terrible motive ... Stop, I lost my way. I will speak again. Thinking about it, he continued like this: “I don’t know how many years will pass, only in Kaperna will one fairy tale bloom that will be remembered for a long time. You will be big, Assol. One morning, in the sea, a scarlet sail will sparkle under the sun. The shining bulk of the scarlet sails of the white ship will move, cutting through the waves, straight to you. This wonderful ship will sail quietly, without screams and shots; many people will gather on the shore, wondering and gasping: and you will stand there The ship will approach majestically to the very shore to the sounds of beautiful music; elegant, in carpets, in gold and flowers, a fast boat will sail from it. "Why have you come? Who are you looking for?" the people on the beach will ask. Then you will see a brave handsome prince; he will stand and stretch out his hands to you. - "Hello, Assol! - he will say. - Far, far from here, I saw you in a dream and came to take you forever to my kingdom. You will live there with me in a pink deep valley. You will have everything, whatever you wish; we will live with you so amicably and cheerfully that your soul will never know tears and sadness. He will put you in a boat, bring you on a ship, and you will leave forever for a brilliant country where the sun rises and where the stars descend from the sky to congratulate you on your arrival.
-- It's all for me? the girl asked softly. Her serious eyes, cheerful, shone with confidence. A dangerous wizard, of course, would not speak like that; she stepped closer. "Perhaps he has already arrived... that ship?"
“Not so soon,” said Aigle, “at first, as I said, you will grow up. Then... What can I say? - it will be, and it's over. What would you do then?
-- I? - She looked into the basket, but apparently did not find anything worthy of serving as a weighty reward. “I would love him,” she said hurriedly, and added, not quite firmly, “if he doesn’t fight.”
“No, he won’t fight,” said the magician, winking mysteriously, “he won’t, I vouch for it.” Go, girl, and don't forget what I told you between two sips of aromatic vodka and thinking about the songs of convicts. Go. May peace be with your furry head!
Longren worked in his small garden, digging in potato bushes. Raising his head, he saw Assol running headlong towards him with a joyful and impatient face.
“Well, here ...” she said, trying to control her breath, and grabbed hold of her father’s apron with both hands. “Listen to what I'll tell you... On the shore, far away, a magician is sitting... She began with the magician and his interesting prediction. The fever of her thoughts prevented her from conveying the incident smoothly. Next came the description of the appearance of the wizard and - in reverse order - the pursuit of a lost yacht.
Longren listened to the girl without interrupting, without a smile, and when she finished, his imagination quickly drew an unknown old man with aromatic vodka in one hand and a toy in the other. He turned away, but, remembering that on the great occasions of a child's life it behooves a man to be serious and surprised, he solemnly nodded his head, saying: "So, so; by all indications, there is no one else to be like a magician. I would like to look at him ... But when you go again, do not turn aside; It's easy to get lost in the forest.
Throwing down the shovel, he sat down by the low brushwood fence and sat the girl on his lap. Terribly tired, she tried to add some more details, but the heat, excitement and weakness made her sleepy. Her eyes were stuck together, her head rested on her father's firm shoulder, and in a moment she would have been carried off into the land of dreams, when suddenly, disturbed by a sudden doubt, Assol sat up straight, with her eyes closed and, resting her fists on Longren's waistcoat, said loudly: do you think the magic ship will come for me or not?
“He will come,” the sailor answered calmly, “since you have been told this, then everything is correct.
"He will grow up, he will forget," he thought, "but for now ... you shouldn't take away such a toy from you. After all, in the future you will have to see not scarlet, but dirty and predatory sails: from a distance - elegant and white, close - "torn and impudent. A passer-by joked with my girl. Well?! Good joke! Nothing - a joke! Look how you got sick - half a day in the forest, in the thicket. As for the scarlet sails, think as I do: you will have Scarlet Sails".
Assol was asleep. Longren, taking out his pipe with his free hand, lit a cigarette, and the wind carried the smoke through the wattle fence into a bush that grew on the outside of the garden. By the bush, with his back to the fence, chewing a pie, sat a young beggar. The conversation between father and daughter put him in a cheerful mood, and the smell of good tobacco set him up in a lucrative mood. “Give, master, a poor man a smoke,” he said through the bars. - My tobacco against yours is not tobacco, but, one might say, poison.
“I would,” said Longren in an undertone, “but I have the tobacco in that pocket.” You see, I don't want to wake my daughter.
- That's the trouble! Wakes up, falls asleep again, and a passer-by took and smoked.
“Well,” objected Longren, “you are not without tobacco after all, but the child is tired. Come in later if you want.
The beggar spat contemptuously, lifted the sack on a stick and explained: “Princess, of course. You drove these overseas ships into her head! Oh, you eccentric eccentric, and also the owner!
“Listen,” Longren whispered, “I’ll probably wake her up, but only to soap your hefty neck.” Go away!
Half an hour later, the beggar was sitting in a tavern at a table with a dozen fishermen. Behind them, now tugging at their husbands' sleeves, now lifting a glass of vodka over their shoulders—for themselves, of course—sat tall women with arched eyebrows and arms as round as cobblestones. The beggar, seething with resentment, narrated: - And he did not give me tobacco. - "You, - he says, - will turn the age of majority, and then, - he says, - a special red ship ... Behind you. Since your fate is to marry the prince. And that, - he says, - believe the magician. But I say: - "Wake up, wake up, they say, get some tobacco." So after all, he ran after me half the way.
-- Who? What? What is he talking about? - curious voices of women were heard. The fishermen, barely turning their heads, explained with a grin: “Longren and his daughter have gone wild, or maybe they have lost their minds; here is a man talking. They had a sorcerer, so you have to understand. They are waiting - aunts, you should not miss! - an overseas prince, and even under red sails!
Three days later, returning from the city shop, Assol heard for the first time: - Hey, gallows! Assol! Look here! Red sails are sailing!
The girl, shuddering, involuntarily glanced from under her arm at the flood of the sea. Then she turned in the direction of the exclamations; there, twenty paces from her, stood a bunch of children; they grimaced, sticking out their tongues. Sighing, the girl ran home.

II GRAY

If Caesar found it better to be first in a village than second in Rome, then Arthur Gray could not be jealous of Caesar in regard to his wise desire. He was born a captain, wanted to be one and became one.
The huge house in which Gray was born was gloomy inside and majestic outside. A flower garden and part of the park adjoined the front facade. The finest varieties of tulips—silver blue, purple, and black with a pink tinge—wriggled through the lawn in lines of whimsically thrown necklaces. The old trees of the park slumbered in the scattered half-light above the sedge of a meandering stream. The fence of the castle, since it was a real castle, consisted of twisted cast-iron pillars connected by an iron pattern. Each pillar ended at the top with a magnificent cast-iron lily; on solemn days these bowls were filled with oil, blazing in the darkness of the night with a vast fiery array.
Gray's father and mother were arrogant slaves of their position, wealth and the laws of a society in relation to which they could say "we". Part of their soul, occupied by the gallery of ancestors, is not worthy of an image, the other part - an imaginary continuation of the gallery - began with little Gray, doomed, according to a well-known, pre-planned plan, to live life and die so that his portrait could be hung on the wall without damaging family honor. . In this regard, a small mistake was made: Arthur Gray was born with a living soul, completely unwilling to continue the line of the family style.
This liveliness, this complete perversity of the boy began to show itself in the eighth year of his life; the type of a knight of bizarre impressions, a seeker and a miracle worker, that is, a man who took the most dangerous and touching role of life out of the countless variety of roles of life - the role of Providence, was outlined in Gray even when, putting a chair against the wall to get a picture depicting a crucifixion, he took the nails out of the bloody hands of Christ, that is, he simply smeared them with blue paint stolen from the house painter. In this form, he found the picture more tolerable. Carried away by a peculiar occupation, he already began to cover up the legs of the crucified, but was caught by his father. The old man lifted the boy from the chair by the ears and asked: - Why did you ruin the picture?
- I didn't spoil it.
- This is the work of a famous artist.
"I don't care," Gray said. “I can’t bear nails sticking out of my hands and blood flowing in my presence. I do not want it.
In the answer of his son, Lionel Gray, hiding a smile under his mustache, recognized himself and did not impose punishment.
Gray tirelessly explored the castle, making startling discoveries. So, in the attic, he found steel knight's rubbish, books bound in iron and leather, decayed clothes and hordes of pigeons. In the cellar where the wine was stored, he received interesting information about lafite, madeira, sherry. Here, in the dim light of the pointed windows, pressed down by the slanting triangles of the stone vaults, stood small and large barrels; the largest, in the form of a flat circle, occupied the entire transverse wall of the cellar; the hundred-year-old dark oak of the barrel gleamed as if polished. Among the casks were pot-bellied bottles of green and blue glass in wicker baskets. Gray mushrooms with thin stems grew on the stones and on the earthen floor: everywhere there was mold, moss, dampness, a sour, suffocating smell. A huge cobweb was golden in the far corner, when, in the evening, the sun looked out for it with its last ray. In one place two barrels of the best Alicante that existed in Cromwell's time were buried, and the cellar-keeper, pointing Gray to an empty corner, did not miss the opportunity to repeat the story of the famous grave in which lay a dead man, more alive than a flock of fox-terriers. Starting the story, the narrator did not forget to try if the tap was working. big barrels, and departed from him, apparently with a relieved heart, for involuntary tears of too strong joy glittered in his cheerful eyes.
“Well, then,” said Poldishok to Gray, sitting down on an empty box and stuffing his pointed nose with tobacco, “do you see this place? There lies such wine, for which more than one drunkard would agree to cut out his tongue, if he were allowed to have a small glass. Each barrel contains a hundred liters of a substance that explodes the soul and turns the body into motionless dough. Its color is darker than cherry and it won't run out of the bottle. It's thick, like good cream. It is enclosed in barrels of ebony, strong as iron. They have double hoops of red copper. On the hoops there is a Latin inscription: "Grey will drink me when he is in paradise." This inscription was interpreted so extensively and contradictorily that your great-grandfather, the noble Simeon Gray, built a cottage, called it "Paradise", and thought in this way to reconcile the enigmatic saying with reality through innocent wit. But what do you think? He died as soon as the hoops began to be knocked down, from a broken heart, the dainty old man was so worried. Since then, this barrel has not been touched. There was a belief that precious wine would bring bad luck. In fact, the Egyptian Sphinx did not ask such a riddle. True, he asked a wise man: - "Will I eat you, as I eat everyone? Tell the truth, you will stay alive," but even then, after mature reflection ...
“I think it’s dripping from the faucet again,” Poldishok interrupted himself, rushing with indirect steps to the corner, where, having fixed the faucet, he would return with an open, bright face. -- Yes. Having judged well, and most importantly, without haste, the sage could say to the sphinx: "Let's go, brother, have a drink, and you will forget about these nonsense." "Grey will drink me when he's in paradise!" How to understand? Will he drink when he dies, or what? Weird. Therefore, he is a saint, therefore he does not drink wine or plain vodka. Let's say "paradise" means happiness. But since the question is put in this way, every happiness will lose half of its brilliant feathers when the lucky person sincerely asks himself: is it paradise? Here's the thing. In order to drink from such a barrel with a light heart and laugh, my boy, to laugh well, you need to stand with one foot on the ground, the other in the sky. There is a third assumption: that someday Gray will drink up to a blissfully heavenly state and boldly empty the barrel. But this, boy, would not be the fulfillment of a prediction, but a tavern brawl.
Convinced once again that the faucet of the large barrel was in good condition, Poldishok finished with concentration and gloomy: - These barrels were brought in 1793 by your ancestor, John Gray, from Lisbon, on the ship "Beagle"; two thousand gold piastres were paid for the wine. The inscription on the barrels was made by the gunsmith Veniamin Elyan from Pondicherry. The barrels are sunk six feet into the ground and covered with ashes from grape stalks. No one has drunk this wine, has not tried it and will not try it.
"I'll drink it," Gray said one day, stamping his foot.
"Here's a brave young man!" said Poldishok. "Will you drink it in heaven?"
-- Of course. Here is paradise! .. I have it, you see? Gray laughed softly, opening his small hand. A delicate but firm palm was lit up by the sun, and the boy clenched his fingers into a fist. - Here he is, here! .. Here, then again not ...
Saying this, he first opened and then clasped his hand, and finally, pleased with his joke, ran ahead of Poldishock, up the gloomy stairs into the corridor of the lower floor.
Gray was strictly forbidden to visit the kitchen, but once he had already discovered this amazing world of steam, soot, hissing, gurgling of boiling liquids, the clatter of knives and delicious smells, the boy diligently visited the huge room. In stern silence, like priests, the cooks moved; their white caps against the blackened walls gave the work the character of a solemn service; merry, fat kitchen-maids were washing dishes by barrels of water, clinking china and silver; the boys, bending under the weight, brought in baskets full of fish, oysters, crayfish and fruit. There, on a long table, lay rainbow-colored pheasants, gray ducks, motley chickens: there was a pig carcass with a short tail and eyes closed as a child; there are turnips, cabbages, nuts, blue raisins, tanned peaches.
In the kitchen, Gray became a little shy: it seemed to him that everything was being moved here. dark forces, whose power is the mainspring of the life of the castle; the shouts sounded like a command and a spell; the movements of the workers, thanks to long practice, have acquired that distinct, stingy precision that seems to be inspiration. Gray was not yet so tall as to look into the largest pot, which seethed like Vesuvius, but he felt special respect for her; he watched with trepidation as she was turned over by two maids; then smoky foam splashed on the stove, and the steam, rising from the noisy stove, filled the kitchen in waves. Once the liquid splashed out so much that she scalded the hand of one girl. The skin instantly turned red, even the nails became red from the rush of blood, and Betsy (that was the name of the maid), crying, rubbed the affected places with oil. Tears rolled uncontrollably down her round, confused face.
Gray froze. While other women fussed about Betsy, he experienced a feeling of acute alien suffering that he could not experience himself.
- Are you in a lot of pain? -- he asked.
"Try it and you'll find out," answered Betsy, covering her hand with her apron.
Furrowing his brows, the boy climbed onto a stool, scooped up a long spoon of hot liquid (by the way, it was mutton soup) and splashed it on the crook of his brush. The impression was not weak, but weakness from severe pain made him stagger. Pale as flour, Gray went up to Betsy, putting his burning hand in the pocket of his pants.
"I think you're in a lot of pain," he said, silent about his experience. "Let's go, Betsy, to the doctor." Let's go!
He tugged diligently on her skirt, while home remedy advocates vied with each other to give the maid salutary recipes. But the girl, greatly tormented, went with Gray. The doctor relieved the pain by applying a bandage. Only after Betsy left did the boy show his hand. This minor episode made twenty-year-old Betsy and ten-year-old Gray true friends. She stuffed his pockets with pies and apples, and he told her fairy tales and other stories read in his books. One day he learned that Betsy could not marry the stable boy Jim, because they did not have money to acquire a household. Gray smashed his china piggy bank with his fireplace tongs and emptied out everything that amounted to about a hundred pounds. Getting up early. when the dowry retired to the kitchen, he made his way into her room and, putting the gift in the girl's chest, covered it with a short note: "Betsy, this is yours. The leader of a gang of robbers is Robin Hood." The commotion caused in the kitchen by this story was so great that Gray had to confess to the forgery. He didn't take the money back and didn't want to talk about it anymore.
His mother was one of those natures that life casts in finished form. She lived in a half-sleep of security, providing for any desire of an ordinary soul, so she had nothing to do but consult with dressmakers, a doctor and a butler. But a passionate, almost religious attachment to his strange child was, presumably, the only valve of those inclinations of hers, chloroformed by upbringing and fate, which no longer live, but vaguely wander, leaving the will inactive. The noble lady resembled a peacock that had hatched a swan's egg. She painfully felt the beautiful isolation of her son; sadness, love and embarrassment filled her when she pressed the boy to her chest, where the heart spoke differently than the language, habitually reflecting the conventional forms of relationships and thoughts. So the cloudy effect, bizarrely constructed by the sun's rays, penetrates the symmetrical setting of the government building, depriving it of its banal virtues; the eye sees and does not recognize the premises: the mysterious shades of light create a dazzling harmony among the squalor.
A noble lady, whose face and figure, it seemed, could only respond with icy silence to the fiery voices of life, whose subtle beauty repelled rather than attracted, because she felt an arrogant effort of will, devoid of feminine attraction - this Lillian Gray, left alone with a boy, became a simple mother, who spoke in a loving, meek tone those very trifles of the heart that cannot be conveyed on paper - their strength is in feeling, not in themselves. She absolutely could not refuse her son anything. She forgave him everything: stay in the kitchen, disgust for the lessons, disobedience and numerous quirks.
If he did not want the trees to be cut, the trees remained untouched, if he asked to forgive or reward someone, the person concerned knew that this would be so; he could ride any horse, take any dog ​​to the castle; rummaging in the library, running barefoot and eating whatever he pleases.
His father struggled with this for some time, but gave in - not to principle, but to the desire of his wife. He limited himself to removing all the children of servants from the castle, fearing that, thanks to low society, the boy's whims would turn into inclinations, difficult to eradicate. In general, he was absorbedly occupied with countless family processes, the beginning of which was lost in the era of the emergence of paper mills, and the end - in the death of all the slanderers. In addition, affairs of state, affairs of the estates, the dictation of memoirs, parade hunting trips, reading newspapers and complicated correspondence kept him at some internal distance from the family; he saw his son so rarely that he sometimes forgot how old he was.
Thus, Gray lived in his own world. He played alone - usually in the backyards of the castle, which had military significance in the old days. These vast wastelands, with the remains of high ditches, with moss-covered stone cellars, were full of weeds, nettles, thistles, thorns and modestly variegated wild flowers. Gray stayed here for hours, exploring mole holes, fighting weeds, watching for butterflies, and building fortresses from scrap bricks, which he bombarded with sticks and cobblestones.
He was already in his twelfth year, when all the hints of his soul, all the disparate features of the spirit and shades of secret impulses united in one strong moment and thus, having received a harmonious expression, became an indomitable desire. Prior to that, he seemed to find only separate parts of his garden - a gap, a shadow, a flower, a dense and magnificent trunk - in a multitude of other gardens, and suddenly he saw them clearly, all of them - in a beautiful, striking correspondence.
It happened in the library. Its high door with cloudy glass at the top was usually locked, but the latch of the lock held weakly in the socket of the wings; pressed with a hand, the door moved away, strained and opened. As the spirit of exploration led Gray into the library, he was struck by a dusty light whose strength and peculiarity lay in the colored pattern on the top of the windowpanes. The silence of abandonment stood here like pond water. Dark rows of bookcases in places adjoined the windows, half-screening them, and between the bookcases there were aisles littered with heaps of books. There is an open album with slipped inner sheets, there are scrolls tied with a golden cord; stacks of sullen-looking books; thick layers of manuscripts, a mound of miniature volumes that cracked like bark when they were opened; here are drawings and tables, rows of new editions, maps; a variety of bindings, rough, delicate, black, variegated, blue, grey, thick, thin, rough and smooth. The cupboards were packed full of books. They seemed like walls containing life in their very thickness. In the reflections of the cupboard glasses, other cupboards were visible, covered with colorless shining spots. A huge globe enclosed in a copper spherical cross of the equator and meridian stood on a round table.
Turning towards the exit, Gray saw a huge picture above the door, which immediately filled the stuffy stupor of the library with its content. The picture depicted a ship rising on the crest of a sea rampart. Jets of foam flowed down its slope. He was depicted in the last moment of takeoff. The ship was heading straight for the viewer. A high-rising bowsprit obscured the base of the masts. The crest of the shaft, flattened by the ship's keel, resembled the wings of a giant bird. Foam floated into the air. The sails, dimly visible behind the backboard and above the bowsprit, full of the furious force of the storm, fell back in their entirety, so that, having crossed the rampart, straighten up, and then, bending over the abyss, rush the ship to new avalanches. Broken clouds fluttered low over the ocean. The dim light doomedly struggled with the approaching darkness of the night. But the most remarkable thing in this picture was the figure of a man standing on the tank with his back to the viewer. It expressed the whole situation, even the character of the moment. The posture of the man (he spread his legs, waving his arms) did not actually say anything about what he was doing, but made one assume the extreme intensity of attention directed to something on the deck, invisible to the viewer. The rolled-up skirts of his caftan fluttered in the wind; a white scythe and a black sword were torn into the air; the richness of the costume showed in him the captain, the dancing position of the body - the wave of the shaft; without a hat, he was apparently absorbed in a dangerous moment and shouted - but what? Did he see a man fall overboard, did he order to turn on another tack, or, drowning out the wind, called the boatswain? Not thoughts, but shadows of these thoughts grew in Gray's soul as he watched the picture. Suddenly it seemed to him that an unknown unknown person approached him from the left, standing next to him; as soon as you turn your head, the bizarre sensation would disappear without a trace. Gray knew this. But he did not extinguish his imagination, but listened. A soundless voice shouted out a few staccato phrases as incomprehensible as the Malay language; there was a noise, as it were, of long landslides; echoes and a dark wind filled the library. All this Gray heard inside himself. He looked around: the instantaneous silence dispelled the sonorous cobweb of fantasy; the link to the storm was gone.
Gray came to see this picture several times. She became for him that necessary word in the conversation of the soul with life, without which it is difficult to understand oneself. In a small boy, a huge sea gradually fit in. He became accustomed to it, rummaging through the library, looking for and voraciously reading those books, behind the golden door of which the blue glow of the ocean opened. There, sowing foam behind the stern, ships moved. Some of them lost their sails and masts and, choking on the waves, sank into the darkness of the abyss, where the phosphorescent eyes of fish flashed. Others, seized by the breakers, fought against the reefs; the subsiding excitement shook the corps menacingly; a deserted ship with torn gear endured a long agony until a new storm blew it to pieces. Still others were safely loaded in one port and unloaded in another; the crew, sitting at the tavern table, sang of the voyage and drank vodka lovingly. There were also pirate ships, with a black flag and a terrible, knife-waving crew; ghost ships glowing with a deathly light of blue illumination; warships with soldiers, guns and music; ships of scientific expeditions looking out for volcanoes, plants and animals; ships with dark secrets and riots; ships of discovery and ships of adventure.
In this world, naturally, the figure of the captain towered over everything. He was the fate, soul and mind of the ship. His character determined the leisure and work of the team. The team itself was selected by him personally and in many respects corresponded to his inclinations. He knew the habits and family affairs of every man. In the eyes of his subordinates, he possessed magical knowledge, thanks to which he confidently walked, say, from Lisbon to Shanghai, through boundless spaces. He repelled the storm by countering a system of complex efforts, killing panic with short orders; swam and stopped where he wanted; disposed of sailing and loading, repair and rest; it was difficult to imagine a great and most reasonable power in a living business full of continuous movement. This power, in its closedness and completeness, was equal to the power of Orpheus.
Such an idea of ​​the captain, such an image and such a true reality of his position, occupied, by the right of spiritual events, the main place in Gray's brilliant mind. No profession but this could so successfully fuse all the treasures of life into one whole, preserving inviolable the finest pattern of each individual happiness. Danger, risk, the power of nature, the light of a distant land, the wonderful unknown, the flickering love that blooms with a date and separation; fascinating effervescence of meetings, faces, events; the immense diversity of life, while high in the sky is the Southern Cross, then the Bear, and all the continents are in sharp eyes, although your cabin is full of the never-leaving homeland with its books, paintings, letters and dry flowers, entwined with a silky curl in a suede amulet on firm chest. In the autumn, at the age of fifteen, Arthur Gray secretly left the house and entered the golden gates of the sea. Soon the schooner "Anselm" left the port of Dubelt for Marseille, taking away the cabin boy with small hands and the appearance of a girl in disguise. This cabin boy was Gray, the owner of an elegant bag, thin as a glove, patent leather boots and cambric linen with woven crowns.
During the year that the Anselm visited France, America and Spain, Gray squandered part of his property on a cake, paying tribute to the past, and lost the rest - for the present and future - at cards. He wanted to be a "devil" sailor. He drank vodka, gasping for breath, and when bathing, with a beating heart, he jumped head first into the water from a height of two sazhens. Little by little he lost everything except the main thing - his strange flying soul; he lost his weakness, becoming broad-boned and strong-muscled, his pallor was replaced by a dark tan, he gave away the refined carelessness of his movements for the confident accuracy of a working hand, and his thinking eyes reflected a gleam, like a man looking at a fire. And his speech, having lost its uneven, arrogantly shy fluidity, became short and precise, like a seagull striking a jet behind the quivering silver of fish.
The captain of the Anselm was a kind man, but a stern sailor who took the boy out of some kind of gloating. He saw in Gray's desperate desire only an eccentric whim and triumphed in advance, imagining how in two months Gray would say to him, avoiding looking into his eyes: - "Captain Gop, I tore my elbows crawling along the rigging; my sides and back, my fingers hurt they don't straighten, my head cracks, and my legs tremble. All these wet ropes weighing two pounds on the weight of my hands; all these rails, shrouds, windlasses, cables, topmasts and sallings are created to torment my tender body. I want to go to my mother." Having listened mentally to such a statement, Captain Gop kept, mentally, the following speech: - "Go wherever you want, my little bird. If resin has stuck to your sensitive wings, you can wash it at home with Rosa-Mimosa cologne. This cologne invented by Gop is more pleased the captain, and, having finished his imaginary rebuke, he repeated aloud: "Yes. Go to the Rose-Mimosa."
Meanwhile, the imposing dialogue came to the captain's mind less and less, as Gray walked towards the goal with clenched teeth and a pale face. He endured the hectic work with a determined effort of will, feeling that it was getting easier and easier for him as the harsh ship broke into his body, and inability was replaced by habit. It happened that the loop of the anchor chain knocked him off his feet, hitting the deck, that the rope, unsupported at the knek, pulled out of his hands, tearing off the skin from his palms, that the wind hit him in the face with a wet corner of the sail with an iron ring sewn into it, and, in short, all the work was a torture that required close attention, but no matter how hard he breathed, with difficulty straightening his back, a smile of contempt did not leave his face. He silently endured ridicule, bullying and the inevitable scolding, until he became "his own" in the new sphere, but from that time on he invariably responded with boxing to any insult.
Once Captain Gop, seeing how he skillfully knits a sail on a yardarm, said to himself: "Victory is on your side, rogue." When Gray went down on deck, Gop called him into the cabin and, opening a tattered book, said: "Listen carefully!" Quit smoking! Finishing the puppy under the captain begins.
And he began to read - or rather, to speak and shout - from the book the ancient words of the sea. It was Gray's first lesson. During the year he got acquainted with navigation, practice, shipbuilding, maritime law, sailing and accounting. Captain Gop gave him his hand and said: "We."
In Vancouver, Gray was caught by a letter from his mother, full of tears and fear. He replied: "I know. But if you could see how I am; look with my eyes. If you could hear how I am: put a shell to your ear: there is the sound of an eternal wave in it; if you loved like me - everything, in your letter I would have found, besides love and a check, a smile ... "And he continued to swim until the Anselm arrived with a cargo in Dubelt, from where, using a stopover, twenty-year-old Gray went to visit the castle. Everything was the same around; just as indestructible in detail and in general impression as five years ago, only the foliage of young elms became thicker; its pattern on the facade of the building shifted and grew.
The servants who ran to him were delighted, startled and froze in the same respect with which, as if only yesterday, they met this Gray. He was told where his mother was; he went into a high room and, quietly closing the door, stopped inaudibly, looking at a gray-haired woman in a black dress. She stood in front of the crucifix: her passionate whisper was sonorous, like a full heartbeat. - "About the floating, traveling, sick, suffering and captive," - he heard, breathing shortly, Gray. Then it was said: - "and to my boy ..." Then he said: - "I ..." But he could not utter anything more. The mother turned around. She had lost weight: in the arrogance of her thin face shone a new expression, like the return of youth. She rushed over to her son; a short chesty laugh, a restrained exclamation and tears in the eyes - that's all. But in that moment she lived stronger and better than in her entire life. - "I immediately recognized you, oh, my dear, my little one!" And Gray really stopped being big. He heard about the death of his father, then spoke about himself. She listened without reproaches and objections, but inwardly - in everything that he asserted as the truth of his life - she saw only toys with which her boy amuses himself. Such toys were continents, oceans and ships.
Gray stayed at the castle for seven days; on the eighth day, taking a large sum money, he returned to Dubelt and said to Captain Hop: “Thank you. You were a good comrade. own ship." Gop flushed, spat, tore his hand away and walked away, but Gray, catching up, embraced him. And they sat down in the hotel, all together, twenty-four people with the team, and drank, and shouted, and sang, and drank and ate everything that was on the sideboard and in the kitchen.
A little time passed, and in the port of Dubelt the evening star flashed over the black line of the new mast. It was the "Secret" bought by Gray; a three-masted galliot of two hundred and sixty tons. So, Arthur Gray sailed as the captain and owner of the ship for another four years, until fate brought him to the Fox. But he always remembered that short chesty laugh, full of heartfelt music, with which he was greeted at home, and twice a year he visited the castle, leaving the woman with silver hair the unsteady confidence that such a big boy could possibly cope with his toys.

III DAWN

A jet of foam from the stern of Gray's ship, the Secret, passed through the ocean like a white line and went out in the glow of the evening lights of Lyss. The ship stood in the roadstead not far from the lighthouse.
Ten days "Secret" unloaded chesucha, coffee and tea, the eleventh day the team spent on the shore, resting and wine vapors; On the twelfth day, Gray felt dull and melancholy, without any reason, not understanding the melancholy.
In the morning, barely waking up, he already felt that this day had begun in black rays. He dressed gloomily, ate breakfast reluctantly, forgot to read the newspaper, and smoked for a long time, immersed in an inexpressible world of aimless tension; unrecognized desires wandered among the dimly emerging words, mutually annihilating themselves with equal effort. Then he got down to business.
Accompanied by the boatswain, Gray inspected the ship, ordered the shrouds to be tightened, the steering ropes to be loosened, the fairleads to be cleaned, the jib to be changed, the deck to be tarred, the compass to be cleaned, the hold to be opened, ventilated and swept. But the case did not entertain Gray. Full of anxious attention to the drearyness of the day, he lived it irritably and sadly: it was as if someone called him, but he forgot who and where.
In the evening he sat down in the cabin, took a book and objected to the author for a long time, making notes of a paradoxical nature in the margins. For some time he was amused by this game, this conversation with the dead ruling from the tomb. Then, picking up the phone, he drowned in blue smoke, living among the ghostly arabesques that emerge in his unsteady layers. Tobacco is terribly powerful; just as oil poured into a galloping break in the waves subdues their rage, so does tobacco: softening the irritation of the senses, it reduces them a few tones lower; they sound smoother and more musical. That is why Gray's melancholy, finally losing its offensive significance after three pipes, turned into thoughtful absent-mindedness. This state continued for about an hour; when the spiritual fog disappeared, Gray woke up, wanted to move and went out on deck. It was full night; overboard, in the dream of black water, the stars and the lights of the mast lanterns slumbered. Warm as a cheek, the air smelled of the sea. Gray raised his head and squinted at the golden coal of the star; instantaneously, through the breathtaking miles, the fiery needle of a distant planet penetrated into his pupils. The dull noise of the evening city reached the ear from the depths of the bay; sometimes a coastal phrase, spoken as if on deck, flew in with the wind along the sensitive water; having sounded clearly, it went out in the creak of gear; a match flared on the can, illuminating his fingers, his round eyes, and his moustache. Gray whistled; the fire of the pipe moved and floated towards him; soon the captain saw in the darkness the hands and face of the watchman.
“Tell Letika,” Gray said, “that he will come with me. Let him take the rods.
He went down to the sloop, where he waited for about ten minutes. Letika, a nimble, roguish fellow, rattling his oars against the side, gave them to Gray; then he went down himself, adjusted the oarlocks, and put the sack of provisions into the stern of the sloop. Gray sat at the wheel.
Where would you like to go, captain? asked Letika, circling the boat with the right oar.
The captain was silent. The sailor knew that it was impossible to insert words into this silence, and therefore, having become silent himself, he began to row hard.
Gray took the direction to the open sea, then began to keep to the left bank. He didn't care where he went. The steering wheel murmured dully; oars tinkled and splashed, everything else was sea and silence.
In the course of a day, a person listens to such a multitude of thoughts, impressions, speeches and words that all this would make up more than one thick book. The face of the day takes on a certain expression, but Gray looked at that face in vain today. In his vague features shone one of those feelings, of which there are many, but which have not been given a name. No matter how you call them, they will remain forever beyond words and even concepts, like the suggestion of aroma. Gray was now in the grip of such a feeling; he could, it is true, say: "I am waiting, I see, I will soon find out ...", but even these words amounted to no more than individual drawings in relation to an architectural design. In these trends there was still the power of luminous excitement.
Where they sailed, on the left, the shore stood out like a wavy thickening of darkness. Sparks from chimneys floated over the red glass of the windows; it was Caperna. Gray heard bickering and barking. The fires of the village looked like a stove door, burnt through with holes through which flaming coal is visible. To the right was the ocean, as distinct as the presence of a sleeping man. Passing Kaperna, Gray turned towards the shore. Here the water lapped softly; illuminating the lantern, he saw the pits of the cliff and its upper overhanging ledges; he liked this place.
"We'll go fishing here," said Gray, clapping the rower on the shoulder.
The sailor chuckled vaguely.
“This is my first time sailing with such a captain,” he muttered. - The captain is efficient, but unlike. Stubborn captain. However, I love him.
Having hammered the oar into the silt, he tied the boat to it, and both climbed up, climbing the stones that jumped out from under their knees and elbows. A thicket stretched from the cliff. There was the sound of an ax cutting through a dry trunk; knocking down a tree, Letika made a fire on a cliff. Shadows moved, and flames reflected by the water; in the receding darkness, grass and branches were highlighted; above the fire, entwined with smoke, sparkling, the air trembled.
Gray sat down by the fire.
“Come on,” he said, holding out the bottle, “drink, friend Letika, to the health of all teetotalers.” By the way, you took not cinchona, but ginger.
“Excuse me, captain,” the sailor replied, catching his breath. “Let me have a bite of this…” He bit off half of the chicken at once and, taking a wing out of his mouth, continued: “I know that you like cinchona. Only it was dark, and I was in a hurry. Ginger, you see, hardens a person. When I have to fight, I drink ginger. While the captain ate and drank, the sailor looked askance at him, then, unable to restrain himself, said: - Is it true, captain, that they say that you come from a noble family?
- It's not interesting, Letika. Take a rod and catch it if you want.
-- And you?
-- I? Don't know. May be. But then. Letika unwound the fishing rod, saying in verse what he was a master of, to the great admiration of the team: - I made a long whip out of a lace and a piece of wood and, attaching a hook to it, let out a drawn-out whistle. Then he tickled the box of worms with his finger. - This worm wandered in the earth and was happy with its life, but now it has been caught on a hook - and catfish will eat it.
Finally, he left singing: - The night is quiet, the vodka is fine, tremble, sturgeons, pop into a swoon, herring - Letika is fishing from the mountain!
Gray lay down by the fire, looking at the water reflecting the fire. He thought, but without the participation of will; in this state, thought, distractedly retaining the surroundings, dimly sees it; she rushes like a horse in a close crowd, crushing, pushing and stopping; emptiness, confusion and delay accompany it alternately. She wanders in the soul of things; from bright excitement hurries to secret hints; circling the earth and sky, conversing vitally with imaginary faces, quenching and decorating memories. In this cloudy movement, everything is alive and prominent, and everything is incoherent, like nonsense. And the resting consciousness often smiles, seeing, for example, how, while thinking about fate, it suddenly favors a guest with an image that is completely inappropriate: some twig broken two years ago. So Gray thought by the fire, but he was "somewhere" - not here.
The elbow with which he leaned, supporting his head with his hand, was damp and numb. The stars shone palely, the gloom was intensified by the tension that preceded dawn. The captain began to fall asleep, but did not notice it. He wanted a drink and reached for the sack, untying it in his sleep. Then he stopped dreaming; the next two hours were for Gray no more than those seconds during which he bowed his head in his hands. During this time, Letika appeared by the fire twice, smoked and, out of curiosity, looked into the mouths of the caught fish - what was there? But, of course, there was nothing there.
Waking up, Gray for a moment forgot how he got to these places. With amazement, he saw the happy brilliance of the morning, the cliff of the coast among these branches and the flaming blue distance; hazel leaves hung above the horizon, but at the same time above his feet. At the bottom of the cliff - with the impression that under the very back of Gray - a quiet surf hissed. Flickering from the leaf, a drop of dew spread over a sleepy face with a cold slap. He got up. Everywhere there was light. The cooled firebrands clung to life with a thin stream of smoke. Its scent gave the pleasure of breathing the green forest air a wild charm.
Letika was not; he got carried away; he was sweating and fishing with the enthusiasm of a gambler. Gray stepped out of the thicket into the bushes scattered along the slope of the hill. The grass smoked and burned; the wet flowers looked like children who had been forcibly washed in cold water. The green world breathed with countless tiny mouths, making it difficult for Gray to pass among its jubilant crowding. The captain got out to an open place overgrown with motley grass, and saw a sleeping young girl here.
He quietly moved the branch away with his hand and stopped with a sense of a dangerous find. Not more than five paces away, curled up, picking up one leg and stretching out the other, the exhausted Assol lay with her head on her comfortably folded arms. Her hair moved in a mess; a button at the neck was undone, revealing a white hole; the open skirt showed her knees; eyelashes slept on the cheek, in the shade of a tender, convex temple, half-hidden by a dark strand; little finger right hand, which was under the head, bent down to the back of the head. Gray squatted down, peering into the girl's face from below, not suspecting that he resembled a faun from a painting by Arnold Böcklin.
Perhaps, under other circumstances, this girl would have been noticed by him only with his eyes, but here he saw her differently. Everything shook, everything smiled in him. Of course, he did not know her, or her name, and, moreover, why she fell asleep on the shore, but he was very pleased with this. He loved pictures without explanations and signatures. The impression of such a picture is incomparably stronger; its content, not bound by words, becomes limitless, affirming all conjectures and thoughts.
The shadow of the foliage crept closer to the trunks, and Gray was still sitting in the same uncomfortable position. Everything slept on the girl: slept;! dark hair, the dress fell off and the folds of the dress; even the grass near her body seemed to doze off in the strength of sympathy. When the impression was complete, Gray stepped into its warm, washing away wave and swam away with it. For a long time already Letika shouted: - "Captain. where are you?" but the captain did not hear him.
When he finally got up, his penchant for the unusual took him by surprise with the determination and inspiration of an exasperated woman. Thoughtfully yielding to her, he removed an expensive old ring from his finger, thinking, not without reason, that perhaps this was suggesting something essential to life, like spelling. He carefully lowered the ring onto his small little finger, which was whitening from under the back of his head. Littlefinger moved impatiently and drooped. Glancing once more at that resting face, Gray turned and saw the sailor's highly raised eyebrows in the bushes. Letika, open-mouthed, looked at Gray's studies with such astonishment, with which Iona, probably, looked at the mouth of his furnished whale.
“Ah, it’s you, Letika!” Gray said. - Look at her. What is good?
- Amazing piece of art! shouted the sailor in a whisper, who loved book expressions. “There is something inviting in consideration of the circumstances. I caught four moray eels and another thick one, like a bubble.
- Hush, Letika. Let's get out of here.
They retreated into the bushes. They should now have turned towards the boat, but Gray hesitated, looking at the distance of the low bank, where the morning smoke of Caperna's chimneys poured over the greenery and sand. In this smoke he saw the girl again.
Then he turned decisively, descending along the slope; the sailor, without asking what had happened, walked behind; he felt that the obligatory silence had come again. Already near the first buildings, Gray suddenly said: - Could you, Letika, with your experienced eye, determine where the tavern is here? - It must be that black roof over there, - Letika realized, - but, by the way, maybe not it.
- What is noticeable in this roof?
“I don't know, Captain. Nothing more than the voice of the heart.
They approached the house; it was indeed Menners' tavern. In the open window, on the table, one could see a bottle; beside her, a dirty hand was milking a half-gray mustache.
Although the hour was early, there were three people in the common room of the tavern. At the window sat the coal-burner, the owner of the drunken mustache we had already noticed; between the sideboard and the inner door of the hall, two fishermen were placed behind scrambled eggs and beer. Menners, a tall young lad, with a dull, freckled face and that particular expression of sly glibness in his blind eyes, which is characteristic of hucksters in general, was grinding dishes at the bar. On the dirty floor lay a sunlit window frame.
As soon as Gray entered the band of smoky light, Manners, bowing respectfully, stepped out from behind his cover. He immediately guessed in Gray the real captain - a category of guests rarely seen by him. Gray asked Roma. Covering the table with a human tablecloth yellowed in the bustle, Menners brought a bottle, first licking the tip of the label that had peeled off with his tongue. Then he returned behind the counter, looking attentively first at Gray, then at the plate, from which he was tearing off something dried up with his fingernail.
While Letika, taking the glass in both hands, modestly whispered to him, looking out the window, Gray called Menners. Hin sat complacently on the end of his chair, flattered by the address, and flattered precisely because it was expressed by a simple nod of Gray's finger.
“You know all the people here, of course,” Gray said calmly. “I am interested in the name of a young girl in a headscarf, in a dress with pink flowers, dark-haired and short, between the ages of seventeen and twenty. I met her not far from here. What is her name?
He said it with a firm simplicity of force that did not allow him to evade this tone. Hin Menners inwardly squirmed and even grinned slightly, but outwardly obeyed the character of the address. However, before answering, he paused - solely out of a fruitless desire to guess what was the matter.
-- Hm! he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. - This must be "Ship Assol", there is no one else to be. She is half-witted.
-- Indeed? Gray said indifferently, drinking a large sip. - How did it happen?
- When so, if you please listen. “And Hin told Gray about how, seven years ago, a girl was talking on the seashore with a collector of songs. Of course, since the beggar affirmed its existence in the same tavern, this story has taken on the outlines of rude and flat gossip, but the essence has remained untouched. “Since then, that’s what she’s been called,” said Menners, “her name is Assol Ship.”
Gray glanced mechanically at Letika, who continued to be quiet and modest, then his eyes turned to the dusty road that ran by the inn, and he felt like a blow - a simultaneous blow to the heart and head. Along the road, facing him, was the same Ship Assol, to whom Menners had just treated clinically. The amazing features of her face, reminiscent of the secret of indelibly exciting, although simple words, appeared before him now in the light of her gaze. The sailor and Manners sat with their backs to the window, but lest they accidentally turn around, Gray had the courage to look away at Hin's red eyes. The moment he saw Assol's eyes, all the rigidity of Menners' story dissipated. Meanwhile, suspecting nothing, Khin continued: “I can also tell you that her father is a real scoundrel. He drowned my dad like some cat, God forgive me. He...
He was interrupted by an unexpected wild roar from behind. Turning his eyes terribly, the collier, shaking off his intoxicated stupor, suddenly barked his singing, and so fiercely that everyone shuddered.
basket maker, basket maker
Take us for baskets! ..
“You loaded yourself again, damned whaleboat!” shouted Menners. -- Get out!
... But just be afraid to hit
To our Palestine!
howled the collier, and, as if nothing had happened, he sank his mustache in the spilled glass.
Hin Manners shrugged his shoulders indignantly.
"Trash, not a man," he said with the terrible dignity of a hoarder. - Every time such a story!
- Can't you tell me more? Gray asked.
- I something? I'm telling you that your father is a scoundrel. Through him, your grace, I became an orphan, and even the child had to independently maintain a mortal subsistence ..
"You're lying," said the collier unexpectedly. “You lie so vilely and unnaturally that I have sobered up. - Hin did not have time to open his mouth, as the collier turned to Gray: - He is lying. His father also lied; mother also lied. Such a breed. You can rest assured that she is as healthy as you and I. I talked to her. She sat on my wagon eighty-four times, or a little less. When a girl walks out of the city and I have sold my coal, I will surely imprison the girl. Let her sit. I say she has a good head. It is visible now. With you, Hin Manners, she, of course, will not say a few words. But I, sir, in the free coal business despise courts and talk. She talks like a big but quirky her conversation. You listen - as if everything is the same as you and I would say, but she has the same, but not quite like that. Here, for example, once a case was opened about her craft. “I’ll tell you what,” she says, and clings to my shoulder like a fly to a bell tower, “my work is not boring, only I want to come up with something special. I,” she says, “so want to contrive so that the boat itself floated on the board, and the rowers would row for real; then they land on the shore, give up the mooring and honor, honor, as if alive, sit on the shore to eat. I, this, laughed, so it became funny to me. I say: - "Well, Assol, this is your business, and that's why you have such thoughts, but look around: everything is at work, like in a fight." "No," she says, "I know I do. When a fisherman fishes, he thinks he will catch a big fish like no one has ever caught." "Well, what about me?" - "And you? - she laughs, - you, right, when you pile coal on a basket, you think that it will bloom." That's what she said! At that very moment, I confess, I was twitched to look at the empty basket, and so it entered my eyes, as if buds had sprouted from the twigs; these buds burst, a leaf splashed on the basket and was gone. I even sobered up a little! But Hin Menners lies and does not take money; I know him!
Believing that the conversation turned into a clear insult, Menners pierced the coal-burner with a glance and disappeared behind the counter, from where he bitterly inquired: - Will you order something to be served?
“No,” said Gray, taking out the money, “we get up and leave. Letika, you will stay here, return in the evening and be silent. Once you know everything you can, tell me. Do you understand?
- The kindest captain, - said Letika with a certain familiarity caused by rum, - only a deaf person can not understand this.
-- Wonderful. Remember also that in none of the cases that you may have, you can neither talk about me, nor even mention my name. Goodbye!
Gray left. From that time on, the feeling of amazing discoveries did not leave him, like a spark in Berthold's powder mortar, one of those spiritual collapses from under which fire breaks out, sparkling. The spirit of immediate action took possession of him. He came to his senses and collected his thoughts only when he got into the boat. Laughing, he held out his hand, palm up, to the hot sun, as he had once done as a boy in a wine cellar; then he sailed away and began to row quickly towards the harbor.

IV THE EVE

On the eve of that day, and seven years after Egl, the collector of songs, told the girl on the seashore the tale of the ship with Scarlet Sails, Assol returned home on one of her weekly visits to the toy shop, upset, with a sad face. She brought her goods back. She was so upset that she could not speak at once, and only after she saw from Longren's worried face that he was expecting something much worse than reality, she began to tell, running her finger along the glass of the window at which she stood, absently observing the sea.
The owner of the toy store began this time by opening the account book and showing her how much they owed. She shuddered at the impressive three-digit number. "That's how much you've taken since December," said the merchant, "but look how much it's sold." And he rested his finger on another figure, already from two characters.
- It's sad and embarrassing to watch. I could see by his face that he was rude and angry. I'd love to run away, but honestly, there was no strength from shame. And he began to say: - "My dear, it is no longer profitable. Now foreign goods are in fashion, all the shops are full of them, but these products are not taken." So he said. He said a lot more, but I got it all mixed up and forgotten. He must have taken pity on me, because he advised me to go to the "Children's Bazaar" and "Aladin's Lamp".
Having spoken out the most important thing, the girl turned her head, looking timidly at the old man. Longren sat drooping, his fingers clasped between his knees, on which he rested his elbows. Feeling the gaze, he lifted his head and sighed. Having overcome her heavy mood, the girl ran up to him, settled down to sit next to him and, putting her light hand under the leather sleeve of his jacket, laughing and looking into her father's face from below, continued with feigned animation: - Nothing, it's all nothing, you listen, please. Here I went. Well, sir, I come to a big scary store; there's a bunch of people there. They pushed me; however, I got out and approached a black man with glasses. What I said to him, I don't remember anything; in the end, he grinned, rummaged through my basket, looked at something, then wrapped it again, as it was, in a scarf and gave it back.
Longren listened angrily. It was as if he saw his dumbfounded daughter in a rich crowd at a counter littered with valuable goods. A neat man with glasses condescendingly explained to her that he must go bankrupt if he starts selling Longren's simple products. Carelessly and deftly, he placed folding models of buildings and railway bridges on the counter in front of her; miniature distinct cars, electrical kits, airplanes and engines. It all smelled of paint and school. According to all his words, it turned out that children in games now only imitate what adults do.
Assol was still in the "Aladin's Lamp" and in two other shops, but achieved nothing.
Finishing the story, she gathered supper; After eating and drinking a glass of strong coffee, Longren said: - Since we are not lucky, we must look. I may go back to serve - on the Fitzroy or the Palermo. Of course they are right,” he continued thoughtfully, thinking of toys. - Now children do not play, but study. They all study and study and never begin to live. All this is so, but it's a pity, really, a pity. Can you live without me for one flight? It is unthinkable to leave you alone.
“I could also serve with you; let's say in the cafeteria.
-- Not! - Longren stamped this word with a blow of his palm on the trembling table. "As long as I'm alive, you won't serve." However, there is time to think.
He fell silent. Assol perched next to him on the corner of a stool; He saw from the side, without turning his head, that she was busy trying to console him, and he almost smiled. But to smile meant to frighten and embarrass the girl. She, muttering something to herself, smoothed his tangled gray hair, kissed his mustache, and, plugging her father's shaggy ears with her small thin fingers, said: "Well, now you don't hear that I love you." While she was preening him, Longren sat, grimacing tightly, like a man who is afraid to breathe in smoke, but, hearing her words, he laughed thickly.
"You're sweet," he said simply and, patting the girl on the cheek, went ashore to look at the boat.
Assol stood for some time in thought in the middle of the room, oscillating between the desire to give herself up to quiet sorrow and the need for household chores; then, having washed the dishes, she revised the rest of the provisions into a scale. She did not weigh or measure, but she saw that the flour would not last until the end of the week, that the bottom was visible in the sugar tin, the tea and coffee wrappers were almost empty, there was no butter, and the only thing on which, with some annoyance at the exception, the eye rested, there was a sack of potatoes. Then she washed the floor and sat down to sew a frill for a skirt made from junk, but immediately remembering that the scraps of cloth were behind the mirror, she went up to him and took the bundle; then she looked at her reflection.
Behind the walnut frame, in the bright emptiness of the reflected room, stood a thin, short girl dressed in cheap white muslin with pink flowers. On her shoulders lay a gray silk scarf. Half-childish, in a light tan, the face was mobile and expressive; beautiful eyes, somewhat serious for her age, looked with the timid concentration of deep souls. Her irregular face could touch with the subtle purity of its outlines; every curve, every convexity of this face, of course, would have found a place in a multitude of female appearances, but their totality, style - was completely original, - originally cute; this is where we will stop. The rest is not subject to words, except for the word "charm".
The reflected girl smiled as unconsciously as Assol. The smile came out sad; noticing this, she became alarmed, as if she were looking at a stranger. She pressed her cheek against the glass, closed her eyes, and softly stroked the mirror with her hand where her reflection fell. A swarm of vague, affectionate thoughts flashed through her; she straightened up, laughed, and sat down, beginning to sew.
While she is sewing, let's look at her closer - inside. There are two girls in it, two Assol, mixed in a wonderful beautiful irregularity. One was the daughter of a sailor, a craftsman who made toys, the other was a living poem, with all the wonders of its consonances and images, with the secret of the neighborhood of words, in all the reciprocity of their shadows and light falling from one to another. She knew life within the limits set for her experience, but in addition to general phenomena she saw a reflected meaning of a different order. Thus, peering into objects, we notice something in them not linearly, but by impression - definitely human, and - just like human - different. Something similar to what (if possible) we said by this example, she saw still beyond the visible. Without these quiet conquests, everything simply understandable was alien to her soul. She knew how and loved to read, but in the book she read mainly between the lines, how she lived. Unconsciously, through a kind of inspiration, she made many ethereal subtle discoveries at every step, inexpressible, but important, like cleanliness and warmth. Sometimes - and this went on for a number of days - she was even reborn; the physical opposition of life vanished like silence in the strike of a bow, and everything that she saw, what she lived with, what was around, became a lace of secrets in the image of everyday life. More than once, agitated and timid, she went to the seashore at night, where, after waiting for the dawn, she seriously looked out for a ship with Scarlet Sails. These moments were happiness for her; it is difficult for us to go into a fairy tale like that, it would be no less difficult for her to get out of her power and charm.
At another time, thinking about all this, she sincerely marveled at herself, not believing that she believed, forgiving the sea with a smile and sadly turning to reality; now, shifting the frill, the girl recalled her life. There was a lot of boredom and simplicity. Loneliness together, it happened, weighed heavily on her, but that wrinkle of inner timidity had already formed in her, that wrinkle of suffering, from which it was impossible to bring and receive revival. They laughed at her, saying: - "She is touched, not in herself"; she was used to this pain as well; the girl even happened to endure insults, after which her chest ached as if from a blow. As a woman, she was unpopular in Kapern, but many suspected, though wildly and vaguely, that she was given more than others - only in another language. Capernets adored thick, heavy women with oily skin, thick calves and powerful arms; here they courted, slapping their backs with their palms and pushing, as in a bazaar. The type of this feeling was like the ingenuous simplicity of a roar. Assol approached this decisive environment in the same way that a ghost society would suit people of an exquisite nervous life, if it possessed all the charm of Assunta or Aspasia: that which is from love is unthinkable here. Thus, in the steady drone of a soldier's trumpet, the charming melancholy of the violin is powerless to lead the stern regiment out of the actions of its straight lines. To what is said in these lines, the girl stood with her back.
While her head was humming the song of life, her small hands worked diligently and deftly; biting off the thread, she looked far ahead of her, but this did not prevent her from turning the scar evenly and laying the buttonhole with the distinctness of a sewing machine. Although Longren did not return, she did not worry about her father. Recently, he quite often sailed away at night to fish or just to clear his head.
She was not afraid; she knew that nothing bad would happen to him. In this respect, Assol was still that little girl who prayed in her own way, babbling amiably in the morning: “Hello, God!”, and in the evening: “Farewell, God!”.
In her opinion, such a short acquaintance with the god was quite enough for him to avert misfortune. She was also part of his position: God was always busy with the affairs of millions of people, therefore, in her opinion, the ordinary shadows of life should be treated with the delicate patience of a guest who, having found the house full of people, waits for the bustling owner, huddling and eating according to circumstances.
When she finished sewing, Assol put her work on the corner table, undressed and lay down. The fire was put out. She soon noticed that there was no drowsiness; consciousness was clear, as in the heat of the day, even the darkness seemed artificial, the body, like consciousness, felt light, daytime. My heart was beating like a pocket watch; it beat as if between a pillow and an ear. Assol was angry, tossing and turning, now throwing off the blanket, now wrapping herself up in it. Finally, she managed to evoke the habitual idea that helps to fall asleep: she mentally threw stones into the clear water, looking at the divergence of the lightest circles. Sleep, indeed, as if only waiting for this handout; he came, whispered to Mary, who was standing at the head of the bed, and, obeying her smile, said around: "Shhhh." Assol immediately fell asleep. She had a favorite dream: flowering trees, melancholy, charm, songs and mysterious phenomena, of which, when she woke up, she remembered only the sparkling of blue water, rising from her feet to her heart with cold and delight. Seeing all this, she stayed for some more time in the impossible country, then woke up and sat down.
There was no sleep, as if she had not fallen asleep at all. The feeling of novelty, joy and desire to do something warmed her. She looked around with the same look that one looks at a new room. Dawn has penetrated - not with all the clarity of illumination, but with that vague effort in which one can understand the surroundings. The bottom of the window was black; the top brightened up. Outside the house, almost at the edge of the frame, the morning star shone. Knowing that now she would not fall asleep, Assol dressed, went to the window, and, removing the hook, drew the frame away. There was an attentive, sensitive silence outside the window; it seems to have arrived just now. In the blue twilight the bushes gleamed, the trees slept further away; breathed with stuffiness and earth.
Holding on to the top of the frame, the girl looked and smiled. Suddenly, something like a distant call stirred her from within and without, and she seemed to wake up once again from obvious reality to something that is clearer and more undoubted. From that moment on, the exultant richness of consciousness did not leave her. So, understanding, we listen to the speeches of people, but if we repeat what has been said, we will understand again, with a different, new meaning. It was the same with her.
Taking an old, but always young, silk scarf on her head, she grabbed it with her hand under her chin, locked the door and fluttered out barefoot onto the road. Although it was empty and deaf, it seemed to her that she sounded like an orchestra, that they could hear her. Everything was nice to her, everything made her happy. Warm dust tickled bare feet; breathed clear and cheerful. Rooftops and clouds darkened in the twilight light of the sky; dormant hedges, wild roses, kitchen gardens, orchards and a gently visible road. In everything, a different order was noticed than in the daytime - the same, but in a correspondence that had eluded earlier. Everyone slept with their eyes open, secretly examining the passing girl.
She walked, the further, the faster, in a hurry to leave the village. Meadows stretched beyond Kaperna; behind the meadows along the slopes of the coastal hills grew hazel, poplars and chestnuts. Where the road ended, turning into a deaf path, at Assol's feet a fluffy black dog with a white chest and a talking strain of eyes spun softly at Assol's feet. The dog, recognizing Assol, squealing and coyly wagging his body, went beside her, silently agreeing with the girl in something understandable, like “I” and “you”. Assol, looking into her communicative eyes, was firmly convinced that the dog could speak, if it had no secret reasons for being silent. Noticing the smile of his companion, the dog frowned merrily, wagged its tail and ran smoothly forward, but suddenly sat down indifferently, busily scraped out the ear bitten by its eternal enemy with its paw, and ran back.
Assol penetrated the tall, dewy meadow grass; holding her hand palm down over her panicles, she walked, smiling at the flowing touch.
Looking into the peculiar faces of flowers, into the tangle of stems, she discerned almost human hints there - postures, efforts, movements, features and glances; she would not be surprised now by a procession of field mice, a ball of gophers, or the rude fun of a hedgehog frightening a sleeping dwarf with its fuqing. And sure enough, a gray hedgehog rolled out in front of her on the path. "Fuk-fuk," he said curtly, with a heart like a cab driver to a pedestrian. Assol spoke with those whom she understood and saw. - "Hello, sick," she said to a purple iris, pierced to holes by a worm. "We need to stay at home," - this referred to a bush stuck in the middle of the path and therefore ripped off by the clothes of passers-by. A large beetle clung to the bell, bending the plant and falling down, but stubbornly pushing with its paws. "Shake off the fat passenger," advised Assol. The beetle, for sure, could not resist and flew to the side with a bang. Thus, agitated, trembling and shining, she approached the hillside, hidden in its thickets from the meadow space, but now surrounded by her true friends, who - she knew this - speak in a bass voice.
They were large old trees among honeysuckle and hazel. Their hanging branches touched the upper leaves of the bushes. In the calmly gravitating large foliage of chestnut trees stood white flower cones, their aroma mixed with the smell of dew and resin. The path, dotted with protrusions of slippery roots, then fell, then climbed the slope. Assol felt at home; she greeted the trees as if they were people, that is, shaking their broad leaves. She walked, whispering now in her mind, now in words: “Here you are, here is another you; there are many of you, my brothers! The "brothers" majestically stroked her with what they could - with leaves - and kindly creaked in response. She scrambled out, soiled on her feet, to a cliff above the sea and stood on the edge of the cliff, out of breath from her hurried walk. Deep, invincible faith, rejoicing, foamed and rustled in her. She scattered her gaze over the horizon, from where she returned back with a light noise of the coastal wave, proud of the purity of her flight. Meanwhile, the sea, outlined on the horizon with a golden thread, was still asleep; only under the cliff, in the puddles of the coastal holes, did the water rise and fall. The steel color of the sleeping ocean near the shore turned into blue and black. Behind the golden thread, the sky, flashing, shone with a huge fan of light; the white clouds were set off by a faint blush. Subtle, divine colors shone in them. A quivering snowy whiteness lay already on the black distance; the foam shone, and a crimson gap, flashing among the golden thread, threw scarlet ripples across the ocean, at Assol's feet.
She sat with her legs tucked up, her hands around her knees. Leaning attentively towards the sea, she looked at the horizon with large eyes, in which there was nothing left of an adult, - with the eyes of a child. Everything she had been waiting for so long and ardently was done there - at the end of the world. She saw in the land of distant abysses an underwater hill; climbing plants streamed upward from its surface; among their round leaves, pierced at the edge with a stalk, bizarre flowers shone. The upper leaves glistened on the surface of the ocean; the one who knew nothing, as Assol knew, saw only awe and brilliance.
A ship rose from the thicket; he surfaced and stopped in the very middle of the dawn. From this distance he was visible as clear as clouds. Scattering joy, he burned like wine, a rose, blood, lips, scarlet velvet and crimson fire. The ship was heading straight for Assol. The wings of foam fluttered under the powerful pressure of his keel; already standing up, the girl pressed her hands to her chest, as a wonderful play of light turned into a swell; the sun rose, and the bright fullness of the morning pulled the covers from everything that was still basking, stretching on the sleepy earth.
The girl sighed and looked around. The music stopped, but Assol was still at the mercy of her sonorous choir. This impression gradually weakened, then became a memory and, finally, just tiredness. She lay down on the grass, yawned and, blissfully closing her eyes, fell asleep - really, a sleep as strong as a young nut, without worries and dreams.
She was awakened by a fly roaming on her bare foot. Turning her leg restlessly, Assol woke up; sitting, she pinned up her disheveled hair, so Gray's ring reminded of itself, but considering it nothing more than a stalk stuck between her fingers, she straightened it; since the hindrance did not disappear, she impatiently raised her hand to her eyes and straightened up, instantly jumping up with the force of a splashing fountain.
Gray's radiant ring gleamed on her finger, as if on someone else's - she could not recognize her own at that moment, she did not feel her finger. “Whose joke is this? Whose joke is this?” she exclaimed swiftly. “Am I dreaming? Maybe I found it and forgot it?” Grasping her right hand, on which there was a ring, with her left hand, she looked around in amazement, searching the sea and green thickets with her gaze; but no one stirred, no one hid in the bushes, and in the blue, far-illuminated sea there was no sign, and a blush covered Assol, and the voices of the heart said a prophetic "yes." There were no explanations for what had happened, but without words or thoughts she found them in her strange feeling, and the ring became close to her. Trembling, she pulled it off her finger; holding it in a handful like water, she examined it - with all her soul, with all her heart, with all the jubilation and clear superstition of youth, then, hiding it behind her bodice, Assol buried her face in her hands, from under which a smile broke uncontrollably, and, lowering her head, slowly walked back.
So - by chance, as people who can read and write say - Gray and Assol found each other in the morning of a summer day, full of inevitability.

V BATTLE PREPARATIONS

When Gray went up to the deck of the Secret, he stood motionless for several minutes, stroking his head from behind to forehead with his hand, which meant extreme confusion. Absent-mindedness - a cloudy movement of feelings - was reflected in his face with an insensitive smile of a lunatic. His assistant Panten was at that time walking along the quarters with a plate fried fish; when he saw Gray, he noticed the strange state of the captain.
“Perhaps you got hurt?” he asked cautiously. -- Where were you? What did you see? However, it is, of course, up to you. The broker offers a profitable freight; with a premium. What's the matter with you?..
"Thank you," said Gray with a sigh, "as if untied." “It was the sounds of your simple, intelligent voice that I missed. It's like cold water. Panten, inform the people that today we are weighing anchor and going to the mouth of the Liliana, about ten miles from here. Its course is interrupted by solid shoals. The mouth can only be entered from the sea. Come get a map. Do not take a pilot. That's all for now... Yes, I need a profitable freight like last year's snow. You can pass this on to the broker. I'm going to the city, where I'll stay until evening.
- What happened?
“Absolutely nothing, Panten. I want you to take note of my desire to avoid any questioning. When the time comes, I'll let you know what's up. Tell the sailors that repairs are to be done; that the local dock is busy.
"Very well," said Panten senselessly at the back of the departing Gray. -- Will be done.
Although the captain's orders were quite sensible, the mate's eyes widened and he rushed uneasily to his cabin with the plate, muttering, "Pantin, you've been puzzled. Does he want to try smuggling? Are we sailing under the black flag of a pirate?" But here Panten is entangled in the wildest assumptions. While he was nervously destroying the fish, Gray went down to the cabin, took the money and, crossing the bay, appeared in the shopping districts of Liss.
Now he acted decisively and calmly, knowing to the smallest detail everything that lay ahead on the wonderful path. Every movement - thought, action - warmed him with the subtle pleasure of artistic work. His plan took shape instantly and convexly. His concepts of life have undergone that last foray of the chisel, after which the marble is calm in its beautiful radiance.
Gray visited three stores, attaching particular importance to the accuracy of choice, as he mentally saw the right color and shade. In the first two shops he was shown market-coloured silks designed to satisfy an unpretentious vanity; in the third he found examples of complex effects. The owner of the shop bustled around happily, laying out stale materials, but Gray was as serious as an anatomist. He patiently dismantled the bundles, put them aside, moved them, unfolded them, and looked at the light with such a multitude of scarlet stripes that the counter, littered with them, seemed to burst into flames. A purple wave lay on the toe of Gray's boot; a rosy glow shone on his arms and face. Rummaging through the light resistance of the silk, he distinguished colors: red, pale pink and dark pink, thick simmers of cherry, orange and dark red tones; here were shades of all forces and meanings, different - in their imaginary relationship, like the words: "charming" - "beautiful" - "magnificent" - "perfect"; hints lurked in the folds, inaccessible to the language of sight, but the true scarlet color did not appear for a long time to the eyes of our captain; what the shopkeeper brought was good, but did not evoke a clear and firm "yes." Finally, one color caught the buyer's disarmed attention; he sat down in an armchair by the window, pulled out a long end from the noisy silk, threw it on his knees and, lounging, with a pipe in his teeth, became contemplatively motionless.
This completely pure, like a scarlet morning stream, full of noble fun and regal color, was exactly the proud color that Gray was looking for. There were no mixed shades of fire, poppy petals, play of violet or lilac hints; there was also no blue, no shadow, nothing to be doubted. He glowed like a smile with the charm of a spiritual reflection. Gray was so thoughtful that he forgot about the owner, who was waiting behind him with the tension of a hunting dog, making a stance. Tired of waiting, the merchant reminded himself of himself with the crackling of a torn piece of cloth.
"Enough samples," said Gray, rising, "I'll take this silk."
- The whole piece? asked the trader, respectfully doubting. But Gray silently looked at his forehead, which made the shop owner a little more cheeky. “In that case, how many meters?”
Gray nodded, inviting them to wait, and calculated the required amount with a pencil on paper.
“Two thousand meters. He looked doubtfully at the shelves. - Yes, no more than two thousand meters.
- Two? - said the owner, jumping convulsively, like a spring. - Thousands? Meters? Please sit down, captain. Would you like to have a look, Captain, at samples of new materials? As you wish. Here are matches, here is fine tobacco; I ask you to. Two thousand... two thousand. He said a price that had as much to do with the real as an oath to a simple "yes," but Gray was pleased because he didn't want to bargain for anything. “Surprising, the best silk,” continued the shopkeeper, “a product beyond compare, only I can find such.
When he was finally exhausted with delight, Gray agreed with him about the delivery, taking on his own account the costs, paid the bill and left, escorted by the owner with the honors of the Chinese king. In the meantime, across the street from where the shop was, a wandering musician, having tuned the cello, made her speak sadly and well with a quiet bow; his companion, the flutist, showered the singing of the jet with the babble of a throaty whistle; the simple song with which they resounded in the dormant yard in the heat reached Gray's ears, and he immediately understood what he should do next. In general, all these days he was at that happy height of spiritual vision, from which he clearly noticed all the hints and hints of reality; Hearing the sounds drowned out by the carriages, he entered the center of the most important impressions and thoughts, caused, according to his character, by this music, already feeling why and how what he thought would turn out well. Passing the lane, Gray passed through the gates of the house where the musical performance took place. By then the musicians were about to leave; the tall flute-player, with an air of downtrodden dignity, waved his hat gratefully at the windows from which the coins flew out. The cello was already back under its master's arm; he, wiping his sweaty forehead, was waiting for the flutist.
"Bah, it's you, Zimmer!" Gray told him, recognizing the violinist, who in the evenings amused the sailors, guests of the Money for a Barrel inn, with his beautiful playing. - How did you change the violin?
“Honorable Captain,” Zimmer said smugly, “I play everything that sounds and crackles. When I was young, I was a musical clown. Now I am drawn to art, and I see with grief that I have ruined an outstanding talent. That is why, out of late greed, I love two at once: the viol and the violin. I play the cello during the day, and the violin in the evenings, that is, as if crying, weeping for the lost talent. Will you treat me with wine, eh? The cello is my Carmen, and the violin.
"Assol," Gray said. Zimmer didn't hear.
- Yes, - he nodded, - solo on cymbals or copper tubes - Another thing. However, what about me? Let the clowns of art make faces - I know that fairies always rest in the violin and cello.
“And what is hidden in my tour-lu-rlu?” asked the flutist, who had come up, a tall fellow with ram's blue eyes and a blond beard. - Well, tell me?
- Depending on how much you drank this morning. Sometimes a bird, sometimes alcohol vapours. Captain, this is my companion Duss; I told him how you litter with gold when you drink, and he is absently in love with you.
“Yes,” said Duss, “I love gesture and generosity. But I am cunning, do not believe my vile flattery.
"That's it," said Gray, laughing. “I don’t have much time, but I can’t stand the job. I suggest you make good money. Assemble an orchestra, but not from the dandies with the ceremonial faces of the dead, who, in musical literalism or - even worse - in sound gastronomy, have forgotten about the soul of music and quietly deaden the stages with their intricate noises - no. Gather yours that make you cry simple hearts cooks and footmen; gather your tramps. The sea and love do not tolerate pedants. I would love to sit with you, and not even with one bottle, but you have to go. I have a lot to do. Take this and drink it to the letter A. If you like my suggestion, come to the "Secret" in the evening, it is located near the head dam.
-- I agree! cried Zimmer, knowing that Gray was paying like a king. “Duss, bow, say yes, and twirl your hat for joy!” Captain Gray wants to get married!
"Yes," Gray said simply. - I'll tell you all the details on the "Secret". Are you...
- For the letter A! Duss nudged Zimmer and winked at Gray. “But… how many letters there are in the alphabet!” Please something and fit ...
Gray gave more money. The musicians are gone. Then he went to the commission office and gave a secret order for a large sum - to perform urgently, within six days. By the time Gray returned to his ship, the office agent was already boarding the ship. By evening the silk was brought; five sailboats hired by Gray fit with the sailors; Letika has not yet returned and the musicians have not arrived; While waiting for them, Gray went to talk to Panten.
It should be noted that Gray sailed with the same crew for several years. At first, the captain surprised the sailors with the vagaries of unexpected voyages, stops - sometimes monthly - in the most non-commercial and deserted places, but gradually they were imbued with Gray's "greyism". He often sailed with only one ballast, refusing to take a profitable charter just because he did not like the offered cargo. No one could persuade him to carry soap, nails, machine parts and other things that are gloomy silent in the holds, causing lifeless ideas of boring necessity. But he willingly loaded fruits, porcelain, animals, spices, tea, tobacco, coffee, silk, valuable tree species: black, sandalwood, palm. All this corresponded to the aristocracy of his imagination, creating a picturesque atmosphere; it is not surprising that the crew of the "Secret", thus brought up in the spirit of originality, looked somewhat down on all other ships, shrouded in the smoke of flat profit. Still, this time Gray met questions in faces; the most stupid sailor knew perfectly well that there was no need to make repairs in the bed of a forest river.
Panten, of course, told them Gray's orders; when he entered, his assistant was finishing his sixth cigar, wandering around the cabin, crazy from the smoke and bumping into chairs. Evening came; a golden beam of light jutted out through the open porthole, in which the lacquered visor of the captain's cap flashed.
"Everything is ready," said Panten gloomily. - If you want, you can raise the anchor.
"You ought to know me a little better, Panten," Gray remarked softly. - There is no secret in what I do. As soon as we drop anchor at the bottom of the Liliana, I'll tell you everything, and you won't waste so many matches on bad cigars. Go, weigh anchor.
Panten, smiling awkwardly, scratched his brow.
“That is true, of course,” he said. “However, I am nothing. When he went out, Gray sat for some time, looking motionless at the half-open door, then went over to his room. Here he either sat or lay down; then, listening to the crackling of the windlass, rolling out a loud chain, he was about to go out to the forecastle, but again he thought and returned to the table, drawing a straight, fast line on the oilcloth with his finger. A punch on the door brought him out of his manic state; he turned the key, letting Letika in. The sailor, breathing heavily, stopped with the air of a messenger who had warned the execution in time.
“Letika, Letika,” I said to myself, he spoke quickly, “when from the cable pier I saw our guys dancing around the windlass, spitting in their palms. I have eyes like an eagle. And I flew; I breathed so hard on the boatman that the man sweated with excitement. Captain, did you want to leave me on the shore?
“Letika,” Gray said, looking at his red eyes, “I expected you no later than morning. Did you pour cold water on the back of your head?
-- Lil. Not as much as was ingested, but lil. Done.
- Speak. “Don't talk, captain; it's all written down here. Take and read. I tried very hard. I'll leave.
-- Where?
“I see by the reproach of your eyes that you still poured little cold water on the back of your head.
He turned and walked out with the strange movements of a blind man. Gray unfolded the paper; the pencil must have marveled as he drew these drawings on it, reminiscent of a rickety fence. Here is what Letika wrote: “According to the instructions. After five hours, I walked along the street. A house with a gray roof, two windows on the side; with it a vegetable garden. looked out the window, but saw nothing because of the curtain."
Then followed several instructions of a family nature, obtained by Letika, apparently through a table conversation, since the memorial ended, somewhat unexpectedly, with the words: "I put a little of my own on account of expenses."
But the essence of this report spoke only of what we know from the first chapter. Gray put the paper on the table, whistled for the watchman and sent for Panten, but instead of the assistant, boatswain Atwood appeared, tugging at his rolled up sleeves.
“We moored at the dam,” he said. “Pantin sent to find out what you want. He is busy: he was attacked there by some people with trumpets, drums and other violins. Did you invite them to "The Secret"? Panten asks you to come, says he has a fog in his head.
“Yes, Atwood,” said Gray, “I certainly called the musicians; go, tell them to go to the cockpit for a while. Next, we will see how to arrange them. Atwood, tell them and the crew that I'll be on deck in a quarter of an hour. Let them gather; you and Panten, of course, will also listen to me.
Atwood cocked his left eyebrow like a cock, stood sideways by the door, and went out. Gray spent those ten minutes with his face in his hands; he did not prepare for anything and did not count on anything, but he wanted to be mentally silent. In the meantime, everyone was already waiting for him, impatiently and with curiosity, full of conjectures. He went out and saw in their faces the expectation of incredible things, but since he himself found what was happening quite natural, the tension of other people's souls was reflected in him as a slight annoyance.
"Nothing special," said Gray, sitting down on the bridge ladder. “We will stay at the mouth of the river until we change all the rigging. You saw that red silk was brought; from it, under the guidance of the sailing master Blunt, they will make new sails for the "Secret". Then we will go, but where I will not say; at least not far from here. I'm going to my wife. She is not yet my wife, but she will be. I need scarlet sails so that even from afar, as agreed with her, she noticed us. That's all. As you can see, there is nothing mysterious here. And enough about that.
“Yes,” said Atwood, seeing from the smiling faces of the sailors that they were pleasantly perplexed and did not dare to speak. - So that's the point, captain ... It's not for us, of course, to judge this. As you wish, so be it. I congratulate you.
-- Thanks to! Gray squeezed the boatswain's hand hard, but he, with an incredible effort, responded with such a squeeze that the captain yielded. After that, everyone came up, replacing each other with shy warmth of a look and muttering congratulations. No one shouted, no noise - the sailors felt something not quite simple in the abrupt words of the captain. Panten breathed a sigh of relief and cheered up - his spiritual heaviness melted away. One ship's carpenter was dissatisfied with something: languidly holding Gray's hand, he grimly asked: - How did you come up with this idea, captain?
"Like the blow of your axe," Gray said. - Zimmer! Show your kids.
The violinist, clapping the musicians on the back, pushed out seven people dressed extremely slovenly.
“Here,” said Zimmer, “this is a trombone; does not play, but fires like a cannon. These two beardless fellows are fanfares; as soon as they play, they want to fight right now. Then clarinet, cornet-a-piston and second violin. All of them are great masters of hugging a frisky prima, that is, me. And here is the main owner of our cheerful craft - Fritz, the drummer. Drummers, you know, usually have a disappointed look, but this one beats with dignity, with enthusiasm. There is something open and direct about his playing, like his sticks. Is that how it's done, Captain Grey?
"Amazing," Gray said. “All of you have a place in the hold, which this time, therefore, will be loaded with different scherzos, adagios, and fortissimos.” Disperse. Panten, take off the moorings, move off. I'll relieve you in two hours.
He did not notice these two hours, since they passed all in the same inner music that did not leave his consciousness, just as the pulse does not leave the arteries. He thought of one thing, wanted one thing, aspired to one thing. A man of action, he mentally anticipated the course of events, regretting only that they could not be moved as simply and quickly as checkers. Nothing in his calm appearance spoke of that tension of feeling, the rumble of which, like the rumble of a huge bell tolling above his head, rushed through his whole being with a deafening nervous moan. This finally brought him to the point that he began to count mentally: "One", two ... thirty ... "and so on, until he said" a thousand ". Such an exercise had an effect: he was finally able to look from the side on the whole enterprise. Here he was somewhat surprised that he could not imagine the inner Assol, since he did not even speak with her. He read somewhere that you can, at least vaguely, understand a person if, imagining yourself to be this person, copy Gray's eyes were already beginning to take on a strange expression that was uncharacteristic of them, and his lips under his mustache were curling into a weak, meek smile, when, coming to his senses, he burst out laughing and went out to relieve Panten.
It was dark. Panten, turning up the collar of his jacket, walked by the compass, saying to the helmsman: "Left quarter point; left. Stop: another quarter." The "Secret" sailed with half sail and a fair wind.
“You know,” Panten said to Gray, “I am satisfied.
-- How?
- The same as you. I got it. Right here on the bridge. He winked slyly, flashing his pipe into a smile.
“Come on,” said Gray, suddenly realizing what was the matter, “what did you understand there? "The best way to smuggle contraband," whispered Panten. “Anyone can have the sails they want. You have a brilliant head, Gray!
"Poor Pantin!" said the captain, not knowing whether to be angry or laugh. “Your conjecture is witty, but devoid of any basis. Go to sleep. I give you my word that you are wrong. I do what I said.
He sent him to bed, checked his heading, and sat down. Now we will leave him, because he needs to be alone.

VI ASSOL REMAINS ALONE

Longren spent the night at sea; he did not sleep, did not fish, but sailed without a definite direction, listening to the splash of water, looking into the darkness, winded and thinking. In the difficult hours of life, nothing restored the strength of his soul like these lonely wanderings. Silence, only silence and desertion - that was what he needed in order for all the weakest and most confused voices of the inner world to sound intelligibly. That night he thought about the future, about poverty, about Assol. It was extremely difficult for him to leave her even for a while; besides, he was afraid to resurrect the subsided pain. Perhaps, having entered the ship, he will again imagine that there, in Kaperna, a friend who has never died is waiting for him, and returning, he will approach the house with the grief of a dead expectation. Mary will never leave the door of the house again. But he wanted Assol to have something to eat, therefore deciding to do as care orders.
When Longren returned, the girl was not yet at home. Her early walks did not bother her father; this time, however, there was a slight tension in his expectation. Walking from corner to corner, he suddenly saw Assol at a turn; entering swiftly and inaudibly, she stood silently in front of him, almost frightening him with the light of her glance, which reflected excitement. It seemed that her second face was revealed - that true face of a person, about which only eyes usually speak. She was silent, looking into Longren's face so incomprehensibly that he quickly asked: "Are you ill?"
She didn't answer right away. When the meaning of the question finally touched her spiritual hearing, Assol started up like a branch touched by a hand, and laughed a long, even laugh of quiet triumph. She needed to say something, but, as always, she didn't have to think of what it was; she said: - No, I'm healthy ... Why do you look like that? I'm having fun. True, I'm having fun, but that's because the day is so good. What did you think? I can see by your face that you're up to something.
“Whatever I think,” said Longren, seating the girl on his knees, “you, I know, will understand what is the matter. There is nothing to live. I will not go on a long voyage again, but I will join the postal steamer that runs between Casset and Liss.
“Yes,” she said from afar, trying to enter into his cares and business, but horrified that she was powerless to stop rejoicing. -- This is very bad. I will be bored. Come back soon. As she spoke, she broke into an uncontrollable smile. - Yes, hurry up, dear; I'm waiting.
- Assol! said Longren, taking her face in his hands and turning her towards him. - Tell me what happened?
She felt that she must dispel his anxiety, and, having overcome her jubilation, she became seriously attentive, only new life still shone in her eyes.
"You're strange," she said. "Absolutely nothing. I was picking nuts."
Longren would not have quite believed it if he had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts. Their conversation became businesslike and detailed. The sailor told his daughter to pack his sack; listed all the necessary things and gave some advice.
"I'll be back home in ten days, and you lay down my gun and stay at home." If anyone wants to offend you, say: - "Longren will return soon." Don't think or worry about me; nothing bad will happen.
After that, he ate, kissed the girl warmly and, throwing the bag over his shoulders, went out onto the city road. Assol watched him go until he disappeared around the corner; then returned. She had a lot of homework to do, but she forgot about it. With an interest of slight surprise, she looked around, as if already a stranger to this house, so infused into her consciousness from childhood that it seemed she always carried it in herself, and now it looked like native places visited a number of years later from the circle of a different life. But something unworthy seemed to her in this rebuff of hers, something wrong. She sat down at the table where Longren was making toys and tried to glue the rudder to the stern; looking at these objects, she involuntarily saw them large, real; everything that had happened in the morning rose again in her with a tremor of excitement, and a golden ring, the size of the sun, fell across the sea at her feet.
Without sitting, she left the house and went to Lisa. She had absolutely nothing to do there; she didn't know why she was going, but she couldn't help but go. On the way, she met a pedestrian who wanted to explore some direction; she sensibly explained to him what was needed, and immediately forgot about it.
She passed the whole long road imperceptibly, as if she were carrying a bird that had absorbed all her tender attention. At the city, she was a little amused by the noise flying from his huge circle, but he had no power over her, as before, when, frightening and hammering, he made her a silent coward. She confronted him. She walked slowly along the ring-shaped boulevard, crossing the blue shadows of the trees, looking trustingly and lightly at the faces of passers-by, with an even gait, full of confidence. A breed of observant people during the day noticed repeatedly an unknown, strange-looking girl, passing among a bright crowd with an air of deep thought. In the square, she held out her hand to the stream of the fountain, fingering among the reflected spray; then, sitting down, she rested and returned to the forest road. She made her way back with a fresh soul, in a peaceful and clear mood, like an evening river, which finally replaced the colorful mirrors of the day with an even brilliance in the shade. Approaching the village, she saw the same collier who fancied that his basket had blossomed; he was standing near a wagon with two unknown gloomy people, covered with soot and mud. Assol was delighted. -- Hello. Philip, she said, what are you doing here?
- Nothing, bitch. The wheel fell off; I corrected him, now I smoke and doodle with our guys. Where are you from?
Assol did not answer.
“You know, Philip,” she began, “I love you very much, and therefore I will only tell you. I will leave soon; I'll probably leave. You don't tell anyone about this.
- Do you want to leave? Where are you going? said the collier in astonishment, his mouth open inquiringly, which made his beard grow longer.
-- I do not know. - She slowly looked around the clearing under the elm, where the cart stood, - the green grass in the pink evening light, the black silent coal-burners, and, after thinking, added: - I do not know all this. I don't know the day or the hour, and I don't even know where. I won't say anything more. Therefore, just in case, farewell; you often took me.
She took a huge black hand and brought it into a state of relative shaking. The worker's face cracked into a fixed smile. The girl nodded, turned and walked away. She disappeared so quickly that Philip and his friends did not have time to turn their heads.
“Miracles,” said the collier, “come and understand her. "Something's wrong with her today... such and such."
- That's right, - supported the second, - either she says, or not - she persuades. None of our business.
“None of our business,” said the third, sighing. Then all three got into the wagon and, wheels rattling along the stony road, disappeared into the dust.

VII SCARLET "SECRET"

It was a white morning hour; in the vast forest stood thin steam, full of strange visions. An unknown hunter, who had just left his fire, was moving along the river; through the trees shone the gap of its air voids, but the diligent hunter did not approach them, examining the fresh footprint of a bear heading towards the mountains.
A sudden sound rushed through the trees with the unexpectedness of an alarming chase; it was the clarinet. The musician, going out on deck, played a fragment of a melody full of sad, drawn-out repetition. The sound trembled like a voice hiding grief; intensified, smiled with a sad overflow and broke off. A distant echo vaguely hummed the same melody.
The hunter, marking the trail with a broken branch, made his way to the water. The fog hasn't cleared yet; in it the shape of a huge ship, slowly turning towards the mouth of the river, faded. Its folded sails came to life, festooned, spreading out and covering the masts with impotent shields of huge folds; voices and footsteps were heard. The coastal wind, trying to blow, lazily fiddled with the sails; finally, the warmth of the sun produced the desired effect; the air pressure intensified, dispelled the fog and poured out along the yards into light scarlet forms full of roses. Pink shadows glided over the whiteness of the masts and rigging, everything was white, except for the spread, smoothly moved sails, the color of deep joy.
The hunter, who was watching from the shore, rubbed his eyes for a long time until he was convinced that he was seeing in this way and not otherwise. The ship disappeared around the bend, and he still stood and watched; then, shrugging his shoulders in silence, he went to his bear.
While the "Secret" was in the riverbed, Gray stood at the helm, not trusting the sailor to steer - he was afraid of the shallows. Panten was sitting next to him, in a new pair of cloth, in a new shiny cap, clean-shaven and humbly puffed up. He still didn't feel any connection between the scarlet outfit and Gray's direct target.
“Now,” said Gray, “when my sails are bright, the wind is good, and my heart is more happy than an elephant at the sight of a small bun, I will try to set you up with my thoughts, as I promised at Lissa. Note - I do not consider you stupid or stubborn, no; you are a model sailor, and that is worth a lot. But you, like most, listen to the voices of all simple truths through the thick glass of life; they scream, but you won't hear. I do what exists, as an old idea of ​​the beautiful-unrealizable, and which, in essence, is just as feasible and possible as a country walk. Soon you will see a girl who cannot, must not get married otherwise than in the way that I am developing before your eyes.
He succinctly conveyed to the sailor what we are well aware of, ending the explanation as follows: - You see how closely fate, will and character traits are intertwined here; I come to the one who is waiting and can wait only for me, but I don’t want anyone else but her, maybe precisely because thanks to her I understood one simple truth. It is to do so-called miracles with your own hands. When the main thing for a person is to receive the dearest nickel, it is easy to give this nickel, but when the soul harbors a seed of a fiery plant - a miracle, do this miracle for him, if you are able. He will have a new soul, and you will have a new one. When the head of the prison himself releases the prisoner, when the billionaire gives the clerk a villa, an operetta singer, and a safe, and the jockey holds his horse for once for the sake of another horse that is unlucky, then everyone will understand how pleasant it is, how inexpressibly wonderful. But there are no lesser miracles: a smile, fun, forgiveness, and - at the right time, the right word. Owning it means owning everything. As for me, our beginning - mine and Assol - will remain for us forever in the scarlet reflection of the sails created by the depth of the heart that knows what love is. Do you understand me?
-- Yes captain. Panten grunted, wiping his mustache with a neatly folded clean handkerchief. -- I got it. You touched me. I'll go downstairs and ask Nix's forgiveness, whom I scolded yesterday for the sunken bucket. And I'll give him tobacco - he lost his at cards.
Before Gray, somewhat surprised at this quick practical result of his words, could say anything, Panten was already thundering down the gangplank and sighing in the distance. Gray looked up, looking up; scarlet sails were silently torn above it; the sun in their seams shone with purple smoke. "Secret" went to sea, moving away from the shore. There was no doubt in Gray's ringing soul - no dull thumps of alarm, no noise of petty worries; calmly, like a sail, he rushed to a delightful goal; full of those thoughts that precede words.
By noon, the smoke of a military cruiser appeared on the horizon, the cruiser changed course and raised the signal from a distance of half a mile - "to drift!".
“Brothers,” Gray said to the sailors, “they won’t fire on us, don’t be afraid; they just can't believe their eyes.
He ordered to drift. Panten, shouting as if on fire, brought the "Secret" out of the wind; the ship came to a halt, while a steam launch sped off from the cruiser with a crew and a white-gloved lieutenant; the lieutenant, stepping on the deck of the ship, looked around in amazement and went with Gray to the cabin, from where an hour later he set off, with a strange wave of his hand and smiling, as if he had received a rank, back to the blue cruiser. Gray seemed to have had more success this time than with the ingenuous Panten, for the cruiser paused to strike the horizon with a mighty volley of salutes, the swift smoke of which, piercing the air with huge sparkling balls, dissipated in tatters over the still water. A kind of semi-holiday stupefaction reigned on the cruiser all day; the mood was unofficial, knocked down - under the sign of love, which was talked about everywhere - from the saloon to the engine hold, and the sentry of the mine department asked a passing sailor: - "Tom, how did you get married?" - "I caught her by the skirt when she wanted to jump out of my window," said Tom, and proudly twirled his mustache.
For some time the "Secret" was an empty sea, without shores; by noon the distant shore opened up. Taking up a telescope, Gray stared at Kaperna. If not for the row of roofs, he would have distinguished Assol in the window of one house, sitting behind some book. She read; a greenish beetle was crawling along the page, stopping and rising on its front paws with an air of independence and domesticity. Already twice he had been blown off without vexation onto the windowsill, from where he appeared again trustingly and freely, as if he wanted to say something. This time he managed to get almost to the hand of the girl holding the corner of the page; here he got stuck on the word "look", stopped doubtfully, expecting a new squall, and, indeed, barely escaped trouble, since Assol had already exclaimed: - "Again, a bug ... a fool! .." - and wanted to decisively blow off a guest into the grass, but suddenly a casual shift of her gaze from one roof to another revealed to her on the blue sea gap of the street space a white ship with scarlet sails.
She shuddered, leaned back, froze; then she jumped up abruptly with a dizzyingly sinking heart, bursting into uncontrollable tears of inspired shock. The "Secret" at that time was rounding a small cape, keeping to the shore at the angle of the port side; low music flowed in the blue day from the white deck under the fire of scarlet silk; music of rhythmic overflows, conveyed not entirely successfully by the words known to all: "Pour, pour glasses - and let's drink, friends, for love" ... - In its simplicity, jubilant, excitement unfolded and rumbled.
Not remembering how she left the house, Assol was already running to the sea, caught up by the irresistible wind of the event; at the first corner she stopped almost exhausted; her legs gave way, her breath broke and went out, her consciousness hung by a thread. Beside herself with fear of losing her will, she stamped her foot and recovered. At times, now the roof, then the fence hid scarlet sails from her; then, fearing that they had disappeared like a mere phantom, she hurried over the painful obstacle and, seeing the ship again, stopped to breathe a sigh of relief.
In the meantime, such confusion, such agitation, such general unrest occurred in Caperna, which will not yield to the affect of the famous earthquakes. Never before had a great ship approached this shore; the ship had those same sails whose name sounded like a mockery; now they clearly and irrefutably glowed with the innocence of a fact that refutes all the laws of being and common sense. Men, women, children in a hurry rushed to the shore, who was in what; the inhabitants called to one another from yard to yard, jumped on each other, yelled and fell; soon a crowd formed by the water, and Assol ran swiftly into this crowd. While she was gone, her name flew among the people with nervous and gloomy anxiety, with malicious fright. Men spoke more; dumbfounded women sobbed in a strangled, serpentine hiss, but if one of them began to crack, the poison climbed into her head. As soon as Assol appeared, everyone was silent, everyone moved away from her with fear, and she was left alone in the middle of the emptiness of the hot sand, confused, ashamed, happy, with a face no less scarlet than her miracle, helplessly stretching out her hands to the tall ship.
A boat full of tanned rowers separated from him; among them stood the one whom, as it now seemed to her, she knew, vaguely remembered from childhood. He looked at her with a smile that warmed and hurried. But thousands of the last ridiculous fears overcame Assol; mortally afraid of everything - mistakes, misunderstandings, mysterious and harmful interference - she ran up to her waist into the warm swaying of the waves, shouting: - I'm here, I'm here! It's me!
Then Zimmer waved his bow - and the same melody burst through the nerves of the crowd, but this time in a full, triumphant chorus. From the excitement, the movement of clouds and waves, the brilliance of the water and the distance, the girl could hardly distinguish what was moving: she, the ship or the boat - everything was moving, spinning and falling.
But the oar splashed sharply near her; she raised her head. Gray leaned down, her hands clutching at his belt. Assol closed her eyes; then, quickly opening her eyes, she boldly smiled at his radiant face, and breathlessly said:
"And you too, my child!" Gray said, taking the wet jewel out of the water. “Here, I have come. Did you recognize me?
She nodded, holding on to his belt, with a new soul and quivering closed eyes. Happiness sat in her like a fluffy kitten. When Assol ventured to open her eyes, the rocking of the boat, the glitter of the waves, the approaching, powerfully tossing, side of the "Secret" - everything was a dream, where light and water swayed, whirling, like the play of sunbeams on a wall flowing with rays. Not remembering how, she climbed up the ladder in Gray's strong arms. The deck, covered and hung with carpets, in scarlet splashes of sails, was like a heavenly garden. And soon Assol saw that she was standing in a cabin - in a room that couldn't be any better.
Then from above, shaking and burying the heart in its triumphant cry, huge music rushed again. Again Assol closed her eyes, afraid that all this would disappear if she looked. Gray took her hands and, now knowing where it was safe to go, she hid her face, wet from tears, on the chest of a friend who had come so magically. Gently, but with a laugh, himself shocked and surprised that an inexpressible, precious minute inaccessible to anyone had come, Gray lifted this long-dreamed face by the chin, and the girl's eyes finally opened clearly. They had all the best of a man.
"Will you take my Longren to us?" -- she said.
-- Yes. And he kissed her so hard, following his iron yes, that she laughed.
Now we will move away from them, knowing that they need to be together as one. There are many words in the world different languages and different dialects, but by all of them, even remotely, you cannot convey what they said to each other on this day.
Meanwhile, on the deck at the mainmast, near the barrel, eaten by a worm, with the bottom knocked down, revealing a hundred-year-old dark grace, the entire crew was already waiting. Atwood stood; Panten sat sedately, beaming like a newborn. Gray went up, gave a sign to the orchestra and, taking off his cap, was the first to scoop up holy wine with a faceted glass, in the song of golden trumpets.
- Well, here ... - he said, having finished drinking, then threw down the glass. “Now drink, drink all; who does not drink is my enemy.
He didn't have to repeat those words. While the "Secret" Caperna, which was terrified forever, was leaving at full speed, under full sail, the crush around the barrel surpassed everything that happens at great holidays of this kind.
- How did you like it? Gray asked Letika.
- Captain! said the sailor, searching for words. “I don’t know if he liked me, but my impressions need to be considered. Beehive and garden!
-- What?! “I mean they put a beehive and a garden in my mouth. Be happy captain. And may she be happy, which I will call the "best load", the best prize of the "Secret"!
When it began to get light the next day, the ship was far from Caperna. Part of the crew both fell asleep and remained lying on the deck, overcoming Gray's wine; only the helmsman and the watchman, and the thoughtful and intoxicated Zimmer, sitting on the stern with the neck of the cello at his chin, kept on their feet. He sat, quietly moved the bow, making the strings speak in a magical, unearthly voice, and thought about happiness...

Nina Nikolaevna Green offers and dedicates

Chapter 1
Prediction

Longren, a sailor of the Orion, a strong three-hundred-ton brig, on which he had served for ten years and to whom he was more attached than any son to his own mother, had to finally leave this service.

It happened like this. On one of his rare returns home, he did not see, as always from afar, on the threshold of the house his wife Mary, clasping her hands, and then running towards him until she lost her breath. Instead, by the crib, a new item in Longren's small house, stood an excited neighbor.

“I followed her for three months, old man,” she said, “look at your daughter.

Dead, Longren leaned over and saw an eight-month-old creature staring intently at his long beard, then sat down, looked down and began to twist his mustache. The mustache was wet, as from rain.

When did Mary die? - he asked.

The woman told a sad story, interrupting the story with a touching gurgle to the girl and assurances that Mary was in paradise. When Longren found out the details, paradise seemed to him a little brighter than a woodshed, and he thought that the fire of a simple lamp - if now they were all together, the three of them - would be an irreplaceable joy for a woman who had gone to an unknown country.

About three months ago, the economic affairs of the young mother were very bad. Of the money left by Longren, a good half was spent on treatment after a difficult birth, on caring for the health of the newborn; finally, the loss of a small but necessary amount of money forced Mary to ask Menners for a loan of money. Menners kept a tavern, a shop and was considered wealthy man.

Mary went to him at six o'clock in the evening. About seven the narrator met her on the road to Liss. Tearful and upset, Mary said she was going into town to pawn her wedding ring. She added that Menners agreed to give money, but demanded love in return. Mary got nowhere.

“We don’t even have a crumb of food in our house,” she told a neighbor. “I’ll go to the city, and the girl and I will make ends meet somehow until the husband returns.”

It was cold, windy weather that evening; the narrator tried in vain to persuade the young woman not to go to Liss by nightfall. "You'll get wet, Mary, it's drizzling, and the wind is about to bring downpour."

Back and forth from the seaside village to the city was at least three hours of fast walking, but Mary did not heed the advice of the narrator. “It’s enough for me to prick your eyes,” she said, “and there is almost no family where I would not borrow bread, tea or flour. I'll pawn the ring and it's over." She went, returned, and the next day she took to her bed with a fever and delirium; bad weather and evening drizzle struck her with bilateral pneumonia, as the city doctor said, called by a kind-hearted narrator. A week later, an empty space remained on Longren's double bed, and a neighbor moved into his house to nurse and feed the girl. It was not difficult for her, a lonely widow.

“Besides,” she added, “it’s boring without such a fool.

Longren went to the city, took the calculation, said goodbye to his comrades and began to raise little Assol. Until the girl learned to walk firmly, the widow lived with the sailor, replacing the orphan's mother, but as soon as Assol stopped falling, bringing her leg over the threshold, Longren decisively announced that now he would do everything for the girl himself, and, thanking the widow for her active sympathy, lived the lonely life of a widower, focusing all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories on a small creature.

Ten years of wandering life left very little money in his hands. He began to work. Soon his toys appeared in city stores - skillfully made small models of boats, cutters, single-deck and double-deck sailboats, cruisers, steamers - in a word, what he knew intimately, which, due to the nature of the work, partly replaced for him the roar of port life and painting voyages. In this way, Longren produced enough to live within the limits of moderate economy. Uncommunicative by nature, after the death of his wife he became even more withdrawn and unsociable. On holidays, he was sometimes seen in a tavern, but he never sat down, but hurriedly drank a glass of vodka at the counter and left, briefly throwing around: “yes”, “no”, “hello”, “goodbye”, “little by little” - on all the appeals and nods of the neighbors. He could not stand the guests, quietly sending them away not by force, but by such hints and fictitious circumstances that the visitor had no choice but to invent a reason for not allowing him to stay longer.

He himself did not visit anyone either; thus a cold alienation lay between him and his countrymen, and had Longren's work - toys - been less independent of the affairs of the village, he would have had to experience the consequences of such relations more tangibly. He bought goods and food in the city - Menners could not even boast of a box of matches that Longren bought from him. He also did all the housework himself and patiently went through the complex art of raising a girl, unusual for a man.

Assol was already five years old, and her father began to smile softer and softer, looking at her nervous, kind face, when, sitting on his knees, she worked on the secret of a buttoned waistcoat or hummed amusingly sailor songs - wild rhymes. In the transmission in a child's voice and not everywhere with the letter "r" these songs gave the impression of a dancing bear, decorated with a blue ribbon. At this time, an event occurred, the shadow of which, falling on the father, covered the daughter as well.

It was spring, early and harsh, like winter, but in a different way. For three weeks, a sharp coastal north crouched on the cold earth.

Fishing boats pulled ashore formed a long row of dark keels on the white sand, resembling the ridges of huge fish. No one dared to fish in such weather. In the village's only street, it was rare to see a man leave his house; a cold whirlwind rushing from the coastal hills into the emptiness of the horizon made the open air a severe torture. All the chimneys of Caperna smoked from morning to evening, blowing smoke over the steep roofs.

But these days of the north lured Longren out of his small warm house more often than the sun, throwing blankets of airy gold over the sea and Kaperna in clear weather. Longren went out to the bridge, laid on long rows of piles, where, at the very end of this wooden pier, he smoked a pipe blown by the wind for a long time, watching how the bottom, bare by the coast, smoked with gray foam, barely keeping up with the ramparts, the roaring run of which to the black, stormy horizon filled space with herds of fantastic maned creatures, rushing in unbridled ferocious despair to distant consolation. Moans and noises, the howling firing of huge surges of water and, it seemed, a visible stream of wind slashing the surroundings - so strong was its even run - gave Longren's tormented soul that dullness, deafness, which, reducing grief to vague sadness, is equal to the effect of deep sleep .

On one of these days, the twelve-year-old son of Menners, Khin, noticing that his father's boat was beating against the piles under the walkways, breaking the sides, went and told his father about it. The storm has just begun; Menners forgot to put the boat on the sand. He immediately went to the water, where he saw at the end of the pier, standing with his back to him, smoking, Longren. There was no one else on the beach except for the two of them. Menners walked along the bridge to the middle, went down into the wildly splashing water and untied the sheet; standing in the boat, he began to make his way to the shore, clutching the piles with his hands. He did not take the oars, and at that moment, when, staggering, he missed grabbing another pile, a strong blow of the wind threw the bow of the boat from the bridge towards the ocean. Now, even the entire length of Menners' body could not reach the nearest pile. The wind and waves, rocking, carried the boat into the disastrous expanse. Realizing the situation, Menners wanted to throw himself into the water in order to swim to the shore, but his decision was too late, since the boat was already spinning not far from the end of the pier, where a significant depth of water and the fury of the waves promised certain death. Between Longren and Menners, carried away into the stormy distance, there was no more than ten sazhens of still saving distance, since on the walkways at hand Longren hung a bundle of rope with a load woven into one end. This rope hung in case of a berth in stormy weather and was thrown from the bridges.

- Longren! shouted the mortally frightened Menners. - What have you become like a stump? You see, I'm being carried away; leave the dock!

Longren was silent, calmly looking at Menners, who was tossing about in the boat, only his pipe began to smoke more strongly, and he, after a pause, took it out of his mouth in order to better see what was happening.

- Longren! - Menners called out, - you hear me, I'm dying, save me!

But Longren did not say a single word to him; he did not seem to hear the desperate cry. Until the boat was carried so far that the words-cries of Menners could barely reach, he did not even step from foot to foot. Menners sobbed in horror, conjured the sailor to run to the fishermen, call for help, promised money, threatened and cursed, but Longren only came closer to the very edge of the pier, so as not to immediately lose sight of the throwing and jumping of the boat. “Longren,” came to him muffledly, as if from a roof, sitting inside the house, “save me!” Then, taking a breath and taking a deep breath so that not a single word would be lost in the wind, Longren shouted:

She asked you the same! Think about it while you're still alive, Manners, and don't forget!

Then the cries ceased, and Longren went home. Assol, waking up, saw that her father was sitting before the dying lamp in deep thought. Hearing the voice of the girl calling him, he went up to her, kissed her tightly and covered her with a tangled blanket.

“Sleep, my dear,” he said, “till morning is still far away.

- What are you doing?

- I made a black toy, Assol, - sleep!

The next day, the inhabitants of Kaperna had only conversations about the missing Menners, and on the sixth day they brought him himself, dying and vicious. His story quickly spread around the surrounding villages. Menners wore until evening; shattered by concussions on the sides and bottom of the boat, during a terrible struggle with the ferocity of the waves, which threatened to tirelessly throw the distraught shopkeeper into the sea, he was picked up by the steamer Lucretia, which was going to Kasset. A cold and a shock of terror ended Menners' days. He lived a little less than forty-eight hours, calling on Longren all the disasters possible on earth and in the imagination. The story of Menners, how the sailor watched his death, refusing to help, is eloquent, all the more so because the dying man breathed with difficulty and groaned, struck the inhabitants of Kaperna. Not to mention the fact that a rare of them was able to remember an insult and more serious than that suffered by Longren, and mourn as much as he grieved for Mary until the end of his life - they were disgusted, incomprehensible, struck them that Longren was silent. Silently, until his last words sent after Menners, Longren stood; stood motionless, stern and quiet, as referee, showing deep contempt for Menners - more than hatred was in his silence, and everyone felt it. If he had shouted, expressing his triumph at the sight of Menners’s despair with gestures or fussiness, or something else, his triumph at the sight of Menners’ despair, the fishermen would have understood him, but he acted differently from what they did, he acted impressive, incomprehensible and by this he set himself above others, in a word, he did what is not forgiven. No one bowed to him anymore, held out his hand, cast a recognizing, greeting look. He remained forever aloof from village affairs; the boys, seeing him, shouted after him: “Longren drowned Menners!” He paid no attention to it. He also did not seem to notice that in the tavern or on the shore, among the boats, the fishermen fell silent in his presence, stepping aside, as if from the plague. The Menners case cemented a previously incomplete alienation. Having become complete, it caused a strong mutual hatred, the shadow of which fell on Assol.

The girl grew up without friends. Two or three dozen children of her age, who lived in Kapern, soaked like a sponge with water, with a rude family principle, the basis of which was the unshakable authority of mother and father, imitative, like all children in the world, crossed out little Assol once and for all from the sphere of their patronage and attention. This happened, of course, gradually, through the suggestion and shouting of adults, it acquired the character of a terrible prohibition, and then, reinforced by gossip and rumors, it grew in the children's minds with fear of the sailor's house.

Moreover, Longren's secluded way of life now freed the hysterical language of gossip; it was said about the sailor that he had killed someone somewhere, because, they say, they no longer take him to serve on ships, and he himself is gloomy and unsociable, because "he is tormented by the remorse of a criminal conscience." While playing, the children chased Assol if she approached them, threw mud and teased her that her father ate human meat, and now he was making counterfeit money. One after another, her naive attempts to get closer ended in bitter crying, bruises, scratches and other manifestations. public opinion; she finally stopped being offended, but still sometimes asked her father: “Tell me, why don’t they like us?” “Hey, Assol,” said Longren, “do they know how to love? You have to be able to love, but that's something they can't." - "Like this - be able to? - "But like this!" He took the girl in his arms and kissed her sad eyes, squinting with tender pleasure. Assol's favorite entertainment was in the evenings or on a holiday, when his father, putting aside jars of paste, tools and unfinished work, sat down, taking off his apron, to rest with a pipe in his teeth - to climb on his knees and, spinning in the gentle ring of his father's hand, touch various parts of toys, asking about their purpose. Thus began a kind of fantastic lecture on life and people - a lecture in which, thanks to Longren's former way of life, accidents, chance in general, outlandish, amazing and unusual events were given the main place. Longren, naming the girl the names of gear, sails, marine items, gradually got carried away, moving from explanations to various episodes in which either the windlass, the steering wheel, the mast or some type of boat, etc. played a role, and from individual illustrations of these, he moved on to broad pictures of sea wanderings, weaving superstition into reality, and reality into images of his fantasy. Here appeared a tiger cat, the messenger of a shipwreck, and a talking flying fish, whose orders meant to go astray, and the Flying Dutchman with her furious crew; signs, ghosts, mermaids, pirates - in a word, all the fables that while away the leisure of a sailor in a calm or favorite tavern. Longren also told about the wrecked, about people who had gone wild and forgot how to speak, about mysterious treasures, riots of convicts, and much more, which the girl listened to more attentively than, perhaps, the story of Columbus about the new continent was listened to for the first time. “Well, say more,” Assol asked, when Longren, lost in thought, fell silent, and fell asleep on his chest with a head full of wonderful dreams.

It also served her as a great, always materially significant pleasure, the appearance of the clerk of the city toy shop, who willingly bought the work of Longren. To appease the father and bargain for the excess, the clerk took with him a couple of apples, a sweet pie, a handful of nuts for the girl. Longren usually asked for the real value out of dislike for bargaining, and the clerk slowed down. “Oh, you,” said Longren, “yes, I spent a week working on this bot. - The boat was five-vershkovy. - Look, what kind of strength - and cage, and kindness? This boat of fifteen people will survive in any weather. In the end, the quiet fuss of the girl, purring over her apple, deprived Longren of his stamina and the desire to argue; he yielded, and the clerk, having filled the basket with excellent, durable toys, went away, laughing in his mustache.

Longren did all the household work himself: he chopped wood, carried water, stoked the stove, cooked, washed, ironed linen and, in addition to all this, managed to work for money. When Assol was eight years old, her father taught her to read and write. He began occasionally taking it with him to the city, and then even sending one if there was a need to intercept money in a store or demolish goods. This did not happen often, although Liss lay only four miles from Kaperna, but the road to it went through the forest, and in the forest there are many things that can frighten children, in addition to the physical danger, which, it is true, is difficult to meet at such a close distance from the city, but still still doesn't hurt to keep in mind. Therefore, only on good days, in the morning, when the thicket surrounding the road is full of sunny showers, flowers and silence, so that Assol's impressionability was not threatened by phantoms of the imagination, Longren let her go to the city.

Once, in the middle of such a trip to the city, a girl sat down by the road to eat a piece of cake, put in a basket for breakfast. As she nibbled, she sorted through the toys; two or three of them were new to her: Longren had made them at night. One such novelty was a miniature racing yacht; this white boat carried scarlet sails made from scraps of silk used by Longren to cover steamer cabins - toys of a wealthy buyer. Here, apparently, having made a yacht, he did not find a suitable material for the sails, using what was available - shreds of scarlet silk. Assol was delighted.

33
Alexander Stepanovich Gr
in: "Scarlet Sails"

Alexander Stepanovich Green
Scarlet Sails

annotation

Alexander Green created in his
creating your own special world. In this world the wind of distant lands blows
yy, it is inhabited by kind, brave, cheerful people. And in the sun-drenched harbors
with romantic names Ch Liss, Zurbagan, Gel-Gyu Ch wonderful de
the wolves are waiting for their suitors. Into this world H a ​​little raised above ours, oh
both fantastic and real, we invite readers.

Alexander Stepanovich Green

Scarlet Sails

I. PREDICTION

Longren, sailor of the Orion, a strong three-hundred-ton brig, on which he
served for ten years and to whom he was attached more strongly than any other son to his relatives.
oh mother, had to finally leave the service.
It happened like this. On one of his rare returns home, he did not see
always from afar, on the threshold of the house, his wife Mary, clasping her hands,
and then running towards until you lose your breath. Instead, by the children's bed
ki Ch of a new object in the small house of Longren Ch stood excited
neighbor.
C I followed her for three months, old man, C she said, C look at your d
oh.
Dead, Longren bent down and saw an eight-month-old creature, concentrating
staring at his long beard, then sat down, looked down and began to twist
mustache The mustache was wet, as from rain.
When did Mary die? Ch he asked.
The woman told a sad story, interrupting the story with touching ghouls
chanting to the girl and assurances that Mary is in paradise. When Longren found out in detail
heaven seemed to him a little lighter than a woodshed, and he thought that about
drive a simple lamp Ch if now they are all together, the three of us Ch would be for gone
necks in an unknown country of a woman an irreplaceable consolation.
About three months ago, the economic affairs of the young mother were very bad. From
money left by Longren, a good half went to treatment after work
days of childbirth, on caring for the health of the newborn; Finally, the loss is a little
th, but the amount necessary for life made Mary ask for a loan of money from
Menners. Menners kept a tavern, a shop and was considered a wealthy person.
com.
Mary went to him at six o'clock in the evening. About seven the narrator met
her on the road to Lys. Tearful and upset, Mary said that she was going to
orde to lay a wedding ring. She added that Menners agreed
give money, but demanded love for it. Mary got nowhere.
We don't even have a crumb of food in our house, she told her neighbor. h i sho
I’m going to the city, and the girl and I will make ends meet somehow before her husband returns.
It was cold, windy weather that evening; narrator in vain persuasion
warned the young woman not to go to Lisa by nightfall. "You'll get wet, Mary, dripping
It's raining, and the wind is about to bring a downpour."
Back and forth from the seaside village to the city was at least three hours
ov quick walk, but Mary did not listen to the advice of the narrator. "Enough
me to prick your eyes, she said, and there are almost no families, r
de I would not borrow bread, tea or flour. I'll pawn the ring and it's over." About Us
went, came back, and the next day she took to her bed with fever and delirium; bad weather and evening
nyaya drizzle struck her down with bilateral pneumonia, as Go said.
a native doctor called by a kind-hearted narrator. In a week for two
Longren's bed left an empty space, and the neighbor moved
to his house to nurse and feed the girl. It was not difficult for her, a lonely widow.
Besides, she added, Ch would be boring without such a fool.
Longren went to the city, took the calculation, said goodbye to his comrades and began to raise
l little Assol. Until the girl learned to walk firmly, the widow lived with
sailor, replacing the orphan's mother, but as soon as Assol stopped falling, for
carrying his leg over the threshold, Longren resolutely announced that he would now
am to do everything for the girl, and, thanking the widow for her active sympathy
e, he lived the lonely life of a widower, concentrating all his thoughts, hopes, love
and memories on a small creature.
Ten years of wandering life left very little money in his hands.
. He began to work. Soon his toys H and
intricately made small models of boats, boats, single-deck and double-deck
bast sailboats, cruisers, steamships, in a word, that he is intimately familiar
l, which, due to the nature of the work, partly replaced the roar of port life
and a pictorial labor of voyages. In this way, Longren mined so much that
to live within the limits of moderate economy. Uncommunicative by nature, he, after
death of his wife, became even more withdrawn and unsociable. On holidays it is sometimes
ate at the tavern, but he never sat down, but hurriedly drank at the
some glass of vodka and left, briefly throwing "yes", "no", "healthy
say goodbye”, “goodbye”, “little by little” H to all the appeals and nods of the neighbors. GOST
he could not stand her, quietly sending them away not by force, but by such hints and fictitious
circumstances, that the visitor had no choice but to
come up with a reason for not allowing to sit longer.
He himself did not visit anyone either; thus, between him and his countrymen lay a cold
one alienation, and be the work of Longren C toys C less independent
from the affairs of the village, he would have to experience more tangibly the consequences
I have such a relationship. He bought goods and food supplies in the city of Ch Menne
rs could not even boast of a box of matches Longren bought from him
ohm. He also did all the housework himself and patiently went through
venous to a man the complex art of raising a girl.
Assol was already five years old, and his father began to smile softer and softer,
looking at her nervous, kind face when, sitting on his lap, she labored
hovered over the secret of a buttoned waistcoat, or amusingly sang sailor songs
Songs of wild revivals. In the transmission in a child's voice and not everywhere with the letter "
p "these songs gave the impression of a dancing bear, decorated with
about the blue ribbon. At this time an event took place, the shadow of which, fallen
against her father, she also hid her daughter.
It was spring, early and harsh, like winter, but in a different way. Weeks for three seasons
l to the cold land a sharp coastal north.
Fishing boats pulled ashore formed a long line on the white sand.
a row of dark keels resembling the ridges of huge fish. Nobody dared
I go fishing in this weather. On the only street of the village
how one could see a person who left the house; cold whirlwind
I from the coastal hills into the emptiness of the horizon, did the "open air" severely
and torture. All the chimneys of Kaperna smoked from morning till evening, blowing smoke along the steep
roofs.
But these days of the Nord lured Longren out of his little warm house more often
than the sun, which, in clear weather, throws blankets over the sea and Caperna
stuffy gold. Longren went out onto the bridge, laid out in long rows with
wai, where, at the very end of this boardwalk, he smoked for a long time an inflated ve
pipe, watching how the bottom exposed near the coast smoked with gray foam, ate
not keeping up with the waves, the roaring run of which to the black, stormy
rizontu filled the space with herds of fantastic maned creatures
tv, rushing in unbridled ferocious despair to a distant consolation. Moan
s and noises, the howling firing of huge surges of water and, it seemed, a visible str
ya wind slashing the neighborhood, H so strong was its even run, H
gave Longren's tormented soul that dullness, stupefaction which
aya, reducing grief to vague sadness, is equal to the effect of deep sleep.
On one of these days, Menners' twelve-year-old son, Khin, noticing that his father
your boat is beating against the piles under the walkways, breaking the sides, went and said about it
father. The storm has just begun; Menners forgot to put the boat on the sand. He is mute
went for a long time to the water, where he saw at the end of the pier, standing with his back to him
Oh, smoking, Longren. There was no one else on the beach except for the two of them. Menners pro
walked along the bridge to the middle, went down into the wildly splashing water and untied the school
from; standing in the boat, he began to make his way to the shore, clutching the piles with his hands. The weight
but he didn’t take it, and at the moment when, staggering, he missed grabbing his eyes
the middle pile, a strong blow of the wind threw the bow of the boat away from the bridges in the direction of
keana. Now, even with the entire length of the body, Menners could not reach the closest
most piles. The wind and waves, rocking, carried the boat into the disastrous expanse. conscience
in position, Menners wanted to throw himself into the water in order to swim to the shore, but decided
it was belated, since the boat was already spinning not far from the end of the pier, where
the considerable depth of the water and the fury of the ramparts promised certain death. Mezh Long
wren and Menners, carried away into the stormy distance, were no more than ten soots
there is still a saving distance, since on the walkways at hand at Longren
hung a bundle of rope with a load woven into one end. Rope this vis
ate in case of a pier in stormy weather and threw himself from the bridges.
Ch Longren! Ch shouted the mortally frightened Menners. W What are you
al, how's the stump? You see, I'm being carried away; leave the dock!
Longren was silent, calmly looking at Menners, who was tossing about in the boat, only
his pipe smoked harder, and he hesitated, took it out of his mouth so that he could see it better.
child what is happening.
Ch Longren! C called out to Menners. You hear me, I'm dying, save me!
But Longren did not say a single word to him; he did not seem to hear the desperate
oh cry. Until the boat was carried so far that the words-cries of Me barely reached
nersa, he didn't even step over from one foot to the other. Menners sobbed in horror,
cash sailor run to the fishermen, call for help, promised money, threatened and syp
cursed, but Longren only came closer to the very edge of the pier to
not immediately lose sight of the tossing and jumping boats. "Longren, H heard to
it’s deaf to him, as if from the roof of H sitting inside the house, H save! Then, typing in
breath and taking a deep breath so that not a single word is lost in the wind, Lon
Gren shouted: She also asked you! Think about it while you're still alive, Menner
s, and don't forget!
Then the cries ceased, and Longren went home. Assol, waking up, saw that
then the father sits before the fading lamp in deep thought. Hearing a goal
os of the girl who called him, he went up to her, kissed her hard and covered her
we take a blanket.
H Sleep, dear, H he said, H until the morning is still far away.
C What are you doing?
I made a black toy, Assol, Ch sleep!
The next day, the inhabitants of Kaperna had only conversations about the missing
m Menners, and on the sixth day they brought him himself, dying and vicious. Er
about the story quickly flew around the surrounding villages. Until the evening wore Menners
; shattered by concussions on the sides and bottom of the boat, during a terrible struggle with sw
with the force of the waves threatening, tirelessly, to throw the crazed lavo into the sea
chnik, he was picked up by the steamer "Lucretia", sailing to Kasset. Colds and
a shock of horror ended the days of Menners. He lived a little less than forty
eight hours, calling on Longren all the disasters possible on earth and in
image. The story of Menners, how a sailor watched his death, refusing to
help, eloquent all the more so because the dying man breathed with difficulty and groaned,
azil of the inhabitants of Caperna. Not to mention the fact that a rare one of them was able to
remember the insult, and more serious than that suffered by Longren, and grieve
as much as he grieved for the rest of his life about Mary, H they were disgusted
oh, incomprehensibly, they were amazed that Longren was silent. Silently, until their last words
ov sent after Menners, Longren stood; stood still, sternly
and quietly, like a judge, showing deep contempt for Menners, more than not
hatred was in his silence, and everyone felt it. If he screamed
squealing with gestures or fussiness of gloating, or something else, their triumph
at the sight of Menners' despair, the fishermen would have understood him, but he acted differently than
m they acted Ch acted impressively, incomprehensibly
above others, in a word, he did what is not forgiven. Nobody bowed to him anymore
u, did not extend his hand, did not cast a recognizing, greeting look. Sover
chenno forever remained aloof from village affairs; boys, envy
after eating him, they shouted after him: “Longren drowned Menners!”. He didn't pay attention to it.
attention. It also seemed that he did not notice that in the tavern or on the shore
near, among the boats, the fishermen fell silent in his presence, stepping aside, as if from
plagued. The Menners case cemented a previously incomplete alienation. St
in full, it aroused a strong mutual hatred, the shadow of which fell on
Assol.
The girl grew up without friends. Two or three dozen children her age who lived in Cape
rne, soaked like a sponge in water, with a rough family beginning, the basis of which
who was served by the unshakable authority of his mother and father, who were impulsive, like all
children in the world, crossed out once and for all little Assol from the sphere of their
patronage and attention. This happened, of course, gradually
m of suggestion and shouting of adults acquired the character of a terrible ban, and for
that, reinforced by gossip and rumors, has grown in the children's minds of fear
home to the sailor's house.
In addition, Longren's secluded lifestyle has now freed the hysterical
gossip language; they used to say about the sailor that he had killed someone somewhere, because
l, he is no longer taken to serve on ships, and he himself is gloomy and unsociable, because
"tormented by the remorse of a criminal conscience." Playing, the children drove Assol, es
when she approached them, they threw mud at them and teased them that as if her father
ate human meat, and now makes counterfeit money. One by one, on
her true attempts at rapprochement ended in bitter weeping, bruises,
pins and other manifestations of public opinion; she stopped,
offended, but still sometimes asked her father: “Tell me why we
do not like?" Ch “Eh, Assol, Ch said Longren, Ch do they know how to love? Above
about being able to love, but that is something they cannot do.” Ch "How can Ch be able to?" C "That's it!
He took the girl in his arms and firmly kissed the sad eyes that squinted from
gentle pleasure.
Assol's favorite entertainment was in the evenings or on a holiday, when his father, oh
putting away the paste jars, tools, and unfinished work, he sat down,
taking off his apron, rest, with a pipe in his teeth, C climb on his knees
and, spinning in the protective ring of the father's hand, touch various parts of the games
ears, asking about their purpose. Thus began a kind of fantasy
lecture on life and people A lecture in which, thanks to the former
Longren's way of life, accidents, chance in general, outlandish, amaze
important and unusual events were given the main place.

This is an introductory section of the book. This book is protected by copyright. To get the full version of the book, contact our partner - the distributor of legal content "LitRes".

Longren, a sailor of the Orion, a strong three-hundred-ton brig, on which he served for ten years and to which he was more attached than any son to his own mother, had to finally leave the service.

It happened like this. On one of his rare returns home, he did not see, as always from a distance, on the threshold of the house his wife Mary, clasping her hands, and then running towards him until she lost her breath. In her place, by the crib, a new item in Longren's small house, stood an excited neighbor.

“I followed her for three months, old man,” she said, “look at your daughter.

Dead, Longren leaned over and saw an eight-month-old creature staring intently at his long beard, then sat down, looked down and began to twist his mustache. The mustache was wet, as from rain.

When did Mary die? - he asked.

The woman told a sad story, interrupting the story with a touching gurgle to the girl and assurances that Mary was in paradise. When Longren found out the details, paradise seemed to him a little brighter than a woodshed, and he thought that the fire of a simple lamp - if now they were all together, the three of them - would be an irreplaceable joy for a woman who had gone to an unknown country.

About three months ago, the economic affairs of the young mother were very bad. Of the money left by Longren, a good half was spent on treatment after a difficult birth, on caring for the health of the newborn; finally, the loss of a small but necessary amount of money forced Mary to ask for a loan of money from Menners. Menners kept a tavern, a shop and was considered a wealthy man.

Mary went to him at six o'clock in the evening. About seven the narrator met her on the road to Liss. Tearful and upset, Mary said that she was going to town to pawn her wedding ring. She added that Menners agreed to give money, but demanded love in return. Mary got nowhere.

“We don’t even have a crumb of food in our house,” she said to a neighbor. “I’m going to the city, and the girl and I will make ends meet sometime before her husband returns.”

It was cold, windy weather that evening; the narrator tried in vain to persuade the young woman not to go to Lisa by nightfall. "You'll get wet, Mary, it's drizzling, and the wind is about to bring downpour."

Back and forth from the seaside village to the city was at least three hours of fast walking, but Mary did not heed the advice of the narrator. “It’s enough for me to prick your eyes,” she said, “and there is almost no family where I would not borrow bread, tea or flour. I'll pawn the ring and it's over." She went, returned, and the next day she took to her bed with a fever and delirium; bad weather and evening drizzle struck her with bilateral pneumonia, as the city doctor said, called by a kind-hearted narrator. A week later, an empty space remained on Longren's double bed, and a neighbor moved into his house to nurse and feed the girl. It was not difficult for her, a lonely widow. Besides,” she added, “it’s boring without such a fool.

Longren went to the city, took the calculation, said goodbye to his comrades and began to raise little Assol. Until the girl learned to walk firmly, the widow lived with the sailor, replacing the orphan's mother, but as soon as Assol stopped falling, bringing her leg over the threshold, Longren decisively announced that now he would do everything for the girl himself, and, thanking the widow for her active sympathy, lived the lonely life of a widower, focusing all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories on a small creature.

Ten years of wandering life left very little money in his hands. He began to work. Soon his toys appeared in city stores - skillfully made small models of boats, cutters, single-deck and double-deck sailboats, cruisers, steamers - in a word, what he knew intimately, which, due to the nature of the work, partly replaced for him the roar of port life and painting voyages. In this way, Longren produced enough to live within the limits of moderate economy. Uncommunicative by nature, after the death of his wife, he became even more withdrawn and unsociable. On holidays, he was sometimes seen in a tavern, but he never sat down, but hurriedly drank a glass of vodka at the counter and left, briefly throwing “yes”, “no”, “hello”, “goodbye”, “little by little” - everything calls and nods from neighbors. He could not stand the guests, quietly sending them away not by force, but by such hints and fictitious circumstances that the visitor had no choice but to invent a reason for not allowing him to stay longer.

He himself did not visit anyone either; thus a cold alienation lay between him and his countrymen, and had Longren's work - toys - been less independent of the affairs of the village, he would have had to experience the consequences of such relations more tangibly. He bought goods and food in the city - Menners could not even boast of a box of matches that Longren bought from him. He also did all the housework himself and patiently went through the complex art of raising a girl, unusual for a man.

Assol was already five years old, and her father began to smile softer and softer, looking at her nervous, kind face, when, sitting on his knees, she was working on the secret of a buttoned waistcoat or amusingly singing sailor songs - wild rhymes. In the transmission in a child's voice and not everywhere with the letter "r" these songs gave the impression of a dancing bear, decorated with a blue ribbon. At this time, an event occurred, the shadow of which, falling on the father, covered the daughter as well.

It was spring, early and harsh, like winter, but in a different way. For three weeks, a sharp coastal north crouched on the cold earth.

Fishing boats pulled ashore formed a long row of dark keels on the white sand, resembling the ridges of huge fish. No one dared to fish in such weather. In the village's only street, it was rare to see a man leave his house; a cold whirlwind rushing from the coastal hills into the emptiness of the horizon made "open air" a severe torture. All the chimneys of Caperna smoked from morning to evening, blowing smoke over the steep roofs.

But these days of the north lured Longren out of his small warm house more often than the sun, throwing blankets of airy gold over the sea and Kaperna in clear weather. Longren went out to the bridge, laid on long rows of piles, where, at the very end of this wooden pier, he smoked a pipe blown by the wind for a long time, watching how the bottom, bare by the coast, smoked with gray foam, barely keeping up with the ramparts, the roaring run of which to the black, stormy horizon filled space with herds of fantastic maned creatures, rushing in unbridled ferocious despair to distant consolation. Moans and noises, the howling firing of huge surges of water and, it seemed, a visible stream of wind slashing the surroundings - so strong was its even run - gave Longren's tormented soul that dullness, deafness, which, reducing grief to vague sadness, is equal to the effect of deep sleep .

On one of these days, the twelve-year-old son of Menners, Khin, noticing that his father's boat was beating against the piles under the walkways, breaking the sides, went and told his father about it. The storm has just begun; Menners forgot to put the boat on the sand. He immediately went to the water, where he saw at the end of the pier, standing with his back to him, smoking, Longren. There was no one else on the beach except for the two of them. Menners walked along the bridge to the middle, went down into the wildly splashing water and untied the sheet; standing in the boat, he began to make his way to the shore, clutching the piles with his hands. He did not take the oars, and at that moment, when, staggering, he missed grabbing another pile, a strong blow of the wind threw the bow of the boat from the bridge towards the ocean. Now, even the entire length of Menners' body could not reach the nearest pile. The wind and waves, rocking, carried the boat into the disastrous expanse. Realizing the situation, Menners wanted to throw himself into the water in order to swim to the shore, but his decision was too late, since the boat was already spinning not far from the end of the pier, where a significant depth of water and the fury of the waves promised certain death. Between Longren and Menners, carried away into the stormy distance, there was no more than ten sazhens of still saving distance, since on the walkways at hand Longren hung a bundle of rope with a load woven into one end. This rope hung in case of a berth in stormy weather and was thrown from the bridges.

- Longren! shouted the mortally frightened Menners. - What have you become like a stump? You see, I'm being carried away; leave the dock!

Longren was silent, calmly looking at Menners, who was tossing about in the boat, only his pipe began to smoke more strongly, and he, after a pause, took it out of his mouth in order to better see what was happening.

- Longren! called Menners. - You hear me, I'm dying, save me!

But Longren did not say a single word to him; he did not seem to hear the desperate cry. Until the boat was carried so far that the words-cries of Menners could barely reach, he did not even step from foot to foot. Menners sobbed in horror, conjured the sailor to run to the fishermen, call for help, promised money, threatened and cursed, but Longren only came closer to the very edge of the pier, so as not to immediately lose sight of the throwing and jumping of the boat. “Longren,” came to him muffledly, as if from a roof, sitting inside the house, “save me!” Then, taking a breath and taking a deep breath so that not a single word would be lost in the wind, Longren shouted: - She also asked you! Think about it while you're still alive, Manners, and don't forget!

Then the cries ceased, and Longren went home. Assol, waking up, saw that her father was sitting before the dying lamp in deep thought. Hearing the voice of the girl calling him, he went up to her, kissed her tightly and covered her with a tangled blanket.

“Sleep, my dear,” he said, “till morning is still far away.

- What are you doing?

- I made a black toy, Assol, - sleep!

The next day, the inhabitants of Kaperna had only conversations about the missing Menners, and on the sixth day they brought him himself, dying and vicious. His story quickly spread around the surrounding villages. Menners wore until evening; shattered by concussions against the sides and bottom of the boat, during a terrible struggle with the ferocity of the waves, which threatened to tirelessly throw the distraught shopkeeper into the sea, he was picked up by the steamer Lucretia, which was going to Kasset. A cold and a shock of terror ended Menners' days. He lived a little less than forty-eight hours, calling on Longren all the disasters possible on earth and in the imagination. The story of Menners, how the sailor watched his death, refusing to help, is eloquent, all the more so because the dying man breathed with difficulty and groaned, struck the inhabitants of Kaperna. Not to mention the fact that a rare of them was able to remember an insult and more serious than that suffered by Longren, and mourn as much as he grieved for Mary until the end of his life - they were disgusted, incomprehensible, struck them that Longren was silent. In silence, until his last words, sent after Menners, Longren stood; he stood motionless, stern and quiet, like a judge, showing deep contempt for Menners - there was more than hatred in his silence, and everyone felt it. If he had shouted, expressing his triumph at the sight of Menners’s despair with gestures or fussiness, or something else, his triumph at the sight of Menners’ despair, the fishermen would have understood him, but he acted differently from what they did - he acted impressively, what is not forgiven. No one bowed to him anymore, held out his hand, cast a recognizing, greeting look. He remained forever aloof from village affairs; the boys, seeing him, shouted after him: “Longren drowned Menners!”. He paid no attention to it. He also did not seem to notice that in the tavern or on the shore, among the boats, the fishermen fell silent in his presence, stepping aside, as if from the plague. The Menners case cemented a previously incomplete alienation. Having become complete, it caused a strong mutual hatred, the shadow of which fell on Assol.

The girl grew up without friends. Two or three dozen children of her age, who lived in Kapern, soaked like a sponge with water, with a rude family principle, the basis of which was the unshakable authority of mother and father, imitative, like all children in the world, crossed out once and for all little Assol from the sphere of their patronage and attention. This happened, of course, gradually, through the suggestion and shouting of adults, it acquired the character of a terrible prohibition, and then, reinforced by gossip and rumors, it grew in the children's minds with fear of the sailor's house.

Moreover, Longren's secluded way of life now freed the hysterical language of gossip; it was said about the sailor that he had killed someone somewhere, because, they say, they no longer take him to serve on ships, and he himself is gloomy and unsociable, because "he is tormented by the remorse of a criminal conscience." While playing, the children chased Assol if she approached them, threw mud and teased her that her father ate human meat, and now he was making counterfeit money. One after another, her naive attempts at rapprochement ended in bitter weeping, bruises, scratches and other manifestations of public opinion; she finally stopped being offended, but still sometimes asked her father: “Tell me, why don’t they like us?” “Hey, Assol,” said Longren, “do they know how to love? You have to be able to love, but that's something they can't." - “How is it to be able to?” - "But like this!" He took the girl in his arms and kissed her sad eyes, squinting with tender pleasure.

Assol's favorite entertainment was in the evenings or on a holiday, when his father, putting aside jars of paste, tools and unfinished work, sat down, taking off his apron, to rest, with a pipe in his teeth - to climb on his knees and, spinning in the gentle ring of his father's hand, touch various parts of toys, asking about their purpose. Thus began a kind of fantastic lecture on life and people - a lecture in which, thanks to Longren's former way of life, accidents, chance in general, outlandish, amazing and unusual events were given the main place. Longren, naming the girl the names of gear, sails, marine items, gradually got carried away, moving from explanations to various episodes in which either the windlass, the steering wheel, the mast or some type of boat, etc. played a role, and from individual illustrations of these, he moved on to broad pictures of sea wanderings, weaving superstition into reality, and reality into images of his fantasy. Here appeared the tiger cat, the messenger of the shipwreck, and the talking flying fish, whose orders meant to go astray, and the Flying Dutchman with his furious crew; signs, ghosts, mermaids, pirates - in a word, all the fables that while away the leisure of a sailor in a calm or favorite tavern. Longren also told about the wrecked, about people who had gone wild and forgot how to speak, about mysterious treasures, riots of convicts, and much more, which the girl listened to more attentively than Columbus's story about the new continent could be listened to for the first time. “Well, say more,” Assol asked, when Longren, lost in thought, fell silent, and fell asleep on his chest with a head full of wonderful dreams.

It also served her as a great, always materially significant pleasure, the appearance of the clerk of the city toy shop, who willingly bought the work of Longren. To appease the father and bargain for the excess, the clerk took with him a couple of apples, a sweet pie, a handful of nuts for the girl. Longren usually asked for the real value out of dislike for bargaining, and the clerk slowed down. “Oh, you,” Longren said, “yes, I spent a week working on this bot. - The boat was five-vershkovy. - Look, what kind of strength, and draft, and kindness? This boat of fifteen people will survive in any weather. In the end, the quiet fuss of the girl, purring over her apple, deprived Longren of his stamina and the desire to argue; he yielded, and the clerk, having filled the basket with excellent, durable toys, went away, laughing in his mustache. Longren did all the household work himself: he chopped wood, carried water, stoked the stove, cooked, washed, ironed linen and, in addition to all this, managed to work for money. When Assol was eight years old, her father taught her to read and write. He began occasionally taking it with him to the city, and then even sending one if there was a need to intercept money in a store or demolish goods. This did not happen often, although Lise lay only four versts from Kaperna, but the road to it went through the forest, and in the forest there are many things that can frighten children, in addition to physical danger, which, it is true, is difficult to meet at such a close distance from the city, but still still doesn't hurt to keep in mind. Therefore, only on good days, in the morning, when the thicket surrounding the road is full of sunny showers, flowers and silence, so that Assol's impressionability was not threatened by phantoms of the imagination, Longren let her go to the city.

One day, in the middle of such a journey to the city, the girl sat down by the road to eat a piece of cake, put in a basket for breakfast. As she nibbled, she sorted through the toys; two or three of them were new to her: Longren had made them at night. One such novelty was a miniature racing yacht; the white ship raised scarlet sails made from scraps of silk used by Longren to wrap steamer cabins - toys of a wealthy buyer. Here, apparently, having made a yacht, he did not find a suitable material for the sail, using what was available - shreds of scarlet silk. Assol was delighted. The fiery cheerful color burned so brightly in her hand, as if she were holding a fire. The road was crossed by a stream, with a pole bridge thrown over it; the stream to the right and left went into the forest. “If I launch her into the water for a swim,” Assol thought, “she won’t get wet, I’ll wipe her off later.” Having moved into the forest behind the bridge, along the course of the stream, the girl carefully launched the ship that captivated her into the water near the shore; the sails immediately sparkled with a scarlet reflection in the transparent water: the light, penetrating matter, lay down in a trembling pink radiation on the white stones of the bottom. “Where are you from, Captain? - Assol asked an imaginary face importantly and, answering herself, said: - I came, I came ... I came from China. - What did you bring? “I won’t say what I brought. “Oh, you are, Captain! Well, then I'll put you back in the basket." The captain had just prepared to humbly answer that he was joking and that he was ready to show an elephant, when suddenly a quiet run-off of the coastal stream turned the yacht with its nose towards the middle of the stream, and, like a real one, leaving the shore at full speed, it floated smoothly down. The scale of the visible instantly changed: the stream seemed to the girl a huge river, and the yacht seemed like a distant, large ship, to which, almost falling into the water, frightened and dumbfounded, she held out her hands. “The captain was scared,” she thought, and ran after the floating toy, hoping that it would be washed ashore somewhere. Hastily dragging a not heavy, but disturbing basket, Assol kept repeating: “Ah, my God! After all, if it happened ... ”- She tried not to lose sight of the beautiful, smoothly escaping triangle of sails, stumbled, fell and ran again.

Assol has never been as deep in the forest as she is now. She, absorbed in an impatient desire to catch a toy, did not look around; near the shore, where she fussed, there were enough obstacles to occupy her attention. Mossy trunks of fallen trees, pits, tall ferns, wild roses, jasmine and hazel hindered her at every step; overcoming them, she gradually lost her strength, stopping more and more often to rest or brush off the sticky cobwebs from her face. When sedge and reed thickets stretched out in wider places, Assol completely lost sight of the scarlet sparkle of the sails, but, having run around the bend of the current, she again saw them, sedately and steadily running away. Once she looked back, and the vastness of the forest, with its variegation, passing from the smoky columns of light in the foliage to the dark clefts of the dense twilight, deeply struck the girl. For a moment, shy, she remembered again about the toy and, after releasing a deep "f-f-w-w" several times, she ran with all her might.

In such an unsuccessful and anxious pursuit, about an hour passed, when, with surprise, but also with relief, Assol saw that the trees ahead parted freely, letting in the blue overflow of the sea, the clouds and the edge of the yellow sandy cliff, to which she ran out, almost falling from fatigue. Here was the mouth of the stream; spilling narrowly and shallowly, so that the flowing blueness of the stones could be seen, it disappeared in the oncoming sea wave. From a low cliff, pitted with roots, Assol saw that by the stream, on a large flat stone, with his back to her, a man was sitting, holding a runaway yacht in his hands, and comprehensively examining it with the curiosity of an elephant that had caught a butterfly. Somewhat reassured by the fact that the toy was intact, Assol slid down the cliff and, coming close to the stranger, looked at him with a studying look, waiting for him to raise his head. But the stranger was so immersed in the contemplation of the forest surprise that the girl managed to examine him from head to toe, establishing that she had never seen people like this stranger before.

But in front of her was none other than Aigle, a well-known collector of songs, legends, traditions and fairy tales, traveling on foot. Gray curls fell out in folds from under his straw hat; a gray blouse tucked into blue trousers and high boots gave him the look of a hunter; a white collar, a tie, a belt studded with silver badges, a cane and a bag with a brand new nickel clasp - showed a city dweller. His face, if one can call it a face, is his nose, his lips and his eyes, which peeped out of a vigorously overgrown radiant beard and a magnificent, ferociously upturned mustache, would have seemed sluggishly transparent, if it were not for his eyes, gray as sand, and shining like pure steel, with a glance bold and strong.

“Now give it to me,” the girl said timidly. - You've already played. How did you catch her?

Aigl raised his head, dropping the yacht, - Assol's excited voice sounded so unexpectedly. The old man looked at her for a minute, smiling and slowly letting his beard pass through a large, sinewy handful. Washed many times, the cotton dress barely covered the girl's thin, tanned legs to the knees. Her dark thick hair, pulled back in a lace scarf, was tangled, touching her shoulders. Every feature of Assol was expressively light and pure, like the flight of a swallow. The dark eyes, tinged with a sad question, seemed somewhat older than the face; his irregular soft oval was covered with that kind of lovely tan that is characteristic of a healthy whiteness of the skin. The half-open little mouth gleamed with a meek smile.

“I swear by the Grimms, Aesop and Andersen,” said Aigle, looking first at the girl, then at the yacht. - It's something special. Listen, you plant! Is this your thing?

- Yes, I ran after her all over the stream; I thought I would die. Was she here?

- At my very feet. The shipwreck is the reason I, in my capacity as a coastal pirate, can give you this prize. The yacht, abandoned by the crew, was thrown onto the sand by a three-inch shaft - between my left heel and the tip of the stick. He tapped his cane. "What's your name, little one?"

"Assol," said the girl, putting the toy Egle had given her into the basket.

"Very well," the old man continued in an incomprehensible speech, without taking his eyes off, in the depths of which a smile of friendly disposition gleamed. “I really shouldn't have asked your name. It is good that it is so strange, so monotonous, musical, like the whistle of an arrow or the sound of a seashell: what would I do if you called yourself one of those euphonious, but unbearably familiar names that are alien to the Beautiful Unknown? Moreover, I do not want to know who you are, who your parents are and how you live. Why break the charm? Sitting on this stone, I was engaged in a comparative study of Finnish and Japanese stories ... when suddenly the stream splashed out this yacht, and then you appeared ... Just the way you are. I, my dear, am a poet at heart - although I never composed myself. What's in your basket?

“Boats,” said Assol, shaking her basket, “then a steamboat and three more of these houses with flags. Soldiers live there.

- Excellent. You were sent to sell. On the way, you took up the game. You let the yacht float, and she ran away - right?

– Have you seen it? Assol asked doubtfully, trying to remember if she had told it herself. - Did someone tell you? Or did you guess?

“I knew it. – But how?

“Because I am the most important wizard. Assol was embarrassed: her tension at these words of Egle crossed the border of fright. The deserted seashore, the silence, the tedious adventure with the yacht, the incomprehensible speech of the old man with sparkling eyes, the majesty of his beard and hair began to seem to the girl a mixture of the supernatural and reality. Make now Aigle a grimace or shout something - the girl would rush away, crying and exhausted with fear. But Aigle, noticing how wide her eyes opened, made a sharp volt.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said seriously. “On the contrary, I want to talk to you to my heart’s content. It was only then that he realized to himself that in the face of the girl his impression had been so intently marked. “An involuntary expectation of a beautiful, blissful fate,” he decided. “Ah, why wasn’t I born a writer? What a glorious story."

“Come on,” Egle continued, trying to round off the original position (the tendency to myth-making - a consequence of constant work - was stronger than the fear of throwing the seeds of a big dream on unknown soil), “come on, Assol, listen to me carefully. I was in that village - where you must be coming from, in a word, in Kaperna. I love fairy tales and songs, and I sat in that village all day, trying to hear something no one heard. But you don't tell fairy tales. You don't sing songs. And if they tell and sing, then, you know, these stories about cunning peasants and soldiers, with eternal praise of swindle, these dirty, like unwashed feet, rough, like rumbling in the stomach, short quatrains with a terrible motive ... Stop, I lost my way. I will speak again. Thinking about it, he continued like this: “I don’t know how many years will pass, only in Kapern one fairy tale will bloom, one that will be remembered for a long time. You will be big, Assol. One morning, in the sea, a scarlet sail will sparkle under the sun. The shining bulk of the scarlet sails of the white ship will move, cutting through the waves, straight to you. This wonderful ship will sail quietly, without screams and shots; many people will gather on the shore, wondering and gasping: and you will stand there. The ship will approach majestically to the very shore to the sounds of beautiful music; elegant, in carpets, in gold and flowers, a fast boat will sail from it. “Why did you come? Who are you looking for?" the people on the beach will ask. Then you will see a brave handsome prince; he will stand and stretch out his hands to you. “Hello, Assol! he will say. “Far, far away from here, I saw you in a dream and came to take you forever to my kingdom. You will live there with me in a pink deep valley. You will have everything you want; we will live with you so amicably and cheerfully that your soul will never know tears and sadness. He will put you in a boat, bring you on a ship, and you will leave forever for a brilliant country where the sun rises and where the stars descend from the sky to congratulate you on your arrival.

- It's all for me? the girl asked quietly. Her serious eyes, cheerful, shone with confidence. A dangerous wizard, of course, would not speak like that; she stepped closer. “Perhaps it has already arrived… that ship?”

“Not so soon,” said Aigle, “at first, as I said, you will grow up. Then… What can I say? - it will be, and it's over. What would you do then?

- I? - She looked into the basket, but apparently did not find anything worthy of serving as a weighty reward. “I would love him,” she said hastily, and added, not quite firmly, “if he doesn’t fight.”

“No, he won’t fight,” said the wizard, winking mysteriously, “he won’t, I vouch for it.” Go, girl, and don't forget what I told you between two sips of aromatic vodka and thinking about the songs of convicts. Go. May peace be with your furry head!

Longren worked in his small garden, digging in potato bushes. Raising his head, he saw Assol running headlong towards him with a joyful and impatient face.

- Well, here ... - she said, trying to control her breathing, and grabbed her father's apron with both hands. “Listen to what I'll tell you… On the shore, far away, a magician is sitting… She began with the magician and his interesting prediction. The fever of her thoughts prevented her from conveying the incident smoothly. This was followed by a description of the appearance of the wizard and - in reverse order - the pursuit of a lost yacht.

Longren listened to the girl without interrupting, without a smile, and when she finished, his imagination quickly drew an unknown old man with aromatic vodka in one hand and a toy in the other. He turned away, but remembering that on the great occasions of a child's life one should be serious and surprised, he solemnly nodded his head, saying: “So, so; by all indications, there is no one else to be like a magician. I would like to look at him ... But when you go again, do not turn aside; It's easy to get lost in the forest.

Throwing down the shovel, he sat down by the low brushwood fence and sat the girl on his lap. Terribly tired, she tried to add some more details, but the heat, excitement and weakness made her sleepy. Her eyes stuck together, her head rested on her father's hard shoulder, and in a moment she would have been carried off into the land of dreams, when suddenly, troubled by a sudden doubt, Assol sat up straight, with her eyes closed and, resting her fists on Longren's vest, said loudly: - What do you think? , will the magic ship come for me or not?

“He will come,” the sailor answered calmly, “since you were told this, then everything is right.”

“Grow up, forget it,” he thought, “but for now ... you shouldn’t take such a toy away from you. After all, in the future you will have to see a lot of not scarlet, but dirty and predatory sails: from a distance - smart and white, close - torn and arrogant. A passer-by joked with my girl. Well?! Good joke! Nothing is a joke! Look how you got sick - half a day in the forest, in the thicket. As for scarlet sails, think like me: you will have scarlet sails.

Assol was asleep. Longren, taking out his pipe with his free hand, lit a cigarette, and the wind carried the smoke through the wattle fence into a bush that grew on the outside of the garden. By the bush, with his back to the fence, chewing a pie, sat a young beggar. The conversation between father and daughter put him in a cheerful mood, and the smell of good tobacco set him up in a lucrative mood. “Give, master, a poor man a smoke,” he said through the bars. - My tobacco against yours is not tobacco, but, one might say, poison.

- That's the trouble! Wakes up, falls asleep again, and a passer-by took and smoked.

“Well,” objected Longren, “you still have some tobacco, and the child is tired. Come in later if you want.

The beggar spat contemptuously, lifted the sack on a stick, and explained: “Princess, of course. You drove these overseas ships into her head! Oh, you eccentric eccentric, and also the owner!

“Listen,” Longren whispered, “I’ll probably wake her up, but only to soap your hefty neck.” Go away!

Half an hour later, the beggar was sitting in a tavern at a table with a dozen fishermen. Behind them, now tugging at their husbands' sleeves, now taking a glass of vodka over their shoulders—for themselves, of course—sat tall women with arched eyebrows and arms as round as cobblestones. The beggar, seething with resentment, narrated: - And he did not give me tobacco. - “You,” he says, “will turn an adult year, and then,” he says, “a special red ship ... Behind you. Since your fate is to marry the prince. And that, - he says, - believe the magician. But I say: “Wake up, wake up, they say, get some tobacco.” So after all, he ran after me half the way.

- Who? What? What is he talking about? - curious voices of women were heard. The fishermen, barely turning their heads, explained with a grin: “Longren and his daughter have gone wild, or maybe they have lost their minds; here is a man talking. They had a sorcerer, so you have to understand. They are waiting - aunts, you would not miss! - an overseas prince, and even under red sails!

Three days later, returning from the city shop, Assol heard for the first time: - Hey, gallows! Assol! Look here! Red sails are sailing!

The girl, shuddering, involuntarily glanced from under her arm at the flood of the sea. Then she turned in the direction of the exclamations; there, twenty paces from her, stood a bunch of children; they grimaced, sticking out their tongues. Sighing, the girl ran home.

II. Gray

If Caesar found it better to be first in a village than second in Rome, then Arthur Gray could not be jealous of Caesar in regard to his wise desire. He was born a captain, wanted to be one and became one.

The huge house in which Gray was born was gloomy inside and majestic outside. A flower garden and part of the park adjoined the front facade. The finest varieties of tulips—silver blue, purple, and black with a pink tinge—wriggled through the lawn in lines of whimsically thrown necklaces. The old trees of the park slumbered in the scattered half-light above the sedge of a meandering stream. The fence of the castle, since it was a real castle, consisted of twisted cast-iron pillars connected by an iron pattern. Each pillar ended at the top with a magnificent cast-iron lily; on solemn days these bowls were filled with oil, blazing in the darkness of the night with a vast fiery array.

Gray's father and mother were arrogant slaves of their position, wealth and the laws of a society in relation to which they could say "we". Part of their soul, occupied by the gallery of ancestors, is not worthy of a picture, the other part - an imaginary continuation of the gallery - began with little Gray, doomed, according to a well-known, pre-planned plan, to live life and die so that his portrait could be hung on the wall without damaging family honor. In this regard, a small mistake was made: Arthur Gray was born with a living soul, completely unwilling to continue the line of the family style.

This liveliness, this complete perversity of the boy began to show itself in the eighth year of his life; the type of a knight of bizarre impressions, a seeker and a miracle worker, that is, a man who took the most dangerous and touching role of life from the countless variety of roles of life - the role of providence, was outlined in Gray even when, putting a chair against the wall to get a picture depicting a crucifixion, he took the nails out of the bloody hands of Christ, that is, he simply smeared them with blue paint stolen from the house painter. In this form, he found the picture more tolerable. Carried away by a peculiar occupation, he already began to cover up the legs of the crucified, but was caught by his father. The old man lifted the boy from the chair by the ears and asked: “Why did you ruin the picture?”

- I didn't spoil it.

This is the work of a famous artist.

"I don't care," Gray said. “I can't bear to have nails sticking out of my hands and blood flowing in my presence. I do not want it.

In the answer of his son, Lionel Gray, hiding a smile under his mustache, recognized himself and did not impose punishment.

Gray tirelessly explored the castle, making startling discoveries. So, in the attic, he found steel knight's rubbish, books bound in iron and leather, decayed clothes and hordes of pigeons. In the cellar where the wine was stored, he received interesting information about lafite, madeira, sherry. Here, in the dim light of the pointed windows, pressed down by the slanting triangles of the stone vaults, stood small and large barrels; the largest, in the form of a flat circle, occupied the entire transverse wall of the cellar; the hundred-year-old dark oak of the barrel gleamed as if polished. Among the casks were pot-bellied bottles of green and blue glass in wicker baskets. Gray mushrooms with thin stems grew on the stones and on the earthen floor: everywhere - mold, moss, dampness, a sour, suffocating smell. A huge cobweb was golden in the far corner, when, in the evening, the sun looked out for it with its last ray. In one place two barrels of the best Alicante that existed in Cromwell's time were buried, and the cellar-keeper, pointing Gray to an empty corner, did not miss the opportunity to repeat the story of the famous grave in which lay a dead man, more alive than a flock of fox-terriers. Beginning the story, the narrator did not forget to check whether the tap of the large barrel was working, and would walk away from it, apparently with a relieved heart, as involuntary tears of overly strong joy shone in his cheerful eyes.

“Well, then,” Poldishok said to Gray, sitting down on an empty box and stuffing his pointed nose with tobacco, “do you see this place? There lies such wine, for which more than one drunkard would agree to cut out his tongue, if he were allowed to have a small glass. Each barrel contains a hundred liters of a substance that explodes the soul and turns the body into motionless dough. Its color is darker than cherry and it won't run out of the bottle. It's thick, like good cream. It is enclosed in barrels of ebony, strong as iron. They have double hoops of red copper. On the hoops there is a Latin inscription: "Grey will drink me when he is in paradise." This inscription was interpreted so extensively and contradictorily that your great-grandfather, the noble Simeon Gray, built a cottage, called it "Paradise", and thought in this way to reconcile the enigmatic saying with reality through innocent wit. But what do you think? He died as soon as the hoops began to be knocked down, from a broken heart, the dainty old man was so worried. Since then, this barrel has not been touched. There was a belief that precious wine would bring bad luck. In fact, the Egyptian Sphinx did not ask such a riddle. True, he asked a wise man: “Will I eat you, as I eat everyone? Tell the truth, you will stay alive, ”but even then, after mature reflection ...

“I think it’s dripping from the faucet again,” Poldishok interrupted himself, rushing with indirect steps to the corner, where, having fixed the faucet, he would return with an open, bright face. - Yes. Having judged well, and most importantly, without haste, the sage could say to the sphinx: “Let's go, brother, have a drink, and you will forget about these nonsense.” "Grey will drink me when he's in paradise!" How to understand? Will he drink when he dies, or what? Weird. Therefore, he is a saint, therefore he does not drink wine or plain vodka. Let's say "paradise" means happiness. But since the question is put in this way, every happiness will lose half of its brilliant feathers when the lucky person sincerely asks himself: is it paradise? Here's the thing. To drink from such a barrel with a light heart and laugh, my boy, to laugh well, you need to stand with one foot on the ground, the other in the sky. There is a third assumption: that someday Gray will drink up to a blissfully heavenly state and boldly empty the barrel. But this, boy, would not be the fulfillment of a prediction, but a tavern brawl.

Convinced once again that the crane of the large barrel was in good condition, Poldishok finished with concentration and gloomy: “These barrels were brought in 1793 by your ancestor, John Gray, from Lisbon, on the ship Beagle; two thousand gold piastres were paid for the wine. The inscription on the barrels was made by the gunsmith Veniamin Elyan from Pondicherry. The barrels are sunk six feet into the ground and covered with ashes from grape stalks. No one has drunk this wine, has not tried it and will not try it.

"I'll drink it," Gray said one day, stamping his foot.

"Here's a brave young man!" Poldishok remarked. “Will you drink it in heaven?”

- Of course. Here is paradise! .. I have it, you see? Gray laughed softly, opening his small hand. A delicate but firm palm was lit up by the sun, and the boy clenched his fingers into a fist. - Here he is, here! .. Here, then again not ...

Saying this, he first opened and then clasped his hand, and finally, pleased with his joke, ran ahead of Poldishock, up the gloomy stairs into the corridor of the lower floor.

Gray was strictly forbidden to visit the kitchen, but once he had already discovered this amazing world of steam, soot, hissing, gurgling of boiling liquids, the clatter of knives and delicious smells, the boy diligently visited the huge room. In stern silence, like priests, the cooks moved; their white caps against the blackened walls gave the work the character of a solemn service; merry, fat kitchen-maids were washing dishes by barrels of water, clinking china and silver; the boys, bending under the weight, brought in baskets full of fish, oysters, crayfish and fruit. There, on a long table, lay rainbow-colored pheasants, gray ducks, motley chickens: there was a pig carcass with a short tail and eyes closed as a child; there are turnips, cabbage, nuts, blue raisins, tanned peaches.

In the kitchen, Gray became a little timid: it seemed to him that everyone here was moved by dark forces, the power of which was the mainspring of the life of the castle; the shouts sounded like a command and a spell; the movements of the workers, thanks to long practice, have acquired that distinct, stingy precision that seems to be inspiration. Gray was not yet so tall as to look into the largest pot, which seethed like Vesuvius, but he felt special respect for her; he watched with trepidation as she was turned over by two maids; then smoky foam splashed on the stove, and the steam, rising from the noisy stove, filled the kitchen in waves. Once the liquid splashed out so much that she scalded the hand of one girl. The skin instantly turned red, even the nails became red from the rush of blood, and Betsy (that was the name of the maid), crying, rubbed the affected places with oil. Tears rolled uncontrollably down her round, confused face.

Gray froze. While other women fussed about Betsy, he experienced a feeling of acute alien suffering that he could not experience himself.

- Are you in a lot of pain? - he asked.

“Try it, you’ll find out,” Betsy answered, covering her hand with an apron.

Furrowing his brows, the boy climbed onto a stool, scooped up a long spoon of hot liquid (by the way, it was mutton soup) and splashed it on the crook of his brush. The impression was not weak, but weakness from severe pain made him stagger. Pale as flour, Gray went up to Betsy, putting his burning hand in the pocket of his pants.

"I think you're in a lot of pain," he said, keeping quiet about his experience. “Let’s go, Betsy, to the doctor.” Let's go!

He tugged diligently on her skirt, while home remedy advocates vied with each other to give the maid salutary recipes. But the girl, greatly tormented, went with Gray. The doctor relieved the pain by applying a bandage. Only after Betsy left did the boy show his hand. This minor episode made twenty-year-old Betsy and ten-year-old Gray true friends. She stuffed his pockets with pies and apples, and he told her fairy tales and other stories read in his books. One day he learned that Betsy could not marry the stable boy Jim, because they did not have money to acquire a household. Gray smashed his china piggy bank with his fireplace tongs and emptied out everything that amounted to about a hundred pounds. Getting up early. when the dowry retired to the kitchen, he made his way into her room and, putting the gift into the girl's chest, covered it with a short note: “Betsy, this is yours. Robber gang leader Robin Hood. The commotion caused in the kitchen by this story was so great that Gray had to confess to the forgery. He didn't take the money back and didn't want to talk about it anymore.

His mother was one of those natures that life casts in finished form. She lived in a half-sleep of security, providing for any desire of an ordinary soul, so she had nothing to do but consult with dressmakers, a doctor and a butler. But her passionate, almost religious attachment to her strange child was, presumably, the only valve of those inclinations of hers, chloroformed by upbringing and fate, which no longer live, but wander vaguely, leaving the will inactive. The noble lady resembled a peacock that had hatched a swan's egg. She painfully felt the beautiful isolation of her son; sadness, love and embarrassment filled her when she pressed the boy to her chest, where the heart spoke differently than the language, habitually reflecting the conventional forms of relationships and thoughts. So the cloudy effect, bizarrely constructed by the sun's rays, penetrates the symmetrical setting of the government building, depriving it of its banal virtues; the eye sees and does not recognize the premises: the mysterious shades of light create a dazzling harmony among the squalor.

A noble lady, whose face and figure, it seemed, could only respond with icy silence to the fiery voices of life, whose subtle beauty repelled rather than attracted, because she felt an arrogant effort of will, devoid of feminine attraction - this Lillian Gray, left alone with the boy , was made by a simple mother, who spoke in a loving, meek tone those very trifles of the heart that you cannot convey on paper - their strength is in feeling, not in themselves. She absolutely could not refuse her son anything. She forgave him everything: stay in the kitchen, disgust for the lessons, disobedience and numerous quirks.

If he did not want the trees to be cut, the trees remained untouched, if he asked to forgive or reward someone, the person concerned knew that this would be so; he could ride any horse, take any dog ​​to the castle; rummaging in the library, running barefoot and eating whatever he pleases.

His father struggled with this for some time, but gave in - not to the principle, but to the desire of his wife. He limited himself to removing all the children of servants from the castle, fearing that, thanks to low society, the boy's whims would turn into inclinations, difficult to eradicate. In general, he was absorbedly occupied with countless family processes, the beginning of which was lost in the era of the emergence of paper mills, and the end - in the death of all the slanderers. In addition, affairs of state, affairs of the estates, the dictation of memoirs, parade hunting trips, reading newspapers and complicated correspondence kept him at some internal distance from the family; he saw his son so rarely that he sometimes forgot how old he was.

Thus, Gray lived in his own world. He played alone - usually in the backyards of the castle, which had military significance in the old days. These vast wastelands, with the remains of high ditches, with moss-covered stone cellars, were full of weeds, nettles, thistles, thorns and modestly variegated wild flowers. Gray stayed here for hours, exploring mole holes, fighting weeds, watching for butterflies, and building fortresses from scrap bricks, which he bombarded with sticks and cobblestones.

He was already in his twelfth year, when all the hints of his soul, all the disparate features of the spirit and shades of secret impulses united in one strong moment and thus, having received a harmonious expression, became an indomitable desire. Before that, he seemed to find only separate parts of his garden - a gap, a shadow, a flower, a dense and lush trunk - in many other gardens, and suddenly he saw them clearly, all - in a beautiful, striking correspondence.

It happened in the library. Its high door with cloudy glass at the top was usually locked, but the latch of the lock held weakly in the socket of the wings; pressed with a hand, the door moved away, strained and opened. As the spirit of exploration led Gray into the library, he was struck by a dusty light whose strength and peculiarity lay in the colored pattern on the top of the windowpanes. The silence of abandonment stood here like pond water. Dark rows of bookcases in places adjoined the windows, half-screening them, and between the bookcases there were aisles littered with heaps of books. There is an open album with slipped inner sheets, there are scrolls tied with a golden cord; stacks of sullen-looking books; thick layers of manuscripts, a mound of miniature volumes that cracked like bark when they were opened; here - drawings and tables, rows of new editions, maps; a variety of bindings, rough, delicate, black, variegated, blue, grey, thick, thin, rough and smooth. The cupboards were packed full of books. They seemed like walls containing life in their very thickness. In the reflections of the cupboard glasses, other cupboards were visible, covered with colorless shining spots. A huge globe enclosed in a copper spherical cross of the equator and meridian stood on a round table.

Turning towards the exit, Gray saw a huge picture above the door, which immediately filled the stuffy stupor of the library with its content. The picture depicted a ship rising on the crest of a sea rampart. Jets of foam flowed down its slope. He was depicted in the last moment of takeoff. The ship was heading straight for the viewer. A high-rising bowsprit obscured the base of the masts. The crest of the shaft, flattened by the ship's keel, resembled the wings of a giant bird. Foam floated into the air. The sails, dimly visible behind the backboard and above the bowsprit, full of the furious force of the storm, fell back in their entirety, so that, having crossed the rampart, straighten up, and then, bending over the abyss, rush the ship to new avalanches. Broken clouds fluttered low over the ocean. The dim light doomedly struggled with the approaching darkness of the night. But the most remarkable thing in this picture was the figure of a man standing on the tank with his back to the viewer. It expressed the whole situation, even the character of the moment. The posture of the man (he spread his legs, waving his arms) did not actually say anything about what he was doing, but made one assume the extreme intensity of attention directed to something on the deck, invisible to the viewer. The rolled-up skirts of his caftan fluttered in the wind; a white scythe and a black sword were torn into the air; the richness of the costume showed the captain in him, the dancing position of the body - the wave of the shaft; without a hat, he was apparently absorbed in a dangerous moment and shouted - but what? Did he see a man fall overboard, did he order to turn on another tack, or, drowning out the wind, called the boatswain? Not thoughts, but shadows of these thoughts grew in Gray's soul as he watched the picture. Suddenly it seemed to him that an unknown unknown person approached him from the left, standing next to him; as soon as you turn your head, the bizarre sensation would disappear without a trace. Gray knew this. But he did not extinguish his imagination, but listened. A soundless voice shouted out a few staccato phrases as incomprehensible as the Malay language; there was a noise, as it were, of long landslides; echoes and a dark wind filled the library. All this Gray heard inside himself. He looked around: the instantaneous silence dispelled the sonorous cobweb of fantasy; the link to the storm was gone.

Gray came to see this picture several times. She became for him that necessary word in the conversation of the soul with life, without which it is difficult to understand oneself. In a small boy, a huge sea gradually fit in. He became accustomed to it, rummaging through the library, looking for and voraciously reading those books, behind the golden door of which the blue glow of the ocean opened. There, sowing foam behind the stern, ships moved. Some of them lost their sails and masts and, choking on the waves, sank into the darkness of the abyss, where the phosphorescent eyes of fish flashed. Others, seized by the breakers, fought against the reefs; the subsiding excitement shook the corps menacingly; a deserted ship with torn gear endured a long agony until a new storm blew it to pieces. Still others were safely loaded in one port and unloaded in another; the crew, sitting at the tavern table, sang of the voyage and drank vodka lovingly. There were also pirate ships, with a black flag and a terrible, knife-waving crew; ghost ships glowing with a deathly light of blue illumination; warships with soldiers, guns and music; ships of scientific expeditions looking out for volcanoes, plants and animals; ships with dark secrets and riots; ships of discovery and ships of adventure.

In this world, naturally, the figure of the captain towered over everything. He was the fate, soul and mind of the ship. His character determined the leisure and work of the team. The team itself was selected by him personally and in many respects corresponded to his inclinations. He knew the habits and family affairs of every man. In the eyes of his subordinates, he possessed magical knowledge, thanks to which he confidently walked, say, from Lisbon to Shanghai, through boundless spaces. He repelled the storm by countering a system of complex efforts, killing panic with short orders; swam and stopped where he wanted; disposed of sailing and loading, repair and rest; it was difficult to imagine a great and most reasonable power in a living business full of continuous movement. This power, in its closedness and completeness, was equal to the power of Orpheus.

Such an idea of ​​the captain, such an image and such a true reality of his position, occupied, by the right of spiritual events, the main place in Gray's brilliant mind. No profession but this could so successfully fuse all the treasures of life into one whole, preserving inviolable the finest pattern of each individual happiness. Danger, risk, the power of nature, the light of a distant land, the wonderful unknown, the flickering love that blooms with a date and separation; fascinating effervescence of meetings, faces, events; an immense variety of life, while high in the sky is the Southern Cross, then the Bear, and all the continents are in sharp eyes, although your cabin is full of the never-leaving homeland with its books, paintings, letters and dry flowers, entwined with a silky curl in a suede amulet on a hard chest. In the autumn, at the age of fifteen, Arthur Gray secretly left the house and entered the golden gates of the sea. Soon the schooner Anselm left the port of Dubelt for Marseille, taking away the cabin boy with small hands and the appearance of a girl in disguise. This cabin boy was Gray, the owner of an elegant bag, thin as a glove, patent leather boots and cambric linen with woven crowns.

During the year that the Anselm visited France, America and Spain, Gray squandered part of his property on a cake, paying tribute to the past, and lost the rest - for the present and future - at cards. He wanted to be a "devil" sailor. He drank vodka, gasping for breath, and when bathing, with a beating heart, he jumped head first into the water from a height of two sazhens. Little by little, he lost everything except the main thing - his strange flying soul; he lost his weakness, becoming broad-boned and strong-muscled, his pallor was replaced by a dark tan, he gave away the refined carelessness of his movements for the confident accuracy of a working hand, and his thinking eyes reflected a gleam, like a man looking at a fire. And his speech, having lost its uneven, arrogantly shy fluidity, became short and precise, like a seagull striking a jet behind the quivering silver of fish.

The captain of the Anselm was a kind man, but a stern sailor who took the boy out of some kind of gloating. In Gray's desperate desire, he saw only an eccentric whim and triumphed in advance, imagining how in two months Gray would say to him, avoiding eye contact: “Captain Gop, I tore my elbows crawling along the rigging; my sides and back hurt, my fingers can't straighten, my head is cracking, and my legs are shaking. All these wet ropes weigh two pounds by the weight of the hands; all these handrails, shrouds, windlasses, cables, topmasts and sallings are created to torment my delicate body. I want my mother." Having listened mentally to such a statement, Captain Hop held, mentally, the following speech: - “Go wherever you want, my chick. If resin has stuck to your sensitive wings, you can wash it off at home with Rosa-Mimosa cologne. This cologne invented by Gop pleased the captain most of all and, having finished his imaginary rebuke, he repeated aloud: “Yes. Go to Rosa-Mimosa.

Meanwhile, the impressive dialogue came to the captain's mind less and less, as Gray walked towards the goal with clenched teeth and a pale face. He endured the hectic work with a determined effort of will, feeling that it was getting easier and easier for him as the harsh ship broke into his body, and inability was replaced by habit. It happened that the loop of the anchor chain knocked him off his feet, hitting the deck, that the rope, unsupported at the knek, pulled out of his hands, tearing off the skin from his palms, that the wind hit him in the face with a wet corner of the sail with an iron ring sewn into it, and, in short, all the work was a torture that required close attention, but no matter how hard he breathed, with difficulty straightening his back, a smile of contempt did not leave his face. He silently endured ridicule, bullying and the inevitable abuse, until he became “his own” in the new sphere, but from that time on he invariably responded with boxing to any insult.

Once Captain Gop, seeing how he skillfully knits a sail on a yardarm, said to himself: "Victory is on your side, rogue." When Gray went down on deck, Gop called him into the cabin and, opening a tattered book, said: “Listen carefully! Quit smoking! Finishing the puppy under the captain begins.

And he began to read - or rather, to speak and shout - from the book the ancient words of the sea. It was Gray's first lesson. During the year he got acquainted with navigation, practice, shipbuilding, maritime law, sailing and accounting. Captain Gop gave him his hand and said: "We."

In Vancouver, Gray was caught by a letter from his mother, full of tears and fear. He replied, “I know. But if you could see how I look through my eyes. If you could hear me: put a shell to your ear: it contains the sound of an eternal wave; if you loved, as I did, everything, in your letter I would find, besides love and a check, a smile ... ”And he continued to swim until the Anselm arrived with cargo in Dubelt, from where, using a stopover, twenty-year-old Gray went to visit the castle. Everything was the same around; just as indestructible in detail and in general impression as five years ago, only the foliage of young elms became thicker; its pattern on the facade of the building shifted and grew.

The servants who ran to him were delighted, startled and froze in the same respect with which, as if only yesterday, they met this Gray. He was told where his mother was; he went into a high room and, quietly closing the door, stopped inaudibly, looking at a gray-haired woman in a black dress. She stood in front of the crucifix: her passionate whisper was sonorous, like a full heartbeat. - "About the floating, traveling, sick, suffering and captive," - heard, breathing shortly, Gray. Then it was said: - "and to my boy ..." Then he said: - "I ..." But he could not utter anything more. The mother turned around. She had lost weight: in the arrogance of her thin face shone a new expression, like the return of youth. She rushed over to her son; short chesty laughter, restrained exclamation and tears in the eyes - that's all. But in that moment she lived stronger and better than in her entire life. - “I immediately recognized you, oh, my dear, my little one!” And Gray really stopped being big. He heard about the death of his father, then spoke about himself. She listened without reproaches and objections, but inwardly - in everything that he asserted as the truth of his life - she saw only toys with which her boy amuses himself. Such toys were continents, oceans and ships.

Gray stayed at the castle for seven days; on the eighth day, having taken a large sum of money, he returned to Dubelt and said to Captain Gop: “Thank you. You were a good friend. Farewell, senior comrade, - here he fixed the true meaning of this word with a terrible, like a vise, handshake, - now I will sail separately, on my own ship. Gop flushed, spat, tore his hand away and walked away, but Gray, catching up, embraced him. And they sat down in the hotel, all together, twenty-four people with the team, and drank, and shouted, and sang, and drank and ate everything that was on the sideboard and in the kitchen.

A little time passed, and in the port of Dubelt the evening star flashed over the black line of the new mast. It was the Secret bought by Gray; a three-masted galliot of two hundred and sixty tons. So, Arthur Gray sailed as the captain and owner of the ship for another four years, until fate brought him to the Fox. But he always remembered that short chesty laugh, full of heartfelt music, with which he was greeted at home, and twice a year he visited the castle, leaving the woman with silver hair the unsteady confidence that such a big boy could possibly cope with his toys.

III. Dawn

A blast of foam from the stern of Gray's ship, the Secret, passed across the ocean like a white line and died out in the glow of Lys's evening lights. The ship stood in the roadstead not far from the lighthouse.

Ten days "Secret" unloaded chesucha, coffee and tea, the eleventh day the team spent on the shore, resting and wine vapors; On the twelfth day, Gray felt dull and melancholy, without any reason, not understanding the melancholy.

In the morning, barely waking up, he already felt that this day had begun in black rays. He dressed gloomily, ate breakfast reluctantly, forgot to read the newspaper, and smoked for a long time, immersed in an inexpressible world of aimless tension; unrecognized desires wandered among the dimly emerging words, mutually annihilating themselves with equal effort. Then he got down to business.

Accompanied by the boatswain, Gray inspected the ship, ordered the shrouds to be tightened, the steering ropes to be loosened, the fairleads to be cleaned, the jib to be changed, the deck to be tarred, the compass to be cleaned, the hold to be opened, ventilated and swept. But the case did not entertain Gray. Full of anxious attention to the drearyness of the day, he lived it irritably and sadly: it was as if someone called him, but he forgot who and where.

In the evening he sat down in the cabin, took a book and objected to the author for a long time, making notes of a paradoxical nature in the margins. For some time he was amused by this game, this conversation with the dead ruling from the tomb. Then, picking up the phone, he drowned in blue smoke, living among the ghostly arabesques that emerge in his unsteady layers. Tobacco is terribly powerful; just as oil poured into a galloping break in the waves subdues their rage, so does tobacco: softening the irritation of the senses, it reduces them a few tones lower; they sound smoother and more musical. That is why Gray's melancholy, finally losing its offensive significance after three pipes, turned into thoughtful absent-mindedness. This state continued for about an hour; when the spiritual fog disappeared, Gray woke up, wanted to move and went out on deck. It was full night; overboard, in the dream of black water, the stars and the lights of the mast lanterns slumbered. Warm as a cheek, the air smelled of the sea. Gray raised his head and squinted at the golden coal of the star; instantaneously, through the breathtaking miles, the fiery needle of a distant planet penetrated into his pupils. The dull noise of the evening city reached the ear from the depths of the bay; sometimes a coastal phrase, spoken as if on deck, flew in with the wind along the sensitive water; having sounded clearly, it went out in the creak of gear; a match flared on the can, illuminating his fingers, his round eyes, and his moustache. Gray whistled; the fire of the pipe moved and floated towards him; soon the captain saw in the darkness the hands and face of the watchman.

“Tell Letika,” Gray said, “that he will come with me. Let him take the rods.

He went down to the sloop, where he waited for about ten minutes. Letika, a nimble, roguish fellow, rattling his oars against the side, gave them to Gray; then he went down himself, adjusted the oarlocks, and put the sack of provisions into the stern of the sloop. Gray sat at the wheel.

Where would you like to go, captain? Letika asked, circling the boat with the right oar.

The captain was silent. The sailor knew that it was impossible to insert words into this silence, and therefore, having become silent himself, he began to row hard.

Gray took the direction to the open sea, then began to keep to the left bank. He didn't care where he went. The steering wheel murmured dully; oars tinkled and splashed, everything else was sea and silence.

In the course of a day, a person listens to such a multitude of thoughts, impressions, speeches and words that all this would make up more than one thick book. The face of the day takes on a certain expression, but Gray looked at that face in vain today. In his vague features shone one of those feelings, of which there are many, but which have not been given a name. No matter how you call them, they will remain forever beyond words and even concepts, like the suggestion of aroma. Gray was now in the grip of such a feeling; he could, it is true, say: “I am waiting, I see, I will soon find out ...”, but even these words amounted to no more than individual drawings in relation to the architectural design. In these trends there was still the power of luminous excitement.

Where they sailed, on the left, the shore stood out like a wavy thickening of darkness. Sparks from chimneys floated over the red glass of the windows; it was Caperna. Gray heard bickering and barking. The fires of the village looked like a stove door, burnt through with holes through which flaming coal is visible. To the right was the ocean, as distinct as the presence of a sleeping man. Passing Kaperna, Gray turned towards the shore. Here the water lapped softly; illuminating the lantern, he saw the pits of the cliff and its upper overhanging ledges; he liked this place.

“We'll fish here,” Gray said, clapping the rower on the shoulder.

The sailor chuckled vaguely.

“This is my first time sailing with such a captain,” he muttered. - The captain is efficient, but unlike. Stubborn captain. However, I love him.

Having hammered the oar into the silt, he tied the boat to it, and both climbed up, climbing the stones that jumped out from under their knees and elbows. A thicket stretched from the cliff. There was the sound of an ax cutting through a dry trunk; knocking down a tree, Letika made a fire on a cliff. Shadows moved, and flames reflected by the water; in the receding darkness, grass and branches were highlighted; above the fire, entwined with smoke, sparkling, the air trembled.

Gray sat down by the fire.

“Come on,” he said, holding out the bottle, “drink, friend Letika, to the health of all teetotalers.” By the way, you took not cinchona, but ginger.

“Excuse me, captain,” the sailor replied, catching his breath. - Let me have a bite of this ... - He ate half of the chicken at once and, taking a wing out of his mouth, continued: - I know that you like cinchona. Only it was dark, and I was in a hurry. Ginger, you see, hardens a person. When I have to fight, I drink ginger. While the captain ate and drank, the sailor looked askance at him, then, unable to restrain himself, said: - Is it true, captain, that they say that you come from a noble family?

- It's not interesting, Letika. Take a rod and catch it if you want.

- I? Don't know. May be. But then. Letika unwound the fishing rod, saying in verse, what he was a master of, to the great admiration of the team: - I made a long whip out of a string and a piece of wood and, attaching a hook to it, let out a drawn-out whistle. Then he tickled the box of worms with his finger. - This worm wandered in the ground and was happy with its life, but now it has been caught on a hook - and catfish will eat it.

Finally, he left singing: - The night is quiet, the vodka is fine, tremble, sturgeon, pop into a swoon, herring - Letika is fishing from the mountain!

Gray lay down by the fire, looking at the water reflecting the fire. He thought, but without the participation of will; in this state, thought, distractedly retaining the surroundings, dimly sees it; she rushes like a horse in a close crowd, crushing, pushing and stopping; emptiness, confusion and delay accompany it alternately. She wanders in the soul of things; from bright excitement hurries to secret hints; circling the earth and sky, conversing vitally with imaginary faces, quenching and decorating memories. In this cloudy movement, everything is alive and prominent, and everything is incoherent, like nonsense. And the resting consciousness often smiles, seeing, for example, how, while thinking about fate, it suddenly favors a guest with an image that is completely inappropriate: some twig broken two years ago. So Gray thought by the fire, but he was "somewhere" - not here.

The elbow with which he leaned, supporting his head with his hand, was damp and numb. The stars shone palely, the gloom was intensified by the tension that preceded dawn. The captain began to fall asleep, but did not notice it. He wanted a drink and reached for the sack, untying it in his sleep. Then he stopped dreaming; the next two hours were for Gray no more than those seconds during which he bowed his head in his hands. During this time, Letika appeared by the fire twice, smoked and looked out of curiosity into the mouths of the caught fish - what is there? But, of course, there was nothing there.

Waking up, Gray for a moment forgot how he got to these places. With amazement, he saw the happy brilliance of the morning, the cliff of the coast among these branches and the flaming blue distance; hazel leaves hung above the horizon, but at the same time above his feet. At the bottom of the cliff - with the impression that under the very back of Gray - the quiet surf hissed. Flickering from the leaf, a drop of dew spread over a sleepy face with a cold slap. He got up. Everywhere there was light. The cold firebrands clung to the life of thin jets of smoke. Its scent gave the pleasure of breathing the green forest air a wild charm.

Letika was not; he got carried away; he was sweating and fishing with the enthusiasm of a gambler. Gray stepped out of the thicket into the bushes scattered along the slope of the hill. The grass smoked and burned; the wet flowers looked like children who had been forcibly washed in cold water. The green world breathed with countless tiny mouths, making it difficult for Gray to pass among its jubilant crowding. The captain got out to an open place overgrown with motley grass, and saw a sleeping young girl here.

He quietly moved the branch away with his hand and stopped with a sense of a dangerous find. Not more than five paces away, curled up, picking up one leg and stretching out the other, the exhausted Assol lay with her head on her comfortably folded arms. Her hair moved in a mess; a button at the neck was undone, revealing a white hole; the open skirt showed her knees; eyelashes slept on the cheek, in the shade of a tender, convex temple, half-hidden by a dark strand; the little finger of the right hand, which was under the head, bent down to the back of the head. Gray squatted down, peering into the girl's face from below, not suspecting that he resembled a faun from a painting by Arnold Böcklin.

Perhaps, under other circumstances, this girl would have been noticed by him only with his eyes, but here he saw her differently. Everything shook, everything smiled in him. Of course, he did not know her, or her name, and, moreover, why she fell asleep on the shore, but he was very pleased with this. He loved pictures without explanations and signatures. The impression of such a picture is incomparably stronger; its content, not bound by words, becomes limitless, affirming all conjectures and thoughts.

The shadow of the foliage crept closer to the trunks, and Gray was still sitting in the same uncomfortable position. Everything slept on the girl: her dark hair slept, her dress and the folds of her dress fell; even the grass near her body seemed to doze off in the strength of sympathy. When the impression was complete, Gray stepped into its warm, washing away wave and swam away with it. For a long time Letika had been shouting: “Captain, where are you?” but the captain did not hear him.

When he finally got up, his penchant for the unusual took him by surprise with the determination and inspiration of an exasperated woman. Thoughtfully yielding to her, he removed an expensive old ring from his finger, thinking, not without reason, that perhaps this was suggesting something essential to life, like spelling. He carefully lowered the ring onto his small little finger, which was whitening from under the back of his head. Littlefinger moved impatiently and drooped. Glancing once more at that resting face, Gray turned and saw the sailor's highly raised eyebrows in the bushes. Letika, open-mouthed, looked at Gray's studies with such astonishment, with which Iona, probably, looked at the mouth of his furnished whale.

- Oh, it's you, Letika! Gray said. - Look at her. What is good?

- Amazing piece of art! shouted the sailor, who loved book expressions, in a whisper. “There is something inviting in consideration of the circumstances. I caught four moray eels and another thick one, like a bubble.

- Hush, Letika. Let's get out of here.

They retreated into the bushes. They should now have turned towards the boat, but Gray hesitated, looking at the distance of the low bank, where the morning smoke of Caperna's chimneys poured over the greenery and sand. In this smoke he saw the girl again.

Then he turned decisively, descending along the slope; the sailor, without asking what had happened, walked behind; he felt that the obligatory silence had come again. Already near the first buildings, Gray suddenly said: - Could you, Letika, with your experienced eye, determine where the tavern is here? “It must be that black roof over there,” Letika realized, “but, by the way, maybe it’s not.

- What is remarkable in this roof?

“I don't know, captain. Nothing more than the voice of the heart.

They approached the house; it was indeed Menners' tavern. In the open window, on the table, one could see a bottle; beside her, a dirty hand was milking a half-gray mustache.

Although the hour was early, there were three people in the common room of the tavern. At the window sat a collier, the owner of a drunken mustache, which we had already noticed; between the sideboard and the inner door of the hall, two fishermen were placed behind scrambled eggs and beer. Menners, a tall young lad, with a dull, freckled face and that particular expression of sly glibness in his blind eyes, which is characteristic of hucksters in general, was grinding dishes at the bar. On the dirty floor lay a sunlit window frame.

As soon as Gray entered the band of smoky light, Manners, bowing respectfully, stepped out from behind his cover. He immediately recognized Gray as a true captain, a class of guests rarely seen by him. Gray asked Roma. Covering the table with a human tablecloth yellowed in the bustle, Menners brought a bottle, first licking the tip of the label that had peeled off with his tongue. Then he returned behind the counter, looking attentively first at Gray, then at the plate, from which he was tearing off something dried up with his fingernail.

While Letika, taking the glass in both hands, modestly whispered to him, looking out the window, Gray called Menners. Hin sat complacently on the end of his chair, flattered by the address, and flattered precisely because it was expressed by a simple nod of Gray's finger.

“You know all the people here, of course,” Gray said calmly. “I am interested in the name of a young girl in a headscarf, in a dress with pink flowers, dark-haired and short, between the ages of seventeen and twenty. I met her not far from here. What is her name?

He said it with a firm simplicity of force that did not allow him to evade this tone. Hin Menners inwardly squirmed and even grinned slightly, but outwardly obeyed the character of the address. However, before answering, he paused - solely out of a fruitless desire to guess what was the matter.

- Hm! he said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. - This must be the “Ship Assol”, there is no one else to be. She is half-witted.

- Indeed? - Gray said indifferently, drinking a large sip. – How did it happen?

- When so, if you please listen. - And Hin told Gray about how, seven years ago, a girl spoke on the seashore with a collector of songs. Of course, since the beggar affirmed its existence in the same tavern, this story has taken on the outlines of rude and flat gossip, but the essence has remained untouched. “Since then, that’s what she’s been called,” said Menners, “her name is Assol Ship.”

Gray automatically glanced at Letika, who continued to be quiet and modest, then his eyes turned to the dusty road that ran by the inn, and he felt as if a blow - a simultaneous blow to the heart and head. Along the road, facing him, was the same Ship Assol, to whom Menners had just treated clinically. The amazing features of her face, reminiscent of the secret of indelibly exciting, although simple words, appeared before him now in the light of her gaze. The sailor and Manners sat with their backs to the window, but lest they accidentally turn around, Gray had the courage to look away at Hin's red eyes. The moment he saw Assol's eyes, all the rigidity of Menners' story dissipated. Meanwhile, suspecting nothing, Khin continued: “I can also tell you that her father is a real scoundrel. He drowned my dad like some cat, God forgive me. He…

He was interrupted by an unexpected wild roar from behind. Turning his eyes terribly, the collier, shaking off his intoxicated stupor, suddenly barked his singing, and so fiercely that everyone shuddered.

Basket maker, basket maker, Take us for the baskets! ..

“You loaded yourself again, damned whaleboat!” shouted Manners. - Get out!

... But just be afraid to fall into our Palestines! .. - howled the collier and, as if nothing had happened, drowned his mustache in a splashed glass.

Hin Manners shrugged his shoulders indignantly.

“Trash, not a man,” he said with the terrible dignity of a hoarder. - Every time such a story!

- Can't you tell me more? Gray asked.

- I something? I'm telling you that your father is a scoundrel. Through him I, Your Grace, became an orphan, and even children had to independently support the mortal subsistence.

"You're lying," the collier said unexpectedly. “You lie so vilely and unnaturally that I have sobered up. - Hin did not have time to open his mouth, as the collier turned to Gray: - He is lying. His father also lied; mother also lied. Such a breed. You can rest assured that she is as healthy as you and I. I talked to her. She sat on my wagon eighty-four times, or a little less. When a girl walks out of the city and I have sold my coal, I will surely imprison the girl. Let her sit. I say she has a good head. It is visible now. With you, Hin Manners, she, of course, will not say a few words. But I, sir, in the free coal business despise courts and talk. She talks like a big but quirky her conversation. You listen - as if everything is the same as what you and I would say, but she has the same, but not quite like that. Here, for example, once a case was opened about her craft.

“I’ll tell you what,” she says, and clings to my shoulder like a fly to a bell tower, “my work is not boring, only I want to come up with something special. “I,” he says, “so want to contrive so that the boat itself floats on my board, and the rowers row for real; then they land on the shore, give up the berth and honor, honor, as if alive, sit down on the shore to eat.

I, this, laughed, so it became funny to me. I say: “Well, Assol, this is your business, and that’s why you have such thoughts, but look around: everything is at work, like in a fight.” “No,” she says, “I know that I know. When a fisherman catches a fish, he thinks he will catch a big fish like no one has ever caught." “Well, what about me?” - "And you? - she laughs, - you, right, when you pile a basket with coal, you think that it will bloom. That's what she said! At that very moment, I confess, I was twitched to look at the empty basket, and so it entered my eyes, as if buds had sprouted from the twigs; these buds burst, a leaf splashed on the basket and was gone. I even sobered up a little! But Hin Menners lies and does not take money; I know him!

Considering that the conversation turned into a clear insult, Menners pierced the coal-burner with a glance and disappeared behind the counter, from where he bitterly inquired: - Would you like to order something?

“No,” Gray said, taking out the money, “we get up and leave.” Letika, you will stay here, return in the evening and be silent. Once you know everything you can, tell me. Do you understand?

- The kindest captain, - said Letika with a certain familiarity caused by rum, - only a deaf person can not understand this.

- Wonderful. Remember also that in none of the cases that you may have, you can neither talk about me, nor even mention my name. Goodbye!

Gray left. From that time on, the feeling of amazing discoveries did not leave him, like a spark in Berthold's powder mortar - one of those spiritual collapses from under which fire breaks out, sparkling. The spirit of immediate action took possession of him. He came to his senses and collected his thoughts only when he got into the boat. Laughing, he held out his hand, palm up, to the hot sun, as he had once done as a boy in a wine cellar; then he sailed away and began to row quickly towards the harbor.

IV. the day before

On the eve of that day, and seven years after Egl, the collector of songs, told the girl on the seashore the tale of the ship with Scarlet Sails, Assol returned home on one of her weekly visits to the toy shop, upset, with a sad face. She brought her goods back. She was so upset that she could not speak at once, and only after she saw from Longren's worried face that he was expecting something much worse than reality, she began to tell, running her finger along the glass of the window at which she stood, absently observing the sea.

The owner of the toy store began this time by opening the account book and showing her how much they owed. She shuddered at the impressive three-digit number. “This is how much you have taken since December,” the merchant said, “but look how much has been sold.” And he rested his finger on another figure, already from two characters.

- It's sad and embarrassing to watch. I could see by his face that he was rude and angry. I would have gladly run away, but, honestly, I had no strength from shame. And he began to say: “My dear, this is no longer profitable for me. Now foreign goods are in fashion, all the shops are full of them, but these products are not taken. So he said. He said a lot more, but I got it all mixed up and forgotten. He must have taken pity on me, as he advised me to go to the Children's Bazaar and Aladdin's Lamp.

Having spoken out the most important thing, the girl turned her head, looking timidly at the old man. Longren sat drooping, his fingers clasped between his knees, on which he rested his elbows. Feeling the gaze, he lifted his head and sighed. Having overcome her heavy mood, the girl ran up to him, settled down to sit next to him and, putting her light hand under the leather sleeve of his jacket, laughing and looking into her father's face from below, continued with feigned animation: - Nothing, it's all nothing, you listen, please. Here I went. Well, sir, I come to a big scary store; there's a bunch of people there. They pushed me; however, I got out and approached a black man with glasses. What I said to him, I don't remember anything; in the end, he grinned, rummaged through my basket, looked at something, then wrapped it again, as it was, in a scarf and gave it back.

Longren listened angrily. It was as if he saw his dumbfounded daughter in a rich crowd at a counter littered with valuable goods. A neat man with glasses condescendingly explained to her that he must go bankrupt if he starts selling Longren's simple products. Carelessly and deftly, he placed folding models of buildings and railway bridges on the counter in front of her; miniature distinct cars, electrical kits, airplanes and engines. It all smelled of paint and school. According to all his words, it turned out that children in games now only imitate what adults do.

Assol was still in the "Aladin's Lamp" and in two other shops, but achieved nothing.

Finishing the story, she gathered supper; After eating and drinking a glass of strong coffee, Longren said: “Since we are unlucky, we must look. Maybe I'll go back to serve - on the Fitzroy or the Palermo. Of course they are right,” he continued thoughtfully, thinking of toys. “Now children don’t play, they study. They all study and study and never begin to live. All this is so, but it's a pity, really, a pity. Can you live without me for one flight? It is unthinkable to leave you alone.

“I could also serve with you; let's say in the cafeteria.

- Not! – Longren stamped this word with a blow of his palm on the trembling table. As long as I'm alive, you won't serve. However, there is time to think.

He fell silent. Assol perched next to him on the corner of a stool; He saw from the side, without turning his head, that she was busy trying to console him, and he almost smiled. But to smile meant to frighten and embarrass the girl. She, saying something to herself, smoothed his tangled gray hair, kissed his mustache and, plugging her father's shaggy ears with her small, thin fingers, said: “Well, now you don’t hear that I love you.” While she was preening him, Longren sat, grimacing tightly, like a man who is afraid to breathe in smoke, but, hearing her words, he laughed thickly.

“You're sweet,” he said simply, and, patting the girl on the cheek, went ashore to look at the boat.

Assol stood for some time in thought in the middle of the room, oscillating between the desire to give herself up to quiet sorrow and the need for household chores; then, having washed the dishes, she revised the rest of the provisions into a scale. She did not weigh or measure, but she saw that the flour would not last until the end of the week, that the bottom was visible in the sugar tin, the tea and coffee wrappers were almost empty, there was no butter, and the only thing on which, with some annoyance at the exception, rested the eye - there was a bag of potatoes. Then she washed the floor and sat down to sew a frill for a skirt made from junk, but immediately remembering that the scraps of cloth were behind the mirror, she went up to him and took the bundle; then she looked at her reflection.

Behind the walnut frame, in the bright emptiness of the reflected room, stood a thin, short girl dressed in cheap white muslin with pink flowers. On her shoulders lay a gray silk scarf. Half-childish, in a light tan, the face was mobile and expressive; beautiful eyes, somewhat serious for her age, looked with the timid concentration of deep souls. Her irregular face could touch with the subtle purity of its outlines; every curve, every bulge of this face, of course, would have found a place in a multitude of female appearances, but their totality, style - was completely original, - originally sweet; this is where we will stop. The rest is not subject to words, except for the word "charm".

The reflected girl smiled as unconsciously as Assol. The smile came out sad; noticing this, she became alarmed, as if she were looking at a stranger. She pressed her cheek against the glass, closed her eyes, and softly stroked the mirror with her hand where her reflection fell. A swarm of vague, affectionate thoughts flashed through her; she straightened up, laughed, and sat down, beginning to sew.

While she is sewing, let's look at her closer - inside. There are two girls in it, two Assol, mixed in a wonderful beautiful irregularity. One was the daughter of a sailor, a craftsman who made toys, the other was a living poem, with all the wonders of its consonances and images, with the secret neighborhood of words, in all the reciprocity of their shadows and light falling from one to another. She knew life within the limits set for her experience, but in addition to general phenomena she saw a reflected meaning of a different order. Thus, peering into objects, we notice something in them not linearly, but by impression - definitely human, and - just like human - different. Something similar to what (if possible) we said by this example, she saw still beyond the visible. Without these quiet conquests, everything simply understandable was alien to her soul. She knew how and loved to read, but in the book she read mainly between the lines, how she lived. Unconsciously, through a kind of inspiration, she made many ethereal subtle discoveries at every step, inexpressible, but important, like cleanliness and warmth. Sometimes - and this went on for a number of days - she was even reborn; the physical opposition of life vanished like silence in the strike of a bow, and everything that she saw, what she lived with, what was around, became a lace of secrets in the image of everyday life. More than once, agitated and timid, she went to the seashore at night, where, after waiting for the dawn, she seriously looked out for a ship with Scarlet Sails. These moments were happiness for her; it is difficult for us to go into a fairy tale like that, it would be no less difficult for her to get out of her power and charm.

At another time, thinking about all this, she sincerely marveled at herself, not believing that she believed, forgiving the sea with a smile and sadly turning to reality; now, shifting the frill, the girl recalled her life. There was a lot of boredom and simplicity. Loneliness together, it happened, weighed heavily on her, but that wrinkle of inner timidity had already formed in her, that wrinkle of suffering, from which it was impossible to bring and receive revival. They laughed at her, saying: “She is touched, not in herself”; she was used to this pain as well; the girl even happened to endure insults, after which her chest ached as if from a blow. As a woman, she was unpopular in Kapern, but many suspected, though wildly and vaguely, that she was given more than others - only in another language. Capernets adored thick, heavy women with oily skin, thick calves and powerful arms; here they courted, slapping their backs with their palms and pushing, as in a bazaar. The type of this feeling was like the ingenuous simplicity of a roar. Assol approached this decisive environment in the same way as a ghost society would suit people of an exquisite nervous life, if it had all the charm of Assunta or Aspasia: that which is from love is unthinkable here. Thus, in the steady drone of a soldier's trumpet, the charming melancholy of the violin is powerless to lead the stern regiment out of the actions of its straight lines. To what is said in these lines, the girl stood with her back.

While her head was humming the song of life, her small hands worked diligently and deftly; biting off the thread, she looked far ahead of her, but this did not prevent her from turning the scar evenly and laying the buttonhole with the distinctness of a sewing machine. Although Longren did not return, she did not worry about her father. Recently, he quite often sailed away at night to fish or just to clear his head.

She was not afraid; she knew that nothing bad would happen to him. In this regard, Assol was still that little girl who prayed in her own way, babbling amiably in the morning: “Hello, God!”, And in the evening: “Farewell, God!”.

In her opinion, such a short acquaintance with the god was quite enough for him to avert misfortune. She was also part of his position: God was always busy with the affairs of millions of people, therefore, in her opinion, the ordinary shadows of life should be treated with the delicate patience of a guest who, having found the house full of people, waits for the bustling owner, huddling and eating according to circumstances.

When she finished sewing, Assol put her work on the corner table, undressed and lay down. The fire was put out. She soon noticed that there was no drowsiness; consciousness was clear, as in the heat of the day, even the darkness seemed artificial, the body, like consciousness, felt light, daytime. My heart was beating like a pocket watch; it beat as if between a pillow and an ear. Assol was angry, tossing and turning, now throwing off the blanket, now wrapping herself up in it. Finally, she managed to evoke the habitual idea that helps to fall asleep: she mentally threw stones into the clear water, looking at the divergence of the lightest circles. Sleep, indeed, as if only waiting for this handout; he came, whispered to Mary, who was standing at the head of the bed, and, obeying her smile, said around: "Shhh." Assol immediately fell asleep. She had a favorite dream: blooming trees, melancholy, charm, songs and mysterious phenomena, of which, when she woke up, she recalled only the sparkling of blue water, rising from her feet to her heart with cold and delight. Seeing all this, she stayed for some more time in the impossible country, then woke up and sat down.

There was no sleep, as if she had not fallen asleep at all. The feeling of novelty, joy and desire to do something warmed her. She looked around with the same look that one looks at a new room. The dawn has penetrated - not with all the clarity of illumination, but with that vague effort in which one can understand the surroundings. The bottom of the window was black; the top brightened up. Outside the house, almost at the edge of the frame, the morning star shone. Knowing that now she would not fall asleep, Assol dressed, went to the window, and, removing the hook, drew the frame away. There was an attentive, sensitive silence outside the window; it seems to have arrived just now. In the blue twilight the bushes gleamed, the trees slept further away; breathed with stuffiness and earth.

Holding on to the top of the frame, the girl looked and smiled. Suddenly, something like a distant call stirred her from within and without, and she seemed to wake up once again from obvious reality to something that is clearer and more undoubted. From that moment on, the exultant richness of consciousness did not leave her. So, understanding, we listen to the speeches of people, but if we repeat what has been said, we will understand again, with a different, new meaning. It was the same with her.

Taking an old, but always young, silk scarf on her head, she grabbed it with her hand under her chin, locked the door and fluttered out barefoot onto the road. Although it was empty and deaf, it seemed to her that she sounded like an orchestra, that they could hear her. Everything was nice to her, everything made her happy. Warm dust tickled bare feet; breathed clear and cheerful. Rooftops and clouds darkened in the twilight light of the sky; dormant hedges, wild roses, kitchen gardens, orchards and a gently visible road. In everything, a different order was noticed than in the daytime - the same, but in a correspondence that had eluded earlier. Everyone slept with their eyes open, secretly examining the passing girl.

She walked, the further, the faster, in a hurry to leave the village. Meadows stretched beyond Kaperna; behind the meadows along the slopes of the coastal hills grew hazel, poplars and chestnuts. Where the road ended, turning into a deaf path, at Assol's feet a fluffy black dog with a white chest and a talking strain of eyes spun softly at Assol's feet. The dog, recognizing Assol, squealing and coyly wagging his body, walked beside her, silently agreeing with the girl in something understandable, like “I” and “you”. Assol, looking into her communicative eyes, was firmly convinced that the dog could speak, if it had no secret reasons for being silent. Noticing the smile of his companion, the dog frowned merrily, wagged its tail and ran smoothly forward, but suddenly sat down indifferently, busily scraped out the ear bitten by its eternal enemy with its paw, and ran back.

Assol penetrated the tall, dewy meadow grass; holding her hand palm down over her panicles, she walked, smiling at the flowing touch.

Looking into the peculiar faces of flowers, into the confusion of stems, she discerned almost human hints there - postures, efforts, movements, features and glances; she would not be surprised now by a procession of field mice, a ball of gophers, or the rude fun of a hedgehog frightening a sleeping dwarf with its fuqing. And sure enough, a gray hedgehog rolled out in front of her on the path. "Fuk-fuk," he said curtly, heartily, like a cab driver to a pedestrian. Assol spoke with those whom she understood and saw. - "Hello, sick," she said to the purple iris, pierced to holes by a worm. “You need to stay at home,” this referred to a bush stuck in the middle of the path and therefore ripped off by the clothes of passers-by. A large beetle clung to the bell, bending the plant and falling down, but stubbornly pushing with its paws. “Shake off the fat passenger,” Assol advised. The beetle, for sure, could not resist and flew to the side with a bang. Thus, agitated, trembling and shining, she approached the hillside, hidden in its thickets from the meadow space, but now surrounded by her true friends, who - she knew this - speak in a bass voice.

They were large old trees among honeysuckle and hazel. Their hanging branches touched the upper leaves of the bushes. In the calmly gravitating large foliage of chestnut trees stood white flower cones, their aroma mixed with the smell of dew and resin. The path, dotted with protrusions of slippery roots, then fell, then climbed the slope. Assol felt at home; she greeted the trees as if they were people, that is, shaking their broad leaves. She walked, whispering now mentally, now with words: “Here you are, here is another you; many of you, my brothers! I'm going, brothers, I'm in a hurry, let me go. I recognize you all, I remember and honor all of you. The "brothers" majestically stroked her with what they could - with leaves - and kindly creaked in response. She scrambled out, soiled on her feet, to a cliff above the sea and stood on the edge of the cliff, out of breath from her hurried walk. Deep, invincible faith, rejoicing, foamed and rustled in her. She scattered her gaze over the horizon, from where she returned back with a light noise of the coastal wave, proud of the purity of her flight. Meanwhile, the sea, outlined on the horizon with a golden thread, was still asleep; only under the cliff, in the puddles of the coastal holes, did the water rise and fall. The steel color of the sleeping ocean near the shore turned into blue and black. Behind the golden thread, the sky, flashing, shone with a huge fan of light; the white clouds were set off by a faint blush. Subtle, divine colors shone in them. A quivering snowy whiteness lay already on the black distance; the foam shone, and a crimson gap, flashing among the golden thread, threw scarlet ripples across the ocean, at Assol's feet.

She sat with her legs tucked up, her hands around her knees. Leaning attentively towards the sea, she looked at the horizon with large eyes, in which there was nothing left of an adult, - the eyes of a child. Everything that she had been waiting for so long and fervently was done there - at the end of the world. She saw in the land of distant abysses an underwater hill; climbing plants streamed upward from its surface; among their round leaves, pierced at the edge with a stalk, bizarre flowers shone. The upper leaves glistened on the surface of the ocean; the one who knew nothing, as Assol knew, saw only awe and brilliance.

A ship rose from the thicket; he surfaced and stopped in the very middle of the dawn. From this distance he was visible as clear as clouds. Scattering joy, he burned like wine, a rose, blood, lips, scarlet velvet and crimson fire. The ship was heading straight for Assol. The wings of foam fluttered under the powerful pressure of his keel; already standing up, the girl pressed her hands to her chest, as a wonderful play of light turned into a swell; the sun rose, and the bright fullness of the morning pulled off the covers from everything that was still basking, stretching on the sleepy earth.

The girl sighed and looked around. The music stopped, but Assol was still at the mercy of her sonorous choir. This impression gradually weakened, then became a memory and, finally, just tiredness. She lay down on the grass, yawned and, blissfully closing her eyes, fell asleep - really, a sleep as strong as a young nut, without worries and dreams.

She was awakened by a fly roaming on her bare foot. Turning her leg restlessly, Assol woke up; sitting, she pinned up her disheveled hair, so Gray's ring reminded of itself, but considering it nothing more than a stalk stuck between her fingers, she straightened it; since the hindrance did not disappear, she impatiently raised her hand to her eyes and straightened up, instantly jumping up with the force of a splashing fountain.

Gray's radiant ring shone on her finger, as if on someone else's - she could not recognize her own at that moment, she did not feel her finger. “Whose joke is this? Whose joke? she exclaimed rapidly. – Am I sleeping? Maybe you found it and forgot? Grasping her right hand, on which there was a ring, with her left hand, she looked around in amazement, searching the sea and green thickets with her gaze; but no one moved, no one hid in the bushes, and in the blue, far-lit sea there was no sign, and a blush covered Assol, and the voices of the heart said a prophetic "yes." There were no explanations for what had happened, but without words or thoughts she found them in her strange feeling, and the ring became close to her. Trembling, she pulled it off her finger; holding it in a handful like water, she examined it with all her soul, with all her heart, with all the jubilation and clear superstition of youth, then, hiding behind her bodice, Assol buried her face in her hands, from under which a smile burst uncontrollably, and, lowering her head, slowly went back the way.

So, by chance, as people who can read and write say, Gray and Assol found each other in the morning of a summer day full of inevitability.

V. Combat preparations

When Gray went up to the deck of the Secret, he stood motionless for several minutes, stroking his head from behind to forehead with his hand, which meant extreme confusion. Absent-mindedness - a cloudy movement of feelings - was reflected in his face with an insensitive smile of a lunatic. His assistant Panten was walking along the quarters with a plate of fried fish; when he saw Gray, he noticed the strange state of the captain.

“Perhaps you got hurt?” he asked carefully. - Where were you? What did you see? However, it is, of course, up to you. The broker offers a profitable freight with a premium. What's the matter with you?..

“Thank you,” Gray said with a sigh, “as if untied.” “It was the sound of your simple, intelligent voice that I missed. It's like cold water. Panten, inform the people that today we are weighing anchor and going to the mouth of the Liliana, about ten miles from here. Its course is interrupted by solid shoals. The mouth can only be entered from the sea. Come get a map. Do not take a pilot. That's all for now... Yes, I need a profitable freight like last year's snow. You can pass this on to the broker. I'm going to the city, where I'll stay until evening.

– What happened?

“Absolutely nothing, Panten. I want you to take note of my desire to avoid any questioning. When the time comes, I'll let you know what's up. Tell the sailors that repairs are to be done; that the local dock is busy.

"Very well," said Panten senselessly at the back of the departing Gray. - Will be done.

Although the captain's orders were quite sensible, the mate's eyes widened and he rushed uneasily back to his cabin with his plate, muttering, “Pantin, you've been puzzled. Does he want to try smuggling? Are we flying under the black flag of a pirate? But here Panten is entangled in the wildest assumptions. While he was nervously destroying the fish, Gray went down to the cabin, took the money and, crossing the bay, appeared in the shopping districts of Liss.

Now he acted decisively and calmly, knowing to the smallest detail everything that lay ahead on the wonderful path. Each movement - thought, action - warmed him with the subtle pleasure of artistic work. His plan took shape instantly and convexly. His concepts of life have undergone that last foray of the chisel, after which the marble is calm in its beautiful radiance.

Gray visited three stores, attaching particular importance to the accuracy of choice, as he mentally saw the right color and shade. In the first two shops he was shown market-coloured silks designed to satisfy an unpretentious vanity; in the third he found examples of complex effects. The owner of the shop bustled around happily, laying out stale materials, but Gray was as serious as an anatomist. He patiently dismantled the bundles, put them aside, moved them, unfolded them, and looked at the light with such a multitude of scarlet stripes that the counter, littered with them, seemed to burst into flames. A purple wave lay on the toe of Gray's boot; a rosy glow shone on his arms and face. Rummaging through the light resistance of the silk, he distinguished colors: red, pale pink and dark pink, thick simmers of cherry, orange and dark red tones; here were shades of all forces and meanings, different - in their imaginary relationship, like the words: "charming" - "beautiful" - "magnificent" - "perfect"; hints lurked in the folds, inaccessible to the language of sight, but the true scarlet color did not appear for a long time to the eyes of our captain; what the shopkeeper brought was good, but did not evoke a clear and firm "yes." Finally, one color caught the buyer's disarmed attention; he sat down in an armchair by the window, pulled out a long end from the noisy silk, threw it on his knees and, lounging, with a pipe in his teeth, became contemplatively motionless.

This completely pure, like a scarlet morning stream, full of noble fun and regal color, was exactly the proud color that Gray was looking for. There were no mixed shades of fire, poppy petals, play of violet or lilac hints; there was also no blue, no shadow, nothing to be doubted. He glowed like a smile with the charm of a spiritual reflection. Gray was so thoughtful that he forgot about the owner, who was waiting behind him with the tension of a hunting dog, making a stance. Tired of waiting, the merchant reminded himself of himself with the crackling of a torn piece of cloth.

“Enough samples,” Gray said, standing up, “I'll take this silk.

- The whole piece? – respectfully doubting, asked the trader. But Gray silently looked at his forehead, which made the shop owner a little more cheeky. “In that case, how many meters?”

Gray nodded, inviting them to wait, and calculated the required amount with a pencil on paper.

“Two thousand meters. He looked doubtfully at the shelves. - Yes, no more than two thousand meters.

- Two? - said the owner, jumping convulsively, like a spring. – Thousands? Meters? Please sit down, captain. Would you like to have a look, Captain, at samples of new materials? As you wish. Here are matches, here is fine tobacco; I ask you to. Two thousand ... two thousand. He said a price that had as much to do with the real one as an oath to a simple yes, but Gray was pleased because he didn't want to bargain for anything. “Amazing, the best silk,” continued the shopkeeper, “a product beyond compare, only I can find such.

When he was finally exhausted with delight, Gray agreed with him about the delivery, taking on his own account the costs, paid the bill and left, escorted by the owner with the honors of the Chinese king. In the meantime, across the street from where the shop was, a wandering musician, having tuned the cello, made her speak sadly and well with a quiet bow; his companion, the flutist, showered the singing of the jet with the babble of a throaty whistle; the simple song with which they resounded in the dormant yard in the heat reached Gray's ears, and he immediately understood what he should do next. In general, all these days he was at that happy height of spiritual vision, from which he clearly noticed all the hints and hints of reality; Hearing the sounds drowned out by the carriages, he entered the center of the most important impressions and thoughts, caused, according to his character, by this music, already feeling why and how what he thought would turn out well. Passing the lane, Gray passed through the gates of the house where the musical performance took place. By then the musicians were about to leave; the tall flute-player, with an air of downtrodden dignity, waved his hat gratefully at the windows from which the coins flew out. The cello was already back under its master's arm; he, wiping his sweaty forehead, was waiting for the flutist.

- Bah, it's you, Zimmer! - Gray told him, recognizing the violinist, who in the evenings amused the sailors, guests of the Money for a Barrel inn, with his beautiful playing. - How did you change the violin?

“Honorable Captain,” Zimmer said smugly, “I play everything that sounds and crackles. When I was young, I was a musical clown. Now I am drawn to art, and I see with grief that I have ruined an outstanding talent. That is why, out of late greed, I love two at once: the viol and the violin. I play the cello during the day, and the violin in the evenings, that is, as if crying, weeping for the lost talent. Will you treat me with wine, eh? The cello is my Carmen, and the violin.

“Assol,” Gray said. Zimmer didn't hear.

- Yes, - he nodded, - solo on cymbals or copper tubes - Another thing. However, what about me? Let the clowns of art make faces - I know that fairies always rest in the violin and cello.

- And what is hidden in my "tour-lu-rlu"? asked the flutist, a tall fellow with lamb-like blue eyes and a blond beard, who approached. - Well, tell me?

– Depending on how much you drank in the morning. Sometimes - a bird, sometimes - alcohol vapors. Captain, this is my companion Duss; I told him how you litter with gold when you drink, and he is absently in love with you.

“Yes,” Duss said, “I love gesture and generosity. But I am cunning, do not believe my vile flattery.

"Here you are," Gray said, laughing. “I don’t have much time, but I can’t stand the job. I suggest you make good money. Assemble an orchestra, but not from dandies with the ceremonial faces of the dead, who, in musical literalism or, even worse, in sound gastronomy, have forgotten about the soul of music and are quietly deadening the stages with their intricate noises - no. Gather together your cooks and footmen who make simple hearts cry; gather your tramps. The sea and love do not tolerate pedants. I would love to sit with you, and not even with one bottle, but you have to go. I have a lot to do. Take this and drink it to the letter A. If you like my suggestion, come to the "Secret" in the evening, it is located near the head dam.

- I agree! Zimmer cried, knowing that Gray was paying like a king. - Duss, bow, say "yes" and twirl your hat for joy! Captain Gray wants to get married!

"Yes," Gray said simply. - I will tell you all the details on the "Secret". Are you…

- For the letter A! Duss nudged Zimmer and winked at Gray. - But ... how many letters in the alphabet! Please something and fit ...

Gray gave more money. The musicians are gone. Then he went to the commission office and gave a secret order for a large sum - to perform urgently, within six days. By the time Gray returned to his ship, the office agent was already boarding the ship. By evening the silk was brought; five sailboats hired by Gray fit with the sailors; Letika has not yet returned and the musicians have not arrived; While waiting for them, Gray went to talk to Panten.

It should be noted that Gray sailed with the same crew for several years. At first, the captain surprised the sailors with the vagaries of unexpected voyages, stops - sometimes monthly - in the most non-commercial and deserted places, but gradually they were imbued with Gray's "greyism". He often sailed with only one ballast, refusing to take a profitable charter just because he did not like the offered cargo. No one could persuade him to carry soap, nails, machine parts and other things that are gloomy silent in the holds, causing lifeless ideas of boring necessity. But he willingly loaded fruits, porcelain, animals, spices, tea, tobacco, coffee, silk, valuable tree species: black, sandalwood, palm. All this corresponded to the aristocracy of his imagination, creating a picturesque atmosphere; it is not surprising that the crew of the "Secret", thus brought up in the spirit of originality, looked somewhat down on all other ships, shrouded in the smoke of flat profit. Still, this time Gray met questions in faces; the most stupid sailor knew perfectly well that there was no need to make repairs in the bed of a forest river.

Panten, of course, told them Gray's orders; when he entered, his assistant was finishing his sixth cigar, wandering around the cabin, crazy from the smoke and bumping into chairs. Evening came; a golden beam of light jutted out through the open porthole, in which the lacquered visor of the captain's cap flashed.

“Everything is ready,” said Panten gloomily. - If you want, you can raise the anchor.

"You ought to know me a little better, Panten," Gray remarked gently.

There is no secret in what I do. As soon as we drop anchor at the bottom of the Liliana, I'll tell you everything, and you won't waste so many matches on bad cigars. Go, weigh anchor.

Panten, smiling awkwardly, scratched his brow.

“That is true, of course,” he said. – However, I nothing. When he went out, Gray sat for some time, looking motionless at the half-open door, then went over to his room. Here he either sat or lay down; then, listening to the crackling of the windlass, rolling out a loud chain, he was about to go out to the forecastle, but again he thought and returned to the table, drawing a straight, fast line on the oilcloth with his finger. A punch on the door brought him out of his manic state; he turned the key, letting Letika in. The sailor, breathing heavily, stopped with the air of a messenger who had averted the execution in time.

“Letika, Letika,” I said to myself, he spoke quickly, “when from the cable pier I saw our guys dancing around the windlass, spitting in their palms. I have eyes like an eagle. And I flew; I breathed so hard on the boatman that the man sweated with excitement. Captain, did you want to leave me on the shore?

“Letika,” Gray said, peering into his red eyes, “I expected you no later than morning. Did you pour cold water on the back of your head?

- Lil. Not as much as was ingested, but lil. Done.

- Speak. “Don't talk, captain; it's all written down here. Take and read. I tried very hard. I'll leave.

“I can see by the reproach of your eyes that you still poured little cold water on the back of your head.

He turned and walked out with the strange movements of a blind man. Gray unfolded the paper; the pencil must have marveled as he drew these drawings on it, reminiscent of a rickety fence. Here is what Letika wrote: “According to the instructions. After five o'clock I walked down the street. House with a gray roof, two windows on the side; with him a garden. The person in question came twice: once for water, twice for chips for the stove. After dark, he peered through the window, but saw nothing because of the curtain.

This was followed by several instructions of a family nature, obtained by Letika, apparently through a table conversation, since the memorial ended, somewhat unexpectedly, with the words: “I put a little of my own on account of expenses.”

But the essence of this report spoke only of what we know from the first chapter. Gray put the paper on the table, whistled for the watchman and sent for Panten, but instead of the assistant, boatswain Atwood appeared, tugging at his rolled up sleeves.

“We moored at the dam,” he said. “Pantin sent to find out what you want. He is busy: he was attacked there by some people with trumpets, drums and other violins. Did you invite them to The Secret? Panten asks you to come, says he has a fog in his head.

“Yes, Atwood,” said Gray, “I certainly called the musicians; go, tell them to go to the cockpit for a while. Next, we will see how to arrange them. Atwood, tell them and the crew that I'll be on deck in a quarter of an hour. Let them gather; you and Panten, of course, will also listen to me.

Atwood cocked his left eyebrow like a cock, stood sideways by the door, and went out. Gray spent those ten minutes with his face in his hands; he did not prepare for anything and did not count on anything, but he wanted to be mentally silent. In the meantime, everyone was already waiting for him, impatiently and with curiosity, full of conjectures. He went out and saw in their faces the expectation of incredible things, but since he himself found what was happening quite natural, the tension of other people's souls was reflected in him as a slight annoyance.

“Nothing special,” Gray said, sitting down on the bridge ladder. “We will stand at the mouth of the river until we change all the rigging. You saw that red silk was brought; from it, under the guidance of the sailing master Blunt, they will make new sails for the Secret. Then we will go, but where I will not say; at least not far from here. I'm going to my wife. She is not yet my wife, but she will be. I need scarlet sails so that even from afar, as agreed with her, she noticed us. That's all. As you can see, there is nothing mysterious here. And enough about that.

“Yes,” said Atwood, seeing from the smiling faces of the sailors that they were pleasantly puzzled and did not dare to speak. - So that's the point, captain ... It's not for us, of course, to judge this. As you wish, so be it. I congratulate you.

- Thanks to! - Gray strongly squeezed the boatswain's hand, but he, making an incredible effort, responded with such a squeeze that the captain relented. After that, everyone came up, replacing each other with shy warmth of a look and muttering congratulations. No one shouted, no noise - the sailors felt something not quite simple in the abrupt words of the captain. Panten breathed a sigh of relief and cheered up - his mental heaviness melted away. One ship's carpenter was dissatisfied with something: languidly holding Gray's hand, he grimly asked: - How did you come up with this idea, captain?

“Like a blow from your axe,” Gray said. - Zimmer! Show your kids.

The violinist, clapping the musicians on the back, pushed out seven people dressed extremely slovenly.

“Here,” Zimmer said, “this is a trombone; does not play, but fires like a cannon. These two beardless fellows are fanfares; as soon as they play, they want to fight right now. Then clarinet, cornet-a-piston and second violin. All of them are great masters of hugging a frisky prima, that is, me. And here is the main owner of our fun craft - Fritz, the drummer. Drummers, you know, usually look disappointed, but this one beats with dignity, with enthusiasm. There is something open and direct about his playing, like his sticks. Is that how it's done, Captain Grey?

“Amazing,” Gray said. - All of you have a place in the hold, which this time, therefore, will be loaded with different "scherzo", "adagio" and "fortissimo". Disperse. Panten, take off the moorings, move off. I'll relieve you in two hours.

He did not notice these two hours, since they passed all in the same inner music that did not leave his consciousness, just as the pulse does not leave the arteries. He thought of one thing, wanted one thing, aspired to one thing. A man of action, he mentally anticipated the course of events, regretting only that they could not be moved as simply and quickly as checkers. Nothing in his calm appearance spoke of that tension of feeling, the rumble of which, like the rumble of a huge bell tolling above his head, rushed through his whole being with a deafening nervous moan. This finally brought him to the point that he began to mentally count: "One", two ... thirty ... "and so on, until he said" a thousand ". Such an exercise worked: he was finally able to look from the outside at the whole enterprise. Here, he was somewhat surprised that he could not imagine the inner Assol, since he had not even spoken to her. He read somewhere that it is possible, even vaguely, to understand a person if, imagining oneself as this person, copy the expression of his face. Gray's eyes were already beginning to take on a strange expression unusual for them, and his lips under his mustache were folded into a weak, meek smile, when, coming to his senses, he burst out laughing and went out to relieve Panten.

It was dark. Panten, turning up the collar of his jacket, walked by the compass, saying to the helmsman: “Left quarter point; left. Stop: another quarter. The "Secret" sailed with half sail and a fair wind.

“You know,” Panten said to Gray, “I am satisfied.

- The same as you. I got it. Right here on the bridge. He winked slyly, flashing his pipe into a smile.

“Come on,” said Gray, suddenly realizing what was the matter, “what did you understand there? “The best way to smuggle contraband,” Panten whispered. “Anyone can have the sails they want. You have a brilliant head, Gray!

“Poor Panten! said the captain, not knowing whether to be angry or laugh. “Your conjecture is witty, but devoid of any basis. Go to sleep. I give you my word that you are wrong. I do what I said.

He sent him to bed, checked his heading, and sat down. Now we will leave him, because he needs to be alone.

VI. Assol remains alone

Longren spent the night at sea; he did not sleep, did not fish, but sailed without a definite direction, listening to the splash of water, looking into the darkness, winded and thinking. In the difficult hours of life, nothing restored the strength of his soul like these lonely wanderings. Silence, only silence and desertion - that was what he needed in order for all the weakest and most confused voices to inner peace sounded clear. That night he thought about the future, about poverty, about Assol. It was extremely difficult for him to leave her even for a while; besides, he was afraid to resurrect the subsided pain. Perhaps, having entered the ship, he will again imagine that there, in Kaperna, a friend who has never died is waiting for him, and, returning, he will approach the house with the grief of a dead expectation. Mary will never leave the door of the house again. But he wanted Assol to have something to eat, therefore deciding to do as care orders.

When Longren returned, the girl was not yet at home. Her early walks did not bother her father; this time, however, there was a slight tension in his expectation. Walking from corner to corner, he suddenly saw Assol at a turn; entering swiftly and inaudibly, she stood silently in front of him, almost frightening him with the light of her glance, which reflected excitement. It seemed that her second face was revealed - that true face of a person, about which only eyes usually speak. She was silent, looking into Longren's face so incomprehensibly that he quickly asked: - Are you sick?

She didn't answer right away. When the meaning of the question finally touched her spiritual hearing, Assol started up like a branch touched by a hand, and laughed a long, even laugh of quiet triumph. She needed to say something, but, as always, she didn't have to think of what it was; she said: - No, I'm healthy ... Why are you looking like that? I'm having fun. True, I'm having fun, but that's because the day is so good. What did you think? I can see by your face that you're up to something.

“Whatever I think,” said Longren, seating the girl on his knees, “you, I know, will understand what is the matter. There is nothing to live. I will not go on a long voyage again, but I will join the postal steamer that runs between Casset and Liss.

“Yes,” she said from afar, trying to enter into his cares and business, but horrified that she was powerless to stop rejoicing. - This is very bad. I will be bored. Come back soon. As she spoke, she broke into an uncontrollable smile. - Yes, hurry up, dear; I'm waiting.

- Assol! said Longren, taking her face in his hands and turning her towards him. - Tell me what happened?

She felt that she must dispel his anxiety, and, having overcome her jubilation, she became seriously attentive, only new life still shone in her eyes.

“You are strange,” she said. - Absolutely nothing. I collected nuts.

Longren would not have quite believed it if he had not been so preoccupied with his own thoughts. Their conversation became businesslike and detailed. The sailor told his daughter to pack his sack; listed all the necessary things and gave some advice.

“I'll be back home in ten days, and you lay down my gun and stay at home. If anyone wants to offend you, say: - Longren will return soon. Don't think or worry about me; nothing bad will happen.

After that, he ate, kissed the girl warmly and, throwing the bag over his shoulders, went out onto the city road. Assol watched him go until he disappeared around the corner; then returned. She had a lot of homework to do, but she forgot about it. With an interest of slight surprise, she looked around, as if already a stranger to this house, so infused into her consciousness from childhood that it seemed she always carried it in herself, and now it looked like native places visited a number of years later from the circle of a different life. But something unworthy seemed to her in this rebuff of hers, something wrong. She sat down at the table where Longren was making toys and tried to glue the rudder to the stern; looking at these objects, she involuntarily saw them large, real; everything that happened in the morning rose again in her with a tremor of excitement, and Golden ring, the size of the sun, fell across the sea at her feet.

Without sitting, she left the house and went to Lisa. She had absolutely nothing to do there; she didn't know why she was going, but she couldn't help but go. On the way, she met a pedestrian who wanted to explore some direction; she sensibly explained to him what was needed, and immediately forgot about it.

She passed the whole long road imperceptibly, as if she were carrying a bird that had absorbed all her tender attention. At the city, she was a little amused by the noise flying from his huge circle, but he had no power over her, as before, when, frightening and hammering, he made her a silent coward. She confronted him. She walked slowly along the ring-shaped boulevard, crossing the blue shadows of the trees, looking trustingly and lightly at the faces of passers-by, with an even gait, full of confidence. A breed of observant people during the day noticed repeatedly an unknown, strange-looking girl, passing among a bright crowd with an air of deep thought. In the square, she held out her hand to the stream of the fountain, fingering among the reflected spray; then, sitting down, she rested and returned to the forest road. She made her way back with a fresh soul, in a peaceful and clear mood, like an evening river, which finally replaced the colorful mirrors of the day with an even brilliance in the shade. Approaching the village, she saw the same collier who fancied that his basket had blossomed; he was standing near a wagon with two unknown gloomy people, covered with soot and mud. Assol was delighted. - Hello. Philip, she said, what are you doing here?

“Nothing, fly. The wheel fell off; I corrected him, now I smoke and doodle with our guys. Where are you from?

Assol did not answer.

“You know, Philip,” she began, “I love you very much, and therefore I will only tell you. I will leave soon; I'll probably leave. You don't tell anyone about this.

- Do you want to leave? Where are you going? the collier was amazed, his mouth open inquiringly, which made his beard grow longer.

- I do not know. She slowly looked around the clearing under the elm tree, where the cart stood, the green grass in the pink evening light, the silent black coal-burners, and, after thinking, added: “I don’t know all this. I don't know the day or the hour, and I don't even know where. I won't say anything more. Therefore, just in case, goodbye; you often took me.

She took a huge black hand and brought it into a state of relative shaking. The worker's face cracked into a fixed smile. The girl nodded, turned and walked away. She disappeared so quickly that Philip and his friends did not have time to turn their heads.

“Miracles,” said the collier, “come and understand her. - Something with her today ... such and such.

- That's right, - supported the second, - either she says, or she persuades. None of our business.

“None of our business,” said the third, sighing. Then all three got into the wagon and, wheels rattling along the stony road, disappeared into the dust.

VII. Scarlet "Secret"

It was a white morning hour; in the vast forest stood thin steam, full of strange visions. An unknown hunter, who had just left his fire, was moving along the river; through the trees shone the gap of its air voids, but the diligent hunter did not approach them, examining the fresh footprint of a bear heading towards the mountains.

A sudden sound rushed through the trees with the unexpectedness of an alarming chase; it was the clarinet. The musician, going out on deck, played a fragment of a melody full of sad, drawn-out repetition. The sound trembled like a voice hiding grief; intensified, smiled with a sad overflow and broke off. A distant echo vaguely hummed the same melody.

The hunter, marking the trail with a broken branch, made his way to the water. The fog hasn't cleared yet; in it the shape of a huge ship, slowly turning towards the mouth of the river, faded. Its folded sails came to life, festooned, spreading out and covering the masts with impotent shields of huge folds; voices and footsteps were heard. The coastal wind, trying to blow, lazily fiddled with the sails; finally, the warmth of the sun produced the desired effect; the air pressure intensified, dispelled the fog and poured out along the yards into light scarlet forms full of roses. Pink shadows glided over the whiteness of the masts and rigging, everything was white, except for the spread, smoothly moved sails, the color of deep joy.

The hunter, who was watching from the shore, rubbed his eyes for a long time until he was convinced that he was seeing in this way and not otherwise. The ship disappeared around the bend, and he still stood and watched; then, shrugging his shoulders in silence, he went to his bear.

While the "Secret" was in the riverbed, Gray stood at the helm, not trusting the sailor to steer - he was afraid of the shallows. Panten was sitting next to him, in a new pair of cloth, in a new shiny cap, clean-shaven and humbly puffed up. He still didn't feel any connection between the scarlet outfit and Gray's direct target.

“Now,” said Gray, “when my sails are glowing, the wind is good, and my heart is more happy than an elephant at the sight of a small bun, I will try to set you up with my thoughts, as I promised in Lissa. Notice I don't think you're stupid or stubborn, no; you are a model sailor, and that is worth a lot. But you, like most, listen to the voices of all simple truths through the thick glass of life; they scream, but you won't hear. I do what exists, as an old idea of ​​the beautiful unrealizable, and which, in essence, is just as feasible and possible as a country walk. Soon you will see a girl who cannot, must not get married otherwise than in the way that I am developing before your eyes.

He succinctly conveyed to the sailor what we are well aware of, ending the explanation as follows: - You see how closely fate, will and character traits are intertwined here; I come to the one who is waiting and can wait only for me, but I don’t want anyone else but her, maybe precisely because thanks to her I understood one simple truth. It is to do so-called miracles with your own hands. When the main thing for a person is to receive the dearest nickel, it is easy to give this nickel, but when the soul conceals the grain of a fiery plant - a miracle, do this miracle for him, if you are able. He will have a new soul, and you will have a new one. When the head of the prison himself releases the prisoner, when the billionaire gives the scribe a villa, an operetta singer, and a safe, and the jockey holds his horse for once for the sake of another horse that is unlucky, then everyone will understand how pleasant it is, how inexpressibly wonderful. But there are no lesser miracles: a smile, fun, forgiveness, and - at the right time, the right word. Owning it means owning everything. As for me, our beginning - mine and Assol - will remain for us forever in the scarlet reflection of the sails created by the depth of the heart, which knows what love is. Do you understand me?

- Yes captain. Panten grunted, wiping his mustache with a neatly folded clean handkerchief. - I got it. You touched me. I'll go downstairs and ask Nix's forgiveness, whom I scolded yesterday for the sunken bucket. And I'll give him tobacco - he lost his at cards.

Before Gray, somewhat surprised at this quick practical result of his words, could say anything, Panten was already thundering down the gangplank and sighing in the distance. Gray looked up, looking up; scarlet sails were silently torn above it; the sun in their seams shone with purple smoke. "Secret" went to sea, moving away from the coast. There was no doubt in Gray's ringing soul—no thumps of alarm, no noise of petty worries; calmly, like a sail, he rushed to a delightful goal; full of those thoughts that precede words.

By noon, the smoke of a military cruiser appeared on the horizon, the cruiser changed course and raised the signal from a distance of half a mile - "to drift!".

“Brothers,” Gray said to the sailors, “they won’t fire on us, don’t be afraid; they just can't believe their eyes.

He ordered to drift. Panten, shouting as if on fire, brought the "Secret" out of the wind; the ship came to a halt, while a steam launch sped off from the cruiser with a crew and a white-gloved lieutenant; the lieutenant, stepping on the deck of the ship, looked around in amazement and went with Gray to the cabin, from where an hour later he set off, with a strange wave of his hand and smiling, as if he had received a rank, back to the blue cruiser. Gray seemed to have had more success this time than with the ingenuous Panten, for the cruiser paused to strike the horizon with a mighty volley of salutes, the swift smoke of which, piercing the air with huge sparkling balls, dissipated in tatters over the still water. A kind of semi-holiday stupefaction reigned on the cruiser all day; the mood was unofficial, knocked down - under the sign of love, which was talked about everywhere - from the saloon to the engine hold, and the sentry of the mine department asked the passing sailor:

“Tom, how did you get married?” - "I caught her by the skirt when she wanted to jump out of my window," said Tom and proudly twirled his mustache.

For some time the "Secret" was an empty sea, without shores; by noon the distant shore opened up. Taking up a telescope, Gray stared at Kaperna. If not for the row of roofs, he would have distinguished Assol in the window of one house, sitting behind some book. She read; a greenish beetle was crawling along the page, stopping and rising on its front paws with an air of independence and domesticity. Already twice he had been blown off without vexation onto the windowsill, from where he appeared again trustingly and freely, as if he wanted to say something. This time he managed to get almost to the hand of the girl holding the corner of the page; here he got stuck on the word “look”, stopped doubtfully, expecting a new flurry, and, indeed, barely escaped trouble, since Assol had already exclaimed: “Again, the bug ... fool! ..” - and wanted to decisively blow the guest into the grass, but suddenly an accidental shift of her gaze from one roof to another revealed to her, on the blue sea gap of the street space, a white ship with scarlet sails.

She shuddered, leaned back, froze; then she jumped up abruptly with a dizzyingly sinking heart, bursting into uncontrollable tears of inspired shock. The "Secret" at that time was rounding a small cape, keeping to the shore at the angle of the port side; low music flowed in the blue day from the white deck under the fire of scarlet silk; music of rhythmic overflows, conveyed by not entirely successful words known to all: “Pour, pour glasses - and let's drink, friends, for love” ... - In its simplicity, exulting, excitement unfolded and rumbled.

Not remembering how she left the house, Assol was already running to the sea, caught up by the irresistible wind of the event; at the first corner she stopped almost exhausted; her legs gave way, her breath broke and went out, her consciousness hung by a thread. Beside herself with fear of losing her will, she stamped her foot and recovered. At times, now the roof, then the fence hid scarlet sails from her; then, fearing that they had disappeared like a mere phantom, she hurried over the painful obstacle and, seeing the ship again, stopped to breathe a sigh of relief.

In the meantime, such confusion, such agitation, such general unrest occurred in Caperna, which will not yield to the affect of the famous earthquakes. Never before had a great ship approached this shore; the ship had those same sails whose name sounded like a mockery; now they clearly and irrefutably glowed with the innocence of a fact that refutes all the laws of being and common sense. Men, women, children in a hurry rushed to the shore, who was in what; the inhabitants called to one another from yard to yard, jumped on each other, yelled and fell; soon a crowd formed by the water, and Assol ran swiftly into this crowd. While she was gone, her name flew among the people with nervous and gloomy anxiety, with malicious fright. Men spoke more; dumbfounded women sobbed in a strangled, snake-like hiss, but if one of them began to crack, the poison climbed into her head. As soon as Assol appeared, everyone was silent, everyone moved away from her with fear, and she was left alone in the middle of the emptiness of the hot sand, confused, ashamed, happy, with a face no less scarlet than her miracle, helplessly stretching out her hands to the tall ship.

A boat full of tanned rowers separated from him; among them stood the one whom, as it now seemed to her, she knew, vaguely remembered from childhood. He looked at her with a smile that warmed and hurried. But thousands of the last ridiculous fears overcame Assol; mortally afraid of everything - mistakes, misunderstandings, mysterious and harmful interference - she ran up to her waist into the warm swaying of the waves, shouting: - I'm here, I'm here! It's me!

Then Zimmer waved his bow - and the same melody burst through the nerves of the crowd, but this time in a full, triumphant chorus. From the excitement, the movement of clouds and waves, the brilliance of the water and the distance, the girl almost could no longer distinguish what was moving: she, the ship or the boat - everything was moving, spinning and falling.

But the oar splashed sharply near her; she raised her head. Gray leaned down, her hands clutching at his belt. Assol closed her eyes; then, quickly opening her eyes, she boldly smiled at his radiant face, and breathlessly said, “Exactly like that.

"And you too, my child!" Gray said, taking the wet jewel out of the water. “Here, I have come. Did you recognize me?

She nodded, holding on to his belt, with a new soul and quivering closed eyes. Happiness sat in her like a fluffy kitten. When Assol decided to open her eyes, the swaying of the boat, the glitter of the waves, the approaching, powerfully tossing and turning, side of the "Secret" - everything was a dream, where light and water swayed, whirling, like the play of sunbeams on a wall flowing with rays. Not remembering how, she climbed the ladder in Gray's strong arms. The deck, covered and hung with carpets, in scarlet splashes of sails, was like a heavenly garden. And soon Assol saw that she was standing in a cabin - in a room that could not be better.

Then from above, shaking and burying the heart in its triumphant cry, huge music rushed again. Again Assol closed her eyes, afraid that all this would disappear if she looked. Gray took her hands and, now knowing where it was safe to go, she hid her face, wet from tears, on the chest of a friend who had come so magically. Gently, but with a laugh, himself shocked and surprised that an inexpressible, precious minute inaccessible to anyone had come, Gray lifted this long-dreamed face by the chin, and the girl's eyes finally opened clearly. They had all the best of a man.

– Will you take my Longren to us? - she said.

- Yes. And he kissed her so hard, following his iron yes, that she laughed.

Now we will move away from them, knowing that they need to be together as one. There are many words in the world in different languages ​​and different dialects, but all of them, even remotely, cannot convey what they said to each other on this day.

Meanwhile, on the deck at the mainmast, near the barrel, eaten by a worm, with the bottom knocked down, revealing a hundred-year-old dark grace, the entire crew was already waiting. Atwood stood; Panten sat sedately, beaming like a newborn. Gray went up, gave a sign to the orchestra and, taking off his cap, was the first to scoop up holy wine with a faceted glass, in the song of golden trumpets.

- Well, here ... - he said, having finished drinking, then threw down the glass. “Now drink, drink everything; who does not drink is my enemy.

He didn't have to repeat those words. While, at full speed, under full sail, the Secret Caperna, terrified forever, was leaving, the crush around the barrel surpassed everything that happens at great holidays of this kind.

- How did you like it? Gray asked Letika.

– Captain! - said, looking for words, the sailor. “I don’t know if he liked me, but my impressions need to be considered. Beehive and garden!

“I mean, they put a beehive and a garden in my mouth. Be happy captain. And may the one that I call the “best load”, the best prize of the Secret, be happy!

When it began to get light the next day, the ship was far from Caperna. Part of the crew both fell asleep and remained lying on the deck, overcoming Gray's wine; only the helmsman and the watchman, and the thoughtful and intoxicated Zimmer, sitting on the stern with the neck of the cello at his chin, kept on their feet. He sat, quietly moved the bow, making the strings speak with a magical, unearthly voice, and thought about happiness ...

"Scarlet Sails" is a work with a touching, romantic plot. This is a story about a girl with a gentle, musical name, similar, as the author himself put it, to the noise of a sea shell. Unfortunately, the content of this book is not known to everyone today. And some don't even know who wrote Scarlet Sails.

Neoromantic writer

Who wrote "Scarlet Sails"? The author of this book is a man who created on paper unprecedented cities, countries, seas, straits, names of people. And he did this not for the sake of an idle game, but to free the imagination, overstrained by poetry. To the question of who wrote "Scarlet Sails", one can answer this way: "This was done by a writer who was in a non-existent, but incredibly beautiful world as deeply as any other of his fellow writers."

This work was read by the Soviet people. Heroes with mysterious and seemingly foreign names were very popular at that time. About the one who wrote "Scarlet Sails", in Soviet era even schoolchildren knew. Schoolchildren first. After all, the characters of this book live in a fictional world, and the desire for unreality is inherent in adolescence and youth.

"Scarlet Sails" in contemporary art

Today's teenagers read little, few of them are familiar with the content of the work to which today's article is devoted. But in vain. After all, Scarlet Sails is a classic. This work is often mentioned in books by more modern authors and even some films. So, in the film "72 meters", released on screens in 2004, there is an allusion to the "Scarlet Sails".

Who wrote a book about a girl who spent many days on the coast waiting for a fabulous ship? A person who has dreamed of the sea and travel since childhood. The heroine of the aforementioned film is waiting for the return of her husband, a submariner who, along with his comrades, found himself in a sunken boat. She has only faith and hope, which sometimes turn out to be stronger than any life's adversities. And in order not to lose them, she reads to her unborn child one of the best, kind books of the 20th century - "Scarlet Sails".

Who wrote the story about Assol, which early years was deprived of maternal love? About the one that she spent her childhood years alone and was unloved by her peers only because she was not like them? The book was written by an author who, at the age of 15, lost the closest person in his life.

The mother of the future writer died of tuberculosis. The boy could not find a common language with his stepmother, subsequently began to live separately from new family father. He knew from an early age what loneliness and misunderstanding are. And probably also, like the heroine of his famous book, he dreamed of scarlet sails. A. Green wrote this work. to an outstanding writer and romance, the inventor and the loser, the revolutionary and the humanist, are the subject of the next few paragraphs.

Sailor

In what year were Scarlet Sails written? Work on the work was completed in 1922. By that time, the author was 32 years old, but he endured as much as not every person manages to experience in a long life.

Alexander Grinevsky was born in 1880 in Vyatka. The early facts from his biography are mentioned above. At the age of 16, he left for Odessa with the intention of becoming a sailor. But the dream was not so easy to realize. In the pocket of the future prose writer was only 25 rubles received from his father. For some time, Alexander wandered, unsuccessfully looking for work, starving. Finally, he turned to one of his father's acquaintances. He fed the young man and got a job as a sailor on a ship called "Plato".

A reader unfamiliar with Green's biography will think that what follows is the incredible adventures of a young adventurer who traded a comfortable gray life for romance and harsh trials. Nothing like this. The sailor did not come out of it. Green was disgusted by the prosaic work of a sailor. In addition, he was not always able to find a common language with others. Soon he quarreled with the captain and moved to land.

wandering

In the following years, Green tried several professions. He was a fisherman, and a laborer, and a railway foreman. He lived for several weeks in his father's house, but the craving for wandering made him restless. In 1900, the future writer added to his life experience by working in the mines. Then he worked as a lumberjack for several months.

It was not easy for Green to find his place in life. He tried to enter into it, as into a stormy sea. But each time he was thrown ashore again - into the vulgar, hated society of the city of Vyatka.

Military service

In the spring of 1902, Green became a soldier in the reserve infantry battalion. Military service influenced the formation of his worldview. At the beginning of the century, revolutionary views were increasingly manifested in society. Green, as a born romantic, could not help but be infected by such ideas. 6 months after entering the service, he deserted. Soon he was caught, but fled. The rebellious spirit of the young man did not go unnoticed by the Socialist-Revolutionary propagandists. They helped the former sailor to hide in Simbirsk.

Socialist-Revolutionary activity

In the society of revolutionaries, Green managed to make a small career. Soon he even had a party nickname. Although the writer from an early age felt hatred towards the existing social system, he refused to participate in terrorist acts. Propaganda among soldiers and workers - this was the scope of his activity. Subsequently, Green did not like to remember the Socialist-Revolutionary years.

The beginning of creativity

Alexander Grin survived several arrests. Once miraculously escaped from hard labor. He began to write in 1906. It was then that his first works were published. The pseudonym "Alexander Grin" appeared a little later.

In 1910, the second collection of short stories was published, but these works have little in common with the story Scarlet Sails. Most of them are written in a realistic manner. At the beginning of the war, some of Greene's writings took on an anti-war character. And in 1916, the writer was forced to hide again, now in Finland.

New power

"Violence cannot be destroyed by violence" - the words from Alexander Grin's note, which appeared in one of the magazines in 1918. The writer did not accept Soviet power. Now he no longer spoke at meetings, did not join literary groups. Using the words of the writer Varlamov, we can say that Green "lived not in a lie."

In 1919, the prose writer was drafted into the Red Army, but soon fell ill with typhus. After recovery, he lived for several years on Nevsky Prospekt, in the "House of Arts". He managed to get a room here with the assistance of Gorky. During this period, the writer led a hermit's life, almost did not communicate with anyone. It was then that he created the touchingly poetic story "Scarlet Sails", published in 1923. Work on it lasted six years.

"Scarlet Sails"

Green began to work on this work in 1916. One day he was walking past a toy storefront. One of them aroused the unexpected interest of the writer. It was a small boat with a sail made of white silk. Surprisingly, the toy became the impetus for writing a work about a sailor who arrived on his beautiful ship to a girl named Assol. Only now the sails have become red, or rather, scarlet. It is this color according to Green that symbolizes a beautiful dream that will certainly come true if you sincerely believe in it.

Assol

In a small town there lived a girl and her father, a widower who made a living making wooden toys. One day the girl saw in the store a miniature yacht with scarlet sails. And then a dream arose in her soul of a prince who one day would sail for her on a ship under scarlet sails.

The townsfolk do not like and do not understand romantics. Soon a rumor about the girl's madness spread throughout the city. But she, in spite of everything, continued to believe and wait. And her dream, of course, came true.