Current page: 14 (total book has 16 pages) [accessible reading excerpt: 4 pages]
The lifeless gray winter twilight crept in from everywhere, clouding the deserted shore. Here and there, behind massive blocks of ice, figures could be seen, peering intently into the distance.
The wind roared, tore the fog apart and carried the lifeless darkness to the very horizon in a wavering veil. Ice fields were moving heavily, and a mixed rumble hung over them, unlike the surf of the sea.
Magpie looked around, he sees: the day is completely ending. The last lifeless ray glided through the torn darkness, sparkled with a myriad of sparks, reflected in the ice and for a moment palely illuminated both the dull roaring icy sea, and this homeless shore, dressed in a sad shroud, and hundreds of human figures scattered along it.
The first waters of the tide ran to the shore. The waves that were noisy before were silent. And as the ice fields moved up to the very shore, the rumble went around. There was a mighty hiss, rustle, crackling of breaking blocks, as if a hundred-legged monster was approaching. The leading ice floes, compressed by the heavily pressing mass, scattering white dust, crawled to the top, piled up in bizarre mountains. The movement of the ice mass, having met an obstacle, turned into a colossal energy of destruction; in a few minutes, along the entire coast, new masses heavily rose in broken outlines.
Magpie went down to the ice one of the first. Jumping from ice floe to ice floe, sliding, falling waist-deep into snow and ice blown by the wind, he ran forward. Ice fragments crashed down in his tracks. His whole being was seized by one thought, relentless, tense, like a trembling string, reverberating in his chest: "If you attack, be in time ... King of heaven!" Shards of ice sprayed from under his feet, the wind whistled in his ears and hit his face with ice needles, dressing his beard and mustache with fluffy frost. But he did not notice anything and ran furiously forward.
(According to A. Serafimovich)
41 Deep autumn
All were rain. And today it froze in the morning and the day turned out to be surprising: fresh, sunny, bright.
I am walking along the winter field. In the sun, winter moved away from the frost and sparkled with all the lights: amber, lilac, blue. I walk, not taking my eyes off this beauty, it seems that I am not moving at all, but the winter field is floating towards me all in the lights. Near the forest, the grass is covered in hoarfrost, but farther away it is bright green and also glitters in the sun. And from lonely trees in a wet meadow, like islands, gray wedges-shadows.
From Vasiliev corner, the forest path goes uphill. She is covered in large oak leaves. You walk, as if on a down pillow, your legs sink to the ankles and rustle with dry foliage. And the forest is almost bare. The last to drop were birch and oak leaves. They drop leaves and willows. And there are a lot of those willows on the street, especially below, on the edge of the village. Cirrus green leaves crumble and fly quietly, sadly. And before they lie down on the ground, they flicker in the air for a long time.
All puddles are covered with thin, transparent ice. That is why they seem to be malachite from the meadow in the meadow. And the water in them moves from the wind, as in a spring, as if alive.
The higher the sun, the warmer and brighter. Well, today is the day! It can be seen, and indeed the sun gives people autumn warmth. And again everything came to life: the ants woke up, climbed up, moved. And the ladybugs came to life, crawling over the clover leaves. I saw three dandelions near the path and was surprised: how did they keep their downy hats in bad weather? And they stand to themselves and bask in the sun, as if they were not afraid of anything. Cunning! We hid, and the sun warmed up and - here we are. The willow below, by the stream, hastened even to throw out the kidneys. Look how their little cases shine, and in some places the lambs are silver. The caps of cattail in the swamp burst, fluffed out, and the fluffs flew in all directions, white, weightless. And I thought: isn’t Indian summer back? And why shouldn't this happen, because it did not exist at one time. Flashed between the rains, no one saw.
Here's to you and deep autumn. Here's your preview.
42
We returned from the hunt with a far from ordinary prey - eighty-four wild ducks, shot within a few hours. Exhausted from the hunt and the perfect journey, we settled down to rest under an old elm tree and, in a comradely manner, began to treat each other with provisions taken from home.
The sun, almost invisible through the lead-black clouds that cover the sky, stands high above the horizon. Further, the silvery mountains, covered in mist, seem outlandish. A light breeze sways the grass that has not had time to dry. Through the branches of the trees you can see the dark blue sky, and in some places gilded leaves hang on the knots. A spicy smell, reminiscent of the smell of wine, is poured into the soft air.
Unexpectedly, low, black clouds swept across the sky with unusual speed. It is necessary to get out of the forest without delay, in order to take cover at the right time and not get wet in the downpour. Fortunately, not far away is the hut of a forest ranger, in which one has to linger for a good half hour.
But lightning flashed, thunder rumbled. The furious downpour first suspended, and then completely stopped its chatter. The elements no longer argue, no longer quarrel, no longer fight. Frustrated hordes of clouds are carried away somewhere into the distance.
In the clearing sky, the slightly swaying top of an old birch looms sharply. The sun is about to peek out from behind a cloud. You look around and you are amazed at how instantly after the rain everything around is transformed.
Refreshed rye trembles gratefully. All living things fuss and rush about. Dark blue dragonflies circle over the reeds of the stream. The bumblebee buzzes something to insects that do not listen to him, no longer feeling the danger. From nearby groves, from arable lands and pastures, joyful bird discord is heard from everywhere.
After kindly saying goodbye to the no longer young hostess, the wife of the traveler, we set off. Some fifty meters from the hut there is a narrow but fast stream flowing from a forest thicket. You can't jump over it and you can't ford it. Looking for transition. Finally, we find a shaky boardwalk, which can only be walked by one by one. We follow the untrodden road through logging, which stretches for several kilometers. On the way, one comes across interspersed with firewood that has not yet been stacked in a row, or eight-meter pine logs that have not been sawn.
Coming out of the forest, we first follow an already traveled dirt road, and then along an asphalt highway that has replaced the old unpaved road. One more kilometer and we are home.
43 What are your thoughts?
Our copses under the sunny sky are good in autumn. You look at them and think that a person should be beautiful next to this beauty.
And today the forest has become orphaned, thinned out, quieted down. And the day is cloudy, gray. I wanted to write in a notebook that it became uncomfortable, lonely in the forest. But the hand did not rise, because this is not true. He is still good at this time: it is spacious, light. What fresh needles and what golden-orange birch tops!
The viburnum by the stream has heavily lowered its ripe brushes and can't wait for people to come for it.
The leaves are falling, they dressed up the aftermath, gilded the paths, made the puddles orange. Leaves are everywhere: in the ravine, in the canal, underfoot; they lie either inside out or face up. And it already smells of fresh prel. And the last leaves keep falling and falling, then they fall smoothly, then flash before your eyes rapidly, as if flying past a bird of unknown color.
The rowan and poplar leaves were the first to drop, cold matinees burned the aspens and sticky trees. But the oaks hold on, they fall down to the whitest blizzard. And the undergrowth is still blazing, glowing with gold: euonymus bushes, young hazel, elderberry. She looked at herself in the canal, the young talina thought. She looks, and she herself drops and drops a leaf into the water, right at her reflection.
And what are the autumn songs of the forest! The wind walks along it, making it rustle, sing, make noise. Spacious here for him, mischievous. Here is something he whispered in my ear. I raise my head, and the trace of him has already caught a cold, walks and sings at the neighboring hill. No wonder they say about him that he is free. And then it will rise up, to the very clouds. What is he worth with his ease and agility.
Today I have a basket with a dozen apples raised under a forest apple tree. And even more leaves, the most bizarre colors. Apples are fresh, juicy, browned on one side. I recently saw this apple tree full of apples. And here she is, take them and dump them in one night. There are many of them on the ground, they will be ankle-deep. And the aroma!
And soon he was fascinated by the lively quivering music of a dozen partridges taking off from young pines. The partridges disappeared, and I stood and waited, as if I would hear it again.
Yes, the forest is good in any weather. When there is fog, and large drops fall on the foliage from wet branches, the forest rustles, as if whispering, talking. What are you whispering about, honey? Tell me your thoughts, friend.
44 Bauxite deposit
All members of the expedition were present, and our leader announced: “On Saturday we are flying to Sverdlovsk. Familiarize yourself on the map with the periphery of the region and get ready for the road. The plane will be piloted by the notorious pilot Ptitsyn.
Gennady Kuzmich Ptitsyn is an enthusiastic aviator who has repeatedly shown amazing fearlessness during trans-European and transatlantic flights, an impartial driver who is in love with his profession. In appearance, Ptitsyn is a typical Uralian: blond, short, stocky, with a weather-beaten and tanned face. He treats with slight contempt people who are not enthusiastic about the achievements of modern aviation.
Our expedition has many tasks, but the main task is to explore the bauxite deposit in the Northern Urals for the newly built aluminum plant near the city of Kamensk-Uralsky.
Upon arrival at our destination, we split into small groups and set off for the bauxites. For several hours you have to make your way through a dense, dense forest. Curly ferns grow on both sides of the winding path, some strange, bizarre herbs have grown in the depths. Conversations freeze, and we, enchanted, silently go deep into the thicket. Only the rustling and whispering of foliage, the buzzing of insects and bird voices are heard.
At half-past ten we are half a mile from the field, but someone suggests a rest, which we cannot but agree with. We quickly collect deadwood, kindle a fire. It smells of burnt pine needles, acrid smoke rises in bluish streams. After half an hour, during which no one wants to move, we get water for tea boiled in our constant teapot companion, steamed and baked potatoes in ashes.
From somewhere, village boys and girls came running to the light, and with them a young puppy that looked like a wolf cub. We invite the guys to join our company, sit by the fire. A red-haired freckled boy decided to get the biggest baked potato out of the ashes and burned his hand. Zoenka and Olechka, members of our expedition, quickly and professionally smeared the burn with Vaseline.
It's time to move, comrades! If we succeed, and our intention cannot fail, today we will examine the bauxite deposit, - our leader said.
Soon we were convinced that he calculated correctly, and the calculations of our professors and teachers turned out to be correct.
45 Seven weather in the yard
Veil passed. From him in Russia they began to celebrate weddings: the field work was ending, there was time for fun. According to popular beliefs, this winter should be warm and snowy, because the wind was blowing from the southwest. But these signs often do not come true. Only one is always true: if grains are not removed from the field before the Pokrov, they will remain in the winter.
In autumn bad weather, every sunny day is a joy. Here is yesterday. The sun had not yet appeared, and already the clouds turned purple in the east, then lit up with fire, became scarlet. The wind tries to disperse them all over the sky, and from them it all turns purple. Fiery clouds climb up, reach even the cold crescent of the moon and cover it. And now the whole sky is red, flaming, disturbing.
The sun also came out, broke through, so pure and scarlet. And the sky gradually cleared, only in the west the wind piled the clouds into white mountains. And the windows in the houses caught fire, the puddles lit up, everything around was transformed, prettier. And the colors became pure: the blue sky, the orange stripes of the forest, the greenery of winter crops, the blue of the river. But all this was not for long - by ten o'clock the sun disappeared, the sky became cloudy, the colors faded, the field became lonely, the river was cold, dark, the day became gray and gloomy. Only expanse to one wind.
And this happens: fog in the morning, damp, cold, lightly drizzling rain. And after lunch, the day suddenly clears up: the sun, and warmth, and joy. But this rarely happens. It is still only October, and already we have seen puddles and ponds swept over by young ice, we have also seen snow.
And once snowflakes fell, light, large, shaggy. At the corner of the street, the grandmother and her grandson were all looking for a bigger snowflake in the air. “Won what! Look look!" shows one to the other. That the grandson is happy is understandable. And then after all, the grandmother: tired of bad weather.
One afternoon there was a rainbow in the sky. Not long flaunted and pleased. The whole of it was not visible, but the wide ends, lowered into the lakes across the river, were clearly visible. I had to see a lot of rainbows, both steep and gentle, but not one pleased as much as this one.
In autumn, the weather is often variable in the yard: either the sun, or rain, or wind, or fog, or frost, or thaw. And there is nothing to be surprised here: winter is fighting with summer, and do not expect reconciliation between them.
46 On the hunt
It was a beautiful July day, one of those days that only happens when the weather has settled for a long time. From early morning the sky was clear; the morning dawn did not glow with heat, but spread with a gentle blush. The sun, not yet incandescent, as during a sultry drought, but dull-purple, as before a storm, bright and welcomingly radiant, was rising above a long cloud, refreshing it. The cloud shone, and its brilliance was like that of forged silver. On such days high clouds usually appear about noon; they almost do not move from their place, but further, towards the sky, they move, and in some places between them sparkling sunbeams make their way from top to bottom.
Exactly on such a day I hunted for black grouse. During the day I shot quite a lot of game; the filled backpack mercilessly cut my shoulder. The evening dawn was extinguished, and in the air, still bright, although no longer illuminated by the rays of the rising sun, cold shadows began to thicken and spread. With quick steps I passed the bushes, climbed a small hill, and instead of the expected familiar plain with a white church in the distance, I saw completely different places, unfamiliar to me. At my feet stretched a narrow valley, and to the right rose a dense aspen forest. I stopped in bewilderment and looked around. “Yes,” I thought, “where did I get to? Apparently, I wandered too far to the left. I quickly got to the other side of the hill and went, taking to the right. I reached the forest, but there was no road: some uncut low bushes spread wide in front of me, and behind them, far, far away, I could see a deserted field.
Meanwhile, the night drew near and grew like a thundercloud. Everything around quickly grew black and subsided, some quails occasionally screamed. A small bird, inaudibly and low rushing on its soft wings, almost bumped into me and timidly dived to the side. I could hardly distinguish distant objects, only one field was white all around. I desperately rushed forward, as if I suddenly guessed where I should go, rounded the hillock and found myself in a shallow, plowed hollow all around. I finally became convinced that I was completely lost, and, no longer trying in the least to recognize the surrounding places, which were almost completely drowned in the mist, I went straight, according to the sounds, at random.
For about half an hour I walked like this, with difficulty rearranging my legs. It seemed that I had never been in such deserted places in my life: not a light was seen anywhere, not a sound was heard. Fields stretched endlessly, bushes, as if rising from under the ground in front of my very nose. I was about to lie down somewhere until morning, when I suddenly found out where I had gone. This area was known to us under the name Bezhin Lug.
(According to I. Turgenev)
47 Farewell to the forest
Every autumn I come several times to say goodbye to the forest and see it either in a scarlet outfit, with the last mushrooms, or sadly dropping a leaf, or completely naked, thinned and quiet. You walk until a snow blizzard sweeps the forest paths.
So today I went to say goodbye. It's fresh outside. Frost stayed at night and left pure silver on both sides of the stream. Chicory showered blue flowers, oregano drooped, only the last daisies chill on the boundary. But it's still good in the forest, quiet, sad. Songbirds have long flown away, and titmouse have taken a walk somewhere on the winter wedge. Only woodpecker in place. Someone needs to take care of the forest: inspect it, knock it out until spring. With difficulty I recognized in the bare little apple tree that forest beauty in bloom, which I admired in the spring. The path went down into the hazel. I have never seen so many nuts in October as I have this year.
I'm bending a nut. Here is the top in hand. Where are the nuts? Not on a branch, not on the ground. I reach for another, bend down - the same thing. Ripe nuts spill out on their own and hide under the leaves. I carved a stick with rogulina. But you touch the edge, and now a nut is flying, then leaves, and then a light dry pedicel. And the nut will instantly run away, fail, hide. How long will he, such a small, nimble one? Tried to shake. Ripe nuts will loudly hit the trunk, bounce effortlessly, ring about the second and fall heavily into the leaves. And then a handsome man will lie down on a wide sheet right in front of you. One feast for the eyes: large, clean, as if red-hot. And the core in it is full, cool, tasty.
Already empty faces hang on the lower branches. At first I thought that someone had passed in front of me and emptied them. But he carefully lifted the leaves: lay down in a row, brotherly, two ripe nuts. And you will see this and that in October: one nut has already fallen to the ground, and the other has just cooked, stuck out halfway and is about to fall.
Toward evening the wind picked up, cold and gusty. An evil leaf breaker will fly once, fly a second, and ripe nuts fall to the ground, leaves fall. And there are already a whole heap of them on the trails. Here the wind will run through them, and then the whole forest will be filled with mysterious rustles. Just listen.
With a full basket of ripe nuts, I returned from the forest without having time to really say goodbye to him. And I'm not upset: however, there will be an excuse to go again.
48
Above the port is a cloudy blue sky darkened by dust. The hot sun looks into the greenish sea, as if through a thin gray veil. It is almost not reflected in the water, cut through by the blows of oars, steamship propellers, sharp keels of ships struggling with high sea waves. They, chained in granite, beat against the sides of ships and grumble, foamed, polluted with various rubbish. The ringing of anchor chains, the rumble of coupled wagons, the metallic scream of iron sheets falling from somewhere on an unpaved pavement, the cries of porters, young sailors and customs soldiers - all these sounds merge into the deafening music of the working day. But the voices of people are barely audible in it, weak and funny. And the people themselves, who originally gave birth to this noise, working to wear and tear and living from hand to mouth, are ridiculous and pitiful. Sweaty, ragged, bent under the weight of goods, they fussily run in clouds of dust. People are insignificant in comparison with the colossi surrounding them, piles of goods, rattling wagons with might and main. What they created enslaved and depersonalized them.
Standing under steam, heavy giant steamships whistle, hiss, and in the sound born by them, there seems to be a mocking note of contempt for the gray, dusty figures of people. Long lines of porters carrying thousands of poods of grain on their shoulders into the iron stomachs of the ships in order to earn a few pounds of the same bread for their stomachs. This is how torn, sweaty, stupefied from fatigue, noise and heat people and powerful machines shining in the sun, created by these people, coexist side by side.
There were eleven blows on the bell. When the last sound died away, the passionate music of labor sounded quieter. It was lunch time. The loaders, quitting their work, scattered around the harbor in noisy groups. Suddenly Grishka Chelkash appeared, an old poisoned wolf, undoubtedly well known to everyone in this area. He was barefoot, in old, worn trousers, in a dirty cotton shirt with a torn collar. Long, slightly stooped, he walked slowly along the plank sidewalk and, moving his hooked predatory nose, cast sharp glances around him. He seemed to be looking for someone. His thick and long mustache kept twitching like a cat's, and his hands clasped behind his back rubbed one another. Even here, among hundreds of barefoot figures like him, he immediately drew attention to himself with his resemblance to a hawk. In this frenzied hustle and bustle of the port, Chelkash felt great. Ahead of him smiled at a solid income, requiring a little work and a lot of dexterity. He dreamed of how he would go on a spree tomorrow morning, when credit papers appeared in his pocket.
(According to M. Gorky)
49
It's been more than three hours since I joined the boys. The moon has risen at last; I did not immediately notice it: it was so small and narrow. This moonless night, it seemed, was still as magnificent as before. But many stars, which until recently stood high in the sky, have already bowed to the dark edge of the earth. Everything was completely quiet all around, as usual, everything calms down only towards morning: everything slept in a strong, motionless, pre-dawn sleep. The air no longer smelled so strongly - dampness seemed to be spreading in it again ... Short summer nights! The boys' conversation was fading away along with the lights... The dogs were dozing too; the horses, as far as I could distinguish in the slightly peeping, weakly pouring light of the stars, also lay with their heads bowed ... Sweet oblivion attacked me; it passed into slumber.
A fresh stream ran down my face. I opened my eyes: the morning was beginning. The dawn had not yet blushed anywhere, but it was already turning white in the east. Everything became visible, although vaguely. The pale gray sky grew lighter, colder, bluer; the stars now twinkled with a faint light, then disappeared; the earth became damp, in some places living sounds began to be heard, and a thin, early breeze had already begun to roam and flutter over the earth. I quickly got up and walked over to the boys. They all slept like the dead around the fire; Pavel alone got up and looked intently at me.
I nodded my head to him and went home along the river. Before I had gone two versts, they were already pouring all around me over a wide wet meadow, and in front over the hills, from forest to forest, and behind me along a long dusty road, along sparkling crimson bushes, and along the river, bashfully blue from under the thinning fog , - first scarlet, then red, golden streams of young, hot light poured ... Everything stirred, woke up, sang ...
Large drops of dew blushed everywhere like radiant diamonds; towards me, clean and clear, as if also washed by the morning coolness, the sounds of a bell rushed, and suddenly a rested herd rushed past me, driven by familiar boys ...
Unfortunately, I must add that in the same year Paul passed away. He did not drown: he killed himself by falling off his horse. Too bad, he was a nice guy!
(According to I. Turgenev)
50
It's good to walk on the ground early in the morning. The air is not yet sultry, but no longer cold, pleasantly refreshing. The sun, which has not yet entered into force, warms carefully and gently. Under the slanting rays of a very dim morning light, everything seems more prominent, more convex: both the bridge across the narrow but full of water ditch, and the trees, the feet of which are still flooded with shadow, and the dark green tops glisten with moisture (the rays of the sun glimmer through them), and low, but entirely covered with countless leaves bushes. Even small bumps on the road and on its sides cast their little shadows, which will no longer be on a bright afternoon.
In the forest now and then come across swamps, black and glossy. The greener the uncut grass that grows near them seems. Sometimes, from the depths of an infinitely vast forest, a red-haired, pleasantly babbling brook will come running. He crosses the path and hastily disappears into the mixed forest. And in one place, like a giant boa constrictor, a juicy, lush stream of moss crawled out of the forest darkness. In the middle of its almost unnatural greenery, a bright brown stream flows.
It must be said that the brown water of these places is not at all cloudy. It is almost transparent when scooped up with a faceted glass, but retains a golden hue. Apparently, that peat suspension is very thin, which gives it this beautiful color.
On the forest road, spreading like a fan, lay side by side the shadows from pines, birches and firs. The forest was not old, but clean, without undergrowth.
After about two kilometers, to the left and to the right of the furrowed road, fast-growing bushes stretched, which can grow only along the banks of a small river. Young shoots were visible everywhere near them.
51
Under the light breeze of the sultry wind, the sea trembled and, covered with small ripples, dazzlingly brightly reflecting the sun, smiled at the blue sky with thousands of silver smiles. In the space between the sea and the sky there was a cheerful splash of waves, running up to the gently sloping shore of a sandy spit. Everything was full of lively joy: the sound and brilliance of the sun, the wind and the salty scent of water, the hot air and yellow sand. A narrow long scythe, piercing with a sharp spire into the boundless desert of water playing with the sun, was lost somewhere in the distance, where a sultry haze hid the earth. Hooks, oars, baskets, and barrels lay disorderly on the spit. On this day, even the seagulls are exhausted by the heat. They sit in rows on the sand with their beaks open and their wings lowered, or they sway lazily on the waves.
When the sun began to descend into the sea, the restless waves either played merrily and noisily, or splashed dreamily affectionately on the shore. Through their noise, something like sighs or soft, affectionate cries reached the shore. The sun was setting, and a pinkish reflection of its rays lay on the yellow hot sand. And the pitiful willow bushes, and the mother-of-pearl clouds, and the waves that ran up the shore—everything was getting ready for the night's rest. Lonely, as if lost in the dark distance of the sea, the fire of the fire flared up brightly, then died out, as if exhausted. Night shadows lay not only on the sea, but also on the shore. All around was only the immeasurable, solemn sea, silvered by the moon, and the blue sky, studded with stars.
(According to M. Gorky)
52 Ordinary earth
In the Meshchersky region there are no special beauties and riches, except for forests, meadows and clear air. Nevertheless, this land of untrodden paths and fearless animals and birds has a great attraction. He is as modest as the paintings of Levitan, but in him, as in these paintings, lies all the charm and all the diversity of Russian nature, imperceptible at first glance. What can be seen in the Meshchersky region? Flowering, never mowed meadows, creeping fogs, pine forests, forest lakes, high stacks smelling of dry and warm hay. The hay in the stacks stays warm throughout the winter. I had to spend the night in stacks in October, when frost covers the grass at dawn, and I dug a deep hole in the hay. You climb into it - you immediately warm up and sleep throughout the night, as if in a heated room. And over the meadows the wind drives leaden clouds. In the Meshchera Territory, one can see, or rather hear, such solemn silence that the bell of a lost cow can be heard from afar, almost for kilometers, unless, of course, the day is windless. In summer, on windy days, the forests rustle with a great oceanic rumble and the tops of giant pines bend after the passing clouds.
Suddenly, lightning flashed in the distance. It's time to seek shelter from the unexpected rain. I hope we manage to escape in time under that oak tree. You will never get wet under this natural tent created by generous nature. But then the lightning flashed, and the hordes of clouds rushed off into the distance. Having made our way through a wet fern and some kind of creeping vegetation, we get out onto a barely noticeable path. How beautiful Meshchera is when you get used to it! Everything becomes familiar: the cries of quails, the fussy knock of woodpeckers, and the rustle of rain in red needles, and the weeping of willows over a sleeping river.
(According to K. Paustovsky)
53
Now bears are no longer led through the villages. Yes, and the gypsies rarely wander, for the most part they live in the places where they are assigned, and only sometimes, paying tribute to their age-old habit, they get out somewhere to pasture, pull on a sooty linen and live with their whole families, engaged in shoeing horses, horseshoeing and mercenary . I even happened to see that the tents gave way to hastily put together wooden booths. It was in a provincial town: not far from the hospital and the market square, on a piece of land not yet built up, next to the postal road.
From the booths came the clanging of iron; I looked into one of them: some old man was forging horseshoes. I looked at his work and saw that he was no longer the former gypsy blacksmith, but a simple artisan; passing quite late in the evening, I went up to the booth and saw an old man doing the same thing. It was strange to see a gypsy camp almost inside the city: wooden booths, fires with cast-iron pots, in which gypsies wrapped in colorful scarves cooked some dishes.
The gypsies walked through the villages, giving their performances for the last time. For the last time, the bears showed their art: they danced, fought, showed how boys steal peas. For the last time, old men and women came to be treated with a sure, tried and tested remedy: to lie on the ground under a bear, which laid its belly on the patient, spreading its four paws wide in all directions on the ground. The last time they were brought into the huts, and if the bear voluntarily agreed to enter, they led him to the front corner, and planted there, and rejoiced at his consent as a good sign.
(According to V. Garshin)
54
During the past summer, I had to live in an old manor near Moscow, where several small dachas were set up and rented out. I never expected this: a dacha near Moscow, I had never lived as a summer resident without some sort of business in an estate so unlike our steppe estates, and in such a climate.
In the manor park the trees were so large that the dachas built in some places in it seemed small under it, having the appearance of native dwellings under the trees in tropical countries. The pond in the park, half covered with green duckweed, stood like a huge black mirror.
I lived on the outskirts of a park adjoining a sparse mixed forest; my plank dacha was not completed, the walls were not caulked, the floors were not planed, there was almost no furniture. From the dampness, which apparently never disappeared, my boots, lying under the bed, were overgrown with moldy velvet.
It rained almost incessantly all summer. It used to happen that white clouds accumulated in the bright blue and thunder rolled in the distance, then a brilliant rain began to fall through the sun, which quickly turned from the heat into fragrant pine steam. Somehow, unexpectedly, the rain ended, and from the park, from the forest, from neighboring pastures - from everywhere again one could hear the joyful discord of birds.
It was still clear before sunset, and on my planked walls the crystal-gold grid of the low sun trembled, falling through the leaves through the windows.
- They won't let you die in peace! murmured Matrena. “They don’t have enough geraniums, old fools, give them magnolia!”
“Geranium vs. Magnolia – rubbish!” Nikanor Ilyich got angry. - The geranium has an annoying, woolly leaf. Don't mess with me, old lady!
The old people argued. Tikhonov said goodbye and went to his mezzanine. The bay was visible from the windows. The bird stirred in the damp branches and called cautiously, as if calling someone. The clock below hissed for a long time and finally struck two brass strikes.
Tikhonov stood in thought at the window, then carefully descended and went to the palace park.
I didn't want to sleep. It was impossible to read in the scattered brilliance of the white night, just as it was impossible to turn on the light. The electric fire seemed noisy. It seemed to stop the slow flow of the night, to destroy secrets that curled up like invisible furry animals in the corners of the room, to make things uncomfortably real, more real than they really were.
A greenish half-light froze in the alleys. Gilded statues gleamed. The fountains were silent at night, their quick rustle was not heard. Only individual drops of water fell, and their splashing carried very far.
The stone stairs near the palace were illuminated by the dawn; yellowish light fell on the ground, reflecting off the walls and windows.
The palace shone through the vague darkness of the trees, like a single golden leaf glowing in early autumn through the thick of still fresh and dark foliage.
Tikhonov went along the canal to the bay. Small fish swam in the canal between the stones overgrown with mud.
The bay was clean and calm. Silence lay over him. The sea has not yet woken up. Only the pink reflection of the water foreshadowed the approaching sunrise.
The ocean steamer was heading towards Leningrad. The dawn was already burning in its portholes, and a light smoke trailed behind the stern.
The steamer trumpeted, welcoming the great northern city, the end of the difficult sea route. Far away, in Leningrad, where the spire of the Admiralty was already glowing with pale gold, another ship answered him with a long cry.
There were boats in the canal. Young sailors were sleeping on them, covered with a tarpaulin. Tikhonov saw their faces ruddy from sleep, occasionally heard light snoring. The pre-dawn wind blew in from the sea and stirred the leaves overhead.
Tikhonov went ashore. There was no one there, only a woman was sitting on a wooden bench at the very end of the pier.
"What is she doing here at this hour?" thought Tikhonov. A shabby black cat walked cautiously along the damp decking of the pier, shaking its paw in disgust after each step.
Tikhonov stopped at the railing and looked into the water. The cat also looked in, and his eyes immediately turned black: near the piles, a flock of long silver fish moved their tails.
The woman got up and went to Tikhonov. He looked at her, and the closer she came, the more clearly, as if from a mist, the light steps sounded, and her embarrassed smile was already visible. The small hat cast a shadow over her forehead, and therefore her eyes seemed very shining. The sea-green silk dress gleamed and rustled, and Tikhonov thought that the woman must be cold - the predawn wind, no matter how warm, always carries with it the smell of snow.
The woman approached. Tikhonov looked into her face and guessed that she was a foreigner.
“Tell me…” the woman said slowly, and a slight wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. - Tell me, will there be a steamer to Leningrad soon?
She seemed to have difficulty choosing her words and pronouncing them with a strong accent.
- In two hours. You'll get there faster by train.
The woman shook her head negatively.
- No train. From the train, I can't find my way home in Leningrad.
Why are you here at this time? Tikhonov asked.
- I missed the last boat. Very stupid. I've been sitting here all night. Just me and this scary cat. She pointed to the black cat and laughed.
- Are you French? Tikhonov asked and blushed: the question seemed to him tactless.
The woman raised her head. There was something both French and Nordic about the hard oval of her face and small chin.
- Oh no! she said at length. - I'm Swedish. But I speak French.
Tikhonov looked at her, but thought of himself. He tried to present himself from the outside.
Despite his age, he felt like a boy and suffered in the company of adults. His peers were already venerable people both in appearance and in their mental disposition. Tikhonov, on the other hand, still had little faith in his talent and loved everything that boys love: fishing, trains, stations, skiing, steamboats and traveling.
In front of people equal to his age, he often got lost, felt bound, knew that he was not at all like that, that is how others imagine him. When he read about himself in the newspapers or heard fellow artists talking about his talent, he remained indifferent, as if it was not about him, but about his namesake or double.
He knew that until now his best picture had not yet been written, and therefore he was sincerely surprised at the noise that was increasingly rising around his things.
Now he thought about himself because he felt like a boy with special force. He was at a loss in front of an unfamiliar woman who was younger than him.
The woman was also embarrassed and, bending down to hide her face, stroked the shabby cat. The cat looked at her questioningly and meowed.
The sun has risen. The gardens began to glow, throwing off the dawn haze. A living light ran like wind across the woman's face, flashed in her eyes, illuminated her eyelashes and the nervous hand that clutched the railing.
The bay was covered with streaks of light and mist. Far across the water rolled the muffled cry of a steamer approaching from Oranienbaum. The steamer went to Leningrad.
A thin, lame marina keeper stepped out onto the boardwalk with his fishing rods. He greeted Tikhonov and asked:
- Why are you, Alexei Nikolaevich, going to Leningrad so early?
“No, I see you off,” Tikhonov answered.
The caretaker unrolled his fishing rods, sat down, dangling his legs from the pier, and began to fish. He occasionally glanced at Tikhonov and the unknown woman, and said to himself with a sigh:
"The thought of lost youth oppressed his decrepit heart."
He pecked, swore and pulled out a small fish.
An empty boat has arrived. Tikhonov escorted the woman to the gangway. She held out her hand to him and looked absently into his eyes. “Goodbye,” she said, and turned away. “Thank you.”
“Citizens passengers,” the captain said from the bridge, “it’s time!”
She went up the gangplank. The steamer yelled angrily, slowly backed away and turned her head into the sea. High milestones glittered on the water.
Tikhonov saw a stranger on deck. The wind blew the dress around her high legs and flapped the stern flag.
Tikhonov went to the shore. Near the caretaker, he looked back. The woman was still standing on the deck.
- What a summer! the caretaker said. – I have never seen such a summer in the Baltic. Solid sun.
Tikhonov agreed, slowly walked away from the pier, but when he disappeared behind the trees of the park, he quickly went to the station.
The first train to Leningrad left at six o'clock. Tikhonov was waiting for him, agitated and foolishly hoping that the train would leave earlier.
In Leningrad, he took a taxi and ordered to take himself to the Peterhof pier. The city was full of streaks of morning light and shadows. Watchmen watered the flowers in the squares. Slow rain fell from the canvas sleeves, scattering in the wind. On the bridges, the Neva wind beat through the windows of the car.
At the pier was a familiar steamer. It was empty. A barefoot sailor was washing the deck with a mop.
- Have you come from Peterhof for a long time? Tikhonov asked.
- Ten minutes.
Tikhonov went to the embankment. She was just here, maybe a minute ago. He knew it from the gleam of the water, from the sunlight that ran along the granite shores, from the kind eyes of the shoe-black who thought about his brushes, from the light flight of the clouds in the sky.
... Shchedrin lived in a new small house built near the water station on Krestovsky Island.
All the rooms in this house were located on different levels. Two or three steps led from room to room, and this gave it a special, maritime cosiness, especially since stairs with copper handrails resembling ladders rose to the second floor, and round windows in the corridor resembled portholes.
Shchedrin turned very gray, and when he wrote, he put on glasses. He taught meteorology and astronomy at the Naval Academy.
In his office there were many copper appliances and maps scribbled with blue and red pencils hung. The instruments glowed on clear days like candles.
The cleanliness in the house was ship-like. Wiener cleaned the rooms. In the battle near Yelabuga, he lost his arm and since then he could no longer drive his favorite cars.
Shchedrin corresponded with the Jacobsens and the doctor in Mariegamn. At the beginning of June, Maria Jacobsen came from Stockholm to stay for two months. Both Shchedrin and Viner called her Marie.
The presence of a cheerful young woman transformed the rooms, which until then had been calm and precise, like astronomical instruments. There was a slight, pleasant mess. Women's gloves lay on sextants, flowers fell on the desk, on manuscripts with calculations, the smell of perfume and fine fabrics penetrated everywhere from Marie's room on the second floor, silver chocolate paper lay on the sofa next to the book opened in the middle. Marie read voraciously in order to better learn Russian.
Next to the portraits of Anna Jacobsen, Pavel Bestuzhev, and Shchedrin's mother, Marie always placed bouquets of leaves, linden branches, and heliotrope flowers on the table. Previously, the house looked like a ship, now it has become more like a greenhouse.
Marie was reckless and disturbed Shchedrin by this. She remained the same as in Mariegamn when she ripped the gold stripe from his sleeve.
She rejoiced at freedom, was delighted that she could walk around the city alone, rejoiced at everything she saw in Leningrad: palaces and theaters, a life devoid of restrictive rules and moralizing, the simplicity of relations between men and women, between workers and scientists, and, finally, the fact that everywhere they looked at her with a smile. She smiled back, too, though she tried to keep the stern expression of a beautiful and slightly disappointed woman on her face.
Shchedrin was especially disturbed by Marie's walks. She got lost twice already. Once a thin pioneer brought her home, called her, handed her over from hand to hand and said to Wiener seriously:
Please don't let her go out alone. I lead it from the Smolny itself.
Marie kissed the pioneer, dragged him into the rooms, showed him the model of the "Brave", tools, maps, paintings depicting sea storms and calms. They gave the boy tea, gave him sweets, and he left happy and stunned.
The second case was much worse. Marie left for Peterhof, missed the last steamer, and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof wharf.
At two o'clock in the morning Shchedrin began calling all the police departments, roused dozens of people to their feet, and then, when Marie was found, he had to apologize and listen to the playful remarks of those on duty.
- Nonsense! Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was deadly sleepy - In your country, I'm not afraid of anything. I even boldly approached one person at the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.
- About what? Shchedrin asked.
“Everything,” Marie replied. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me like an old acquaintance.
- Yes, it must be Ackerman! exclaimed Shchedrin. - That's the old devil! Is he still fishing?
“Yes,” Marie said. - Along with a black cat. It's like a fairytale.
Marie slept until evening. The windows were open. The wind leafed through the book, forgotten on the window. He turned the pages back and forth, looking for his favorite lines, finally found them and fell silent: “From the realm of blizzards, from the realm of ice and snow, how pure and fresh your May flies.”
Marie was awakened by a rustle in the room. The wind tossed torn envelopes off the table. It was gloomy. Far away on the seashore, iron thunder rumbled and rolled into the abyss.
Marie jumped up. Lightning flared up outside the windows, trembled and died out in the depths of the noisy gardens.
Marie quickly washed, dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.
“Thunderstorm,” he said to Marie. - You slept nine hours.
- What are you playing? Marie asked and sat down in a chair, her legs crossed.
She looked out the window, where a hot wind was already raging in the gardens and throwing plucked leaves on the windowsills. One sheet fell on the piano. There was no lid on the piano, and the sheet got tangled in the steel strings. Shchedrin carefully took out the sheet and said:
- Tchaikovsky. If I were a composer, I would write a climate symphony.
Mari laughed.
"Don't laugh," Shchedrin told her and plucked the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return the Miocene climate to Europe. I don't know if you studied the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you must know that the Earth has experienced several terrible icings.
Marie cringed.
"We don't need any more," she said seriously.
“Of course not. The icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to make everything clear, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the climate of the Miocene will return to Europe.
- Warm?
“Very much,” Shchedrin replied. - The Gulf of Finland will smoke like fresh milk. Two crops will be harvested here. Magnolia forests will bloom on the Åland Islands. Can you imagine: white nights in magnolia forests! This can make you really crazy!
- What does it mean to be stupid? Marie asked.
- Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word - go crazy.
- Very well! Marie said. - But what is needed for this?
- Rubbish! We need a little revolution in Greenland. Enormous work must be begun in Greenland in order to melt, if only for a short time, a layer of ice one and a half meters high on the tops of the plateaus. This will be enough.
– How did you get to this point?
Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.
- What is this for? - he said. – You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.
The downpour roared outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles were bursting in the puddles in the garden, and maybe that's why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.
“Play,” said Marie. “Every day you tell me fairy tales like a stupid girl.
“These are not fairy tales,” said Shchedrin, and played the overture from Eugene Onegin. – Pushkin is also not a fairy tale. It's all real.
Marie sighed and thought. The morning meeting now seemed distant, like childhood. Was she? Who is this man - thin, with gray temples and a young face? Why didn't she ask him who he was? It is difficult to meet a second person in such a huge city.
The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly, rolling down from the leaves.
Marie quietly got up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The storm moved to the east. To the west, a rain-washed sunset burned.
Marie went to the Summer Garden.
She wandered along the damp alleys of the garden, went out to the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.
The ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in the silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly brighter than the night.
The majestic buildings that surrounded Marie seemed to be painted in watercolor. Only columns and powerful attics stood out, illuminated by diffused light. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was a reflection of the night in the canals, or a thin strip of dawn was still smoldering in the west, or the lanterns, mixing their brilliance with dusk, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, slight sadness.
Marie walked past the Hermitage. She was already in it and now she tried to imagine its night halls, the dim glow of the Neva outside the windows, the centuries-old silence of the pictures.
Marie went out into the square near the Winter Palace, stopped and clasped her hands. She did not know whose genius, whose delicate hand had created this world's most beautiful turn of colonnades, buildings, arches, cast-iron gratings, this expanse filled with greenish night coolness and majestic architectural thought.
Marie returned back by the last river boat. Glassy and empty, he carried her, swaying along the black Neva, past the Peter and Paul Fortress, past ravelins and crownworks, past piles, bridges and parks. The policeman was dozing in the corner of the cabin.
Behind the Freedom Bridge, a wide beam of a searchlight rose into the sky, smoking and fading. It descended and illuminated a white stone building on the shore, simple and majestic.
The policeman opened his eyes.
“Preparations are starting,” he told Marie. - They illuminate the best buildings.
- What kind of preparation? Marie asked.
She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.
“To the holiday,” the policeman said. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I've lived here since I was a kid, and I can't see enough of it every day. You stand at the post at night and sometimes you don’t know whether you are dreaming all this, or in reality. You will approach the house, you will look - the lantern with number burns; then you will calm down: it means that you are not dreaming.
Marie smiled shyly.
“I study at the rowing school,” the policeman said. - I'm going to sea in an outrigger. When you swim out in the evening, you can't see the city, it's in the fog. Some lanterns shine on the water. It's hard to even go back to shore.
- Where are you in the city? Marie asked.
- You, you see, are not Russian: your conversation is not ours.
- I'm Swedish.
“Ahhh…” said the policeman. “So you love it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.
At the pier near the river Krestovka Marie got off. The policeman went with her and escorted her home.
- I'm not afraid why! Marie was embarrassed. - You worked, you were tired.
“Don’t worry,” the policeman assured her. - I'm not going home. I'll go to the water station, I'll spend the night there. I still have to train for the holiday in the morning. There will be races. From here - straight to Sestroretsk. For endurance.
At the gate of her house, Marie said goodbye to the policeman. He shook her hand politely and left. Marie stood a little in the garden, then laughed. She wondered what her friends in Stockholm would say if she offered her hand to a police officer there.
By the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and architect.
Tikhonov got Peterhof. The holiday in Peterhof was given a maritime character. Teams of warships were supposed to arrive here from Kronstadt, and in the palace it was decided to arrange a ball for old and young sailors - a meeting of two generations.
After the incident on the pier, Tikhonov discovered new properties in himself. He began to notice things that he had previously passed indifferently. The world turned out to be filled with amazing colors, light, sounds. He, the artist, had never seen such a variety of colors before. They were everywhere, but most of all they shimmered in the sea water.
The world has become significant in everything. Tikhonov felt life in all its diversity of manifestations, as something unified, powerful, created for happiness.
He owed this full sense of life to his time. This feeling only intensified under the influence of a meeting at dawn with a young woman.
There was something about this meeting that defies description and story. That "something" was love. But Tikhonov did not yet admit this to himself. In his mind, everything merged into one sparkling circle: the distant whistle of an ocean steamer, the golden shimmer of the city in the morning mist, the stillness of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame caretaker of the pier and his words about the unusual Baltic summer.
In this state, Tikhonov began to work on decorating Peterhof. While working, he thought about his time, about the country and about her, a stranger.
He remembered the words of the famous writer, the one who once ruffled his hair and called him a "bubble". He read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer said to his young contemporary:
“When you write, think about her, even if she wasn’t there, and about excellent people to whom you, also an excellent person, sincerely and simply and very sincerely tell about what only you know, what she and everyone needs to know. them, do you understand?
She was. And Tikhonov thought about her, thought that she would pass here, see all the charm of the land adorned by him, and feel, like him, the breath of a free and cheerful country, where she came as a guest.
Nikanor Ilyich was terribly excited when he learned that Tikhonov had been assigned to decorate Peterhof. For several days he worried for nothing. There was no one to talk to. Matryona was hard to talk, and Tikhonov was too busy. Therefore, the old man was delighted to tears when Katya arrived in Peterhof. She came to her brother to talk about how to decorate her boats and yachts for the holiday.
From Tikhonov she went down to the old people, and Nikanor Ilyich immediately struck up a conversation with her.
"I love holidays," said Nikanor Ilyich. - A holiday, I believe, sometimes a person needs more than daily bread.
- Oh, my God! Matrena sighed. - No strength! At least take him away, Katyusha, the cursed one.
- Quiet! Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. - You yourself will wash and clean the house for the holiday. I suppose you can’t put on your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!
Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich took to his bed. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.
“Alyosha…” he said, and suddenly burst into tears.
Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.
“I have a weakness of the heart. Am I going to look around and see nothing? And I would, a fool, live and live. Curiosity is burning me. I tried to go up to you, look at the sketches - what did you come up with for the holiday - but I'm afraid to interfere.
Tikhonov brought sketches to the old man. Nikanor Ilyich looked at them for a long time, then patted Tikhonov on the shoulder.
“I love perfection in you, Alyosha,” he said. - You are real. My word is final.
Saying goodbye, he asked Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, to call on the customer and convey that the piano cover was ready and it could be picked up.
Only on the second day did Tikhonov find, at the address given by Nikanor Ilyich, a small house in a garden on Krestovsky Island. It was raining, the ground smelled of rain-beaten dust.
Tikhonov was opened by a blond old man without one arm - Wiener. Tikhonov asked Citizen Shchedrin. Viner led him into a room with the windows wide open.
On the wall Tikhonov saw two portraits of excellent work. One showed an officer in a black uniform, the other a young woman with nervous eyebrows flying high. There was a clearly tangible resemblance to the stranger met on the pier.
Tikhonov ran his hand over his forehead, as if trying to drive away an obsessive thought, but the woman looked at him with already familiar eyes, and he involuntarily came closer and closer to the portrait and peered into it more and more intently.
Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort on himself to tear himself away from the portrait.
Behind Tikhonov stood a tall, gray-haired sailor, looking at him attentively.
“I come to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” Tikhonov said. - He is sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano cover is ready. You can come for her.
“Sit down,” said the sailor, and showed Tikhonov to a chair.
If Tikhonov had sat in it, he would have found himself with his back to the portrait. Tikhonov stepped towards the armchair, but changed his mind and sat down in another one so that he could see the portrait.
The sailor was still looking attentively at Tikhonov.
“Thank you,” he said. - And what about Nikanor Ilyich?
“Heart,” Tikhonov answered curtly.
Are you his son?
No, I'm his former student.
Are you obviously an artist?
- Yes.
“I guessed when I saw you peering into this portrait.
- Wonderful job! Who is it?
“She is a beautiful woman, the daughter of an old skipper from the Åland Islands.
- Is she Swedish? Tikhonov asked quickly.
- Yes. Her name was Anna Jacobsen. Her life was connected with very tragic circumstances. This is the wife of officer Pavel Bestuzhev, who was killed in a duel on Aland at the beginning of the last century. She went crazy.
“My great-grandfather,” Tikhonov said, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel. He got busted. He was a simple soldier.
“Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was that?”
- I think that also at the beginning of the last century.
The sailor got up and went to the window. He looked at the rain that was pouring dust into puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:
- You are not from the village of Meghry on the Kovzha River?
“Yes,” Tikhonov said in surprise. – How do you know this?
The sailor did not answer.
“Your great-grandfather,” he said, “is buried in the same grave as Pavel Bestuzhev. Both of them were killed on the same day. They shared a common destiny. Is your surname Tikhonov?
- Yes.
- Finally! - The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook hands with Tikhonov. My name is Shchedrin. I was looking for you for a long time, then I left. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned a detailed story of the death of Pavel Bestuzhev. He was a freethinker. He saved a Decembrist from execution and was killed in a duel due to a collision with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was not buried alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out how these two people, Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev, were connected, but no one could explain this to me. The locals did not know anything, but I could not rummage through the archives. They would not have given me, and it was not at all up to it then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev's dying letter. In it, I found a request to inform his relatives about the death of soldier Tikhonov, in the village of Megry on the Kovzha River. During the Civil War, I accidentally ended up in Meghry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.
In the Botanical Garden on Aptekarsky Island, a small photographic camera was aimed at a bare branch of an apple tree. It was March, the buds were barely noticeable on the branch.
Every three hours the machine clicked and took a picture. So he clicked all March, April and May, until the branch blossomed.
Alexey Tikhonov often visited the Botanical Garden. In the trunks of trees, in the drawing of leaves, in the branches that grew in disorder, he found a variety of shapes and colors that helped him work on his paintings.
He made friends, as with a man, with a small black apparatus hidden in the foliage. The device lived one life with plants. He spent days and nights with them, when it was so quiet in the greenhouses that one could hear the rustle of the earth sucking drops falling from the leaves. When the apparatus was removed, Tikhonov felt regret, as if a small beast had been taken out of the greenhouse, which lived in the grass and did no harm to anyone.
Employees of the Botanical Garden showed Tikhonov the film taken by the apparatus. In five minutes they put her through a projection lamp. Tikhonov looked at the white small screen and saw how the bud grew before his eyes, swelled, covered with sticky juice, burst and out of it, stretching, as after sleep, straightening the crumpled petals, a white flower blossomed and suddenly all trembled from the sunlight that fell on it.
When Tikhonov thought about the long years that had passed over his country and over his own life, he recalled this seemingly suddenly, but in fact slowly blossoming flower.
Tikhonov knew that the years passed with a regular, long-calculated slowness, that the country was changing every month, and every month new thoughts, desires and goals entered the consciousness, defining the face of a different person.
But at the same time, the feeling of the past years was such that it was all the same morning and it was still far from noon. Time seemed unified, not fragmented into boring segments of years. The monolithic and majestic year of the revolution lasted.
Meanwhile, Tikhonov's temples were already turning gray early, and decrepit Nikanor Ilyich's hands were shaking.
He more and more often looked up from work and sat motionless, complaining about his heart.
He didn't want to quit his job.
“It’s time to die,” he said, “and, you see, I’m working. I balk. Why? Very simply: I believe that I should thank the new life with my work, leave instructive and rich gifts for the young.
And he left, old man, these gifts. They were in the subtleties of woodwork, in things that were not inferior to the work of the best furniture masters of the nineteenth century.
“I am self-taught,” he said. - I would have to reach out to good samples - and then a victory. And everything is given to you, young people - the people will exact more from you than from us.
The famous writer has died. Tikhonov's teacher, an artist with angry eyes, also died. Tikhonov's mother, Nastasya, also died.
He went to Meghry when he received a letter from her with a request to "come and bury the old woman."
Nastasya lay transparent and silent in the hut, smiling, and her teeth gleamed, as in her youth. Even during her lifetime, she told Tikhonov that almost twenty years ago some naval officer came to Meghry, asked about his grandfather Semyon, who had been flogged to death, and promised to visit Alyosha in Peterhof.
- Did you have it? she asked anxiously. - Say: was?
“No, mother, I wasn’t.
- How so? Nastasya asked in bewilderment. - So tall, okay. I remembered everything about him for many years, I grieve everything. Did they kill him at the front?
She started crying.
Tikhonov's sister Katya, a tall, swarthy girl, also came to the funeral from Cherepovets. She worked as a teacher, but wanted to change profession and become a sports instructor. She took prizes in rowing competitions. Her love for water and boats was jealous and violent.
Tikhonov took her with him to Leningrad, and a month later she was already working at a water station on Krestovsky Island.
Tikhonov lived all the same, in Peterhof, in Nikitin's house. Leningrad shone with the cleanliness of new houses. The majestic city was reflected in the marble, in the mirrored glass, throwing off its former gloom, but Tikhonov fell in love with the old people, did not want to offend them and still lived with them on the mezzanine.
Wherever he was - in Sevastopol or Baku, in Vladivostok or on the Volga - he always knew that he would return to this house, littered with canvases, stretchers, pieces of valuable wood, smelling of paints, alcohol varnish and geraniums - Matryona bred her with the same perseverance.
The wooden platforms of the Baltic Station darkened with dew. It was white night. Electric trains went to Peterhof without lights. The carriages rattled softly at the junctions, afraid to frighten away the silence of the dacha settlements, to break the calm that had long stood over the seaside.
Tikhonov hurried to Peterhof. The newspapers published a message about a great art festival in Leningrad, scheduled for June 24th. Tikhonov wanted to please old Nikitin with this message.
Sitting at the window of the car, Tikhonov tried for the tenth time to read this message in the newspaper, but the light was very weak. It was possible to read only printed in large print. Tikhonov put down the newspaper and looked out the window. There stretched an obscure and lofty night. A single star crossed the twilight and slowly glowed over the tall thickets of gardens.
“It must be Jupiter,” thought Tikhonov. He imagined the night over the Gulf of Finland, when only three lights were visible in the darkness: the white light of the lighthouse in Kronstadt, the ashen fire of Jupiter, and the quiet golden gleam on the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, illuminated by dawn. Dawn burned right there, beyond the edge of the earth. The morning stood nearby, and the inhabitants of the upper floors of the Leningrad houses saw him all night from their windows.
... Old man Nikitin did not sleep. He called Tikhonov from the open window. The old man was working: he was polishing the lid of an old piano.
- Did you bring the newspaper, Alyosha? Nikitin asked. - They say that there is already printed about our holiday.
Tikhonov was especially fond of the old man for the fact that the old man considered everything related to architecture, sculpture and decoration of buildings his own business. The great architect Zakharov, the builder of the Admiralty, or the sculptor Andreev were for him as familiar and understandable people as the familiar bronzers and carpenters.
The old man was united with these people by knowledge of the matter, a faithful eye, love for the material - whether it be a thin layer of wood, grated paint or a piece of good sonorous bronze.
“This must be the continuity of culture,” Tikhonov decided, “in this thousand-year-old community of craftsmen, no matter who they are – locksmiths, carpenters, architects or poets.”
Nikanor Ilyich asked Tikhonov to read the message about the holiday. Tikhonov read it aloud, sitting on the windowsill, and the simple words of the message seemed to him made to be carved in stone:
“The socialist culture, won by bloodshed and created by the heroic work of the working people of the Union, is confidently advancing along the path of uninterrupted flourishing. The socialist era requires the creation of monumental monuments and works of art that could capture and pass on to posterity its greatness and its heroic essence. The creation of these monuments of art will make use of the various talents in which the peoples inhabiting the Union are so rich.
Our city - the city of Lenin - is not only the cradle of the revolution and the center of advanced industry, but also the city of famous masters of art.
The law of the assimilation of the cultural heritage by our society has the greatest grounds for its expression in our city. It is enough to recall the names of at least one of the architects - the builders of the city - Bazhenov, Rastrelli, Voronikhin, Zakharov and others, so that the idea becomes clear that it is here, in the city of Lenin, that a young socialist country can learn the laws of craftsmanship from glorious artists of the past.
Due to the fact that academies are being opened in Leningrad that train masters of architecture, sculpture, painting and engraving, masters of artistic processing of stone, wood and metal, porcelain and cutting, the Leningrad Council decided to arrange a big national holiday in Leningrad on June 24. The main idea that should mark this holiday is that the socialist city is not only a place of settlement for people and the center of state institutions, public organizations and factories, but also an independent work of art - a powerful factor in the artistic education of the masses.
- What is the conversation in this message, as I understand it? Nikanor Ilyich said. - About the nobility of the human soul. I have long noticed that people are different, depending on what they see around them.
- Where is your nobility, Matryona said from the corner, when the customer has already sent a telegram, she is worried, but your lid is not ready!
- Nothing will be done with him, with the customer. The customer will forgive me everything for this cover. He is a sailor, a diverse person. It's hard to talk to him, to be honest. I told him about the ebony, and he told me about the climate. I told him about dark varnish, and he told me about the climate. Tortured me with this climate!
- What about the climate? Tikhonov asked.
“Climate is a tricky business. If he succeeds, we shall be the happiest nation in the world. There is a cut of oak in his office; This oak tree is four hundred years old, if not more. Well, of course, there are annual layers on the oak. In our opinion, this is called "tree eye". Some layers are thicker, others are thinner, there are also very thin ones, not wider than a thread. So he asks: “What do you see in front of you, Nikitin, a wise man, an omniscient furniture maker?” – “Layers as layers, I say. The oak layer also has a beautiful appearance, if it is polished wisely. And he begins to argue: “It's not about polishing, but about accurate conclusions. I am, he says, a bit of a meteorologist and a botanist. Each year the layer grows depending on the moisture. In rainy summers, the layer grows more, in dry summers - less, and from this oak you can tell five hundred years ago what climate it was surrounded by. “What do you need to know? I ask. “Is there even the slightest benefit to our human brother?” – “There is, says, only to tell for a long time. For now, I’ll tell you one thing: we read from these sections and from all sorts of other signs a wonderful thing; and this thing is that there were times when we had a warm and cheerful climate, like in the island of Ceylon. Forests of magnolias grew all around along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. We, he says, will try to return this climate. To do this, he says, is possible, and there are no miracles in this.
- They won't let you die in peace! murmured Matrena. “They don’t have enough geraniums, old fools, give them magnolia!”
“Geranium vs. Magnolia – rubbish!” Nikanor Ilyich got angry. - The geranium has an annoying, woolly leaf. Don't mess with me, old lady!
The old people argued. Tikhonov said goodbye and went to his mezzanine. The bay was visible from the windows. The bird stirred in the damp branches and called cautiously, as if calling someone. The clock below hissed for a long time and finally struck two brass strikes.
Tikhonov stood in thought at the window, then carefully descended and went to the palace park.
I didn't want to sleep. It was impossible to read in the scattered brilliance of the white night, just as it was impossible to turn on the light. The electric fire seemed noisy. It seemed to stop the slow flow of the night, to destroy secrets that curled up like invisible furry animals in the corners of the room, to make things uncomfortably real, more real than they really were.
A greenish half-light froze in the alleys. Gilded statues gleamed. The fountains were silent at night, their quick rustle was not heard. Only individual drops of water fell, and their splashing carried very far.
The stone stairs near the palace were illuminated by the dawn; yellowish light fell on the ground, reflecting off the walls and windows.
The palace shone through the vague darkness of the trees, like a single golden leaf glowing in early autumn through the thick of still fresh and dark foliage.
Tikhonov went along the canal to the bay. Small fish swam in the canal between the stones overgrown with mud.
The bay was clean and calm. Silence lay over him. The sea has not yet woken up. Only the pink reflection of the water foreshadowed the approaching sunrise.
The ocean steamer was heading towards Leningrad. The dawn was already burning in its portholes, and a light smoke trailed behind the stern.
The steamer trumpeted, welcoming the great northern city, the end of the difficult sea route. Far away, in Leningrad, where the spire of the Admiralty was already glowing with pale gold, another ship answered him with a long cry.
There were boats in the canal. Young sailors were sleeping on them, covered with a tarpaulin. Tikhonov saw their faces ruddy from sleep, occasionally heard light snoring. The pre-dawn wind blew in from the sea and stirred the leaves overhead.
Tikhonov went ashore. There was no one there, only a woman was sitting on a wooden bench at the very end of the pier.
"What is she doing here at this hour?" thought Tikhonov. A shabby black cat walked cautiously along the damp decking of the pier, shaking its paw in disgust after each step.
Tikhonov stopped at the railing and looked into the water. The cat also looked in, and his eyes immediately turned black: near the piles, a flock of long silver fish moved their tails.
The woman got up and went to Tikhonov. He looked at her, and the closer she came, the more clearly, as if from a mist, the light steps sounded, and her embarrassed smile was already visible. The small hat cast a shadow over her forehead, and therefore her eyes seemed very shining. The sea-green silk dress gleamed and rustled, and Tikhonov thought that the woman must be cold - the predawn wind, no matter how warm, always carries with it the smell of snow.
The woman approached. Tikhonov looked into her face and guessed that she was a foreigner.
“Tell me…” the woman said slowly, and a slight wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. - Tell me, will there be a steamer to Leningrad soon?
She seemed to have difficulty choosing her words and pronouncing them with a strong accent.
- In two hours. You'll get there faster by train.
The woman shook her head negatively.
- No train. From the train, I can't find my way home in Leningrad.
Why are you here at this time? Tikhonov asked.
- I missed the last boat. Very stupid. I've been sitting here all night. Just me and this scary cat. She pointed to the black cat and laughed.
- Are you French? Tikhonov asked and blushed: the question seemed to him tactless.
The woman raised her head. There was something both French and Nordic about the hard oval of her face and small chin.
- Oh no! she said at length. - I'm Swedish. But I speak French.
Tikhonov looked at her, but thought of himself. He tried to present himself from the outside.
Despite his age, he felt like a boy and suffered in the company of adults. His peers were already venerable people both in appearance and in their mental disposition. Tikhonov, on the other hand, still had little faith in his talent and loved everything that boys love: fishing, trains, stations, skiing, steamboats and traveling.
In front of people equal to his age, he often got lost, felt bound, knew that he was not at all like that, that is how others imagine him. When he read about himself in the newspapers or heard fellow artists talking about his talent, he remained indifferent, as if it was not about him, but about his namesake or double.
He knew that until now his best picture had not yet been written, and therefore he was sincerely surprised at the noise that was increasingly rising around his things.
Now he thought about himself because he felt like a boy with special force. He was at a loss in front of an unfamiliar woman who was younger than him.
The woman was also embarrassed and, bending down to hide her face, stroked the shabby cat. The cat looked at her questioningly and meowed.
The sun has risen. The gardens began to glow, throwing off the dawn haze. A living light ran like wind across the woman's face, flashed in her eyes, illuminated her eyelashes and the nervous hand that clutched the railing.
The bay was covered with streaks of light and mist. Far across the water rolled the muffled cry of a steamer approaching from Oranienbaum. The steamer went to Leningrad.
A thin, lame marina keeper stepped out onto the boardwalk with his fishing rods. He greeted Tikhonov and asked:
- Why are you, Alexei Nikolaevich, going to Leningrad so early?
“No, I see you off,” Tikhonov answered.
The caretaker unrolled his fishing rods, sat down, dangling his legs from the pier, and began to fish. He occasionally glanced at Tikhonov and the unknown woman, and said to himself with a sigh:
"The thought of lost youth oppressed his decrepit heart."
He pecked, swore and pulled out a small fish.
An empty boat has arrived. Tikhonov escorted the woman to the gangway. She held out her hand to him and looked absently into his eyes. “Goodbye,” she said, and turned away. “Thank you.”
“Citizens passengers,” the captain said from the bridge, “it’s time!”
She went up the gangplank. The steamer yelled angrily, slowly backed away and turned her head into the sea. High milestones glittered on the water.
Tikhonov saw a stranger on deck. The wind blew the dress around her high legs and flapped the stern flag.
Tikhonov went to the shore. Near the caretaker, he looked back. The woman was still standing on the deck.
- What a summer! the caretaker said. – I have never seen such a summer in the Baltic. Solid sun.
Tikhonov agreed, slowly walked away from the pier, but when he disappeared behind the trees of the park, he quickly went to the station.
The first train to Leningrad left at six o'clock. Tikhonov was waiting for him, agitated and foolishly hoping that the train would leave earlier.
In Leningrad, he took a taxi and ordered to take himself to the Peterhof pier. The city was full of streaks of morning light and shadows. Watchmen watered the flowers in the squares. Slow rain fell from the canvas sleeves, scattering in the wind. On the bridges, the Neva wind beat through the windows of the car.
At the pier was a familiar steamer. It was empty. A barefoot sailor was washing the deck with a mop.
- Have you come from Peterhof for a long time? Tikhonov asked.
- Ten minutes.
Tikhonov went to the embankment. She was just here, maybe a minute ago. He knew it from the gleam of the water, from the sunlight that ran along the granite shores, from the kind eyes of the shoe-black who thought about his brushes, from the light flight of the clouds in the sky.
... Shchedrin lived in a new small house built near the water station on Krestovsky Island.
All the rooms in this house were located on different levels. Two or three steps led from room to room, and this gave it a special, maritime cosiness, especially since stairs with copper handrails resembling ladders rose to the second floor, and round windows in the corridor resembled portholes.
Shchedrin turned very gray, and when he wrote, he put on glasses. He taught meteorology and astronomy at the Naval Academy.
In his office there were many copper appliances and maps scribbled with blue and red pencils hung. The instruments glowed on clear days like candles.
The cleanliness in the house was ship-like. Wiener cleaned the rooms. In the battle near Yelabuga, he lost his arm and since then he could no longer drive his favorite cars.
Shchedrin corresponded with the Jacobsens and the doctor in Mariegamn. At the beginning of June, Maria Jacobsen came from Stockholm to stay for two months. Both Shchedrin and Viner called her Marie.
The presence of a cheerful young woman transformed the rooms, which until then had been calm and precise, like astronomical instruments. There was a slight, pleasant mess. Women's gloves lay on sextants, flowers fell on the desk, on manuscripts with calculations, the smell of perfume and fine fabrics penetrated everywhere from Marie's room on the second floor, silver chocolate paper lay on the sofa next to the book opened in the middle. Marie read voraciously in order to better learn Russian.
Next to the portraits of Anna Jacobsen, Pavel Bestuzhev, and Shchedrin's mother, Marie always placed bouquets of leaves, linden branches, and heliotrope flowers on the table. Previously, the house looked like a ship, now it has become more like a greenhouse.
Marie was reckless and disturbed Shchedrin by this. She remained the same as in Mariegamn when she ripped the gold stripe from his sleeve.
She rejoiced at freedom, was delighted that she could walk around the city alone, rejoiced at everything she saw in Leningrad: palaces and theaters, a life devoid of restrictive rules and moralizing, the simplicity of relations between men and women, between workers and scientists, and, finally, the fact that everywhere they looked at her with a smile. She smiled back, too, though she tried to keep the stern expression of a beautiful and slightly disappointed woman on her face.
Shchedrin was especially disturbed by Marie's walks. She got lost twice already. Once a thin pioneer brought her home, called her, handed her over from hand to hand and said to Wiener seriously:
Please don't let her go out alone. I lead it from the Smolny itself.
Marie kissed the pioneer, dragged him into the rooms, showed him the model of the "Brave", tools, maps, paintings depicting sea storms and calms. They gave the boy tea, gave him sweets, and he left happy and stunned.
The second case was much worse. Marie left for Peterhof, missed the last steamer, and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof wharf.
At two o'clock in the morning Shchedrin began calling all the police departments, roused dozens of people to their feet, and then, when Marie was found, he had to apologize and listen to the playful remarks of those on duty.
- Nonsense! Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was deadly sleepy - In your country, I'm not afraid of anything. I even boldly approached one person at the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.
- About what? Shchedrin asked.
“Everything,” Marie replied. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me like an old acquaintance.
- Yes, it must be Ackerman! exclaimed Shchedrin. - That's the old devil! Is he still fishing?
“Yes,” Marie said. - Along with a black cat. It's like a fairytale.
Marie slept until evening. The windows were open. The wind leafed through the book, forgotten on the window. He turned the pages back and forth, looking for his favorite lines, finally found them and fell silent: “From the realm of blizzards, from the realm of ice and snow, how pure and fresh your May flies.”
Marie was awakened by a rustle in the room. The wind tossed torn envelopes off the table. It was gloomy. Far away on the seashore, iron thunder rumbled and rolled into the abyss.
Marie jumped up. Lightning flared up outside the windows, trembled and died out in the depths of the noisy gardens.
Marie quickly washed, dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.
“Thunderstorm,” he said to Marie. - You slept nine hours.
- What are you playing? Marie asked and sat down in a chair, her legs crossed.
She looked out the window, where a hot wind was already raging in the gardens and throwing plucked leaves on the windowsills. One sheet fell on the piano. There was no lid on the piano, and the sheet got tangled in the steel strings. Shchedrin carefully took out the sheet and said:
- Tchaikovsky. If I were a composer, I would write a climate symphony.
Mari laughed.
"Don't laugh," Shchedrin told her and plucked the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return the Miocene climate to Europe The Miocene climate is a warm, almost tropical climate that existed in Europe during the Miocene, a distant geological epoch.. I don't know if you studied the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you must know that the Earth has experienced several terrible icings.
Marie cringed.
"We don't need any more," she said seriously.
“Of course not. The icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to make everything clear, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the climate of the Miocene will return to Europe.
- Warm?
“Very much,” Shchedrin replied. - The Gulf of Finland will smoke like fresh milk. Two crops will be harvested here. Magnolia forests will bloom on the Åland Islands. Can you imagine: white nights in magnolia forests! This can make you really crazy!
- What does it mean to be stupid? Marie asked.
- Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word - go crazy.
- Very well! Marie said. - But what is needed for this?
- Rubbish! We need a little revolution in Greenland. Enormous work must be begun in Greenland in order to melt, if only for a short time, a layer of ice one and a half meters high on the tops of the plateaus. This will be enough.
– How did you get to this point?
Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.
- What is this for? - he said. – You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.
The downpour roared outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles were bursting in the puddles in the garden, and maybe that's why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.
“Play,” said Marie. “Every day you tell me fairy tales like a stupid girl.
“These are not fairy tales,” said Shchedrin, and played the overture from Eugene Onegin. – Pushkin is also not a fairy tale. It's all real.
Marie sighed and thought. The morning meeting now seemed distant, like childhood. Was she? Who is this man - thin, with gray temples and a young face? Why didn't she ask him who he was? It is difficult to meet a second person in such a huge city.
The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly, rolling down from the leaves.
Marie quietly got up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The storm moved to the east. To the west, a rain-washed sunset burned.
Marie went to the Summer Garden.
She wandered along the damp alleys of the garden, went out to the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.
The ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in the silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly brighter than the night.
The majestic buildings that surrounded Marie seemed to be painted in watercolor. Only columns and powerful attics stood out, illuminated by diffused light. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was a reflection of the night in the canals, or a thin strip of dawn was still smoldering in the west, or the lanterns, mixing their brilliance with dusk, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, slight sadness.
Marie walked past the Hermitage. She was already in it and now she tried to imagine its night halls, the dim glow of the Neva outside the windows, the centuries-old silence of the pictures.
Marie went out into the square near the Winter Palace, stopped and clasped her hands. She did not know whose genius, whose delicate hand had created this world's most beautiful turn of colonnades, buildings, arches, cast-iron gratings, this expanse filled with greenish night coolness and majestic architectural thought.
Marie returned back by the last river boat. Glassy and empty, he carried her, swaying along the black Neva, past the Peter and Paul Fortress, past ravelins and crownworks, past piles, bridges and parks. The policeman was dozing in the corner of the cabin.
Behind the Freedom Bridge, a wide beam of a searchlight rose into the sky, smoking and fading. It descended and illuminated a white stone building on the shore, simple and majestic.
The policeman opened his eyes.
“Preparations are starting,” he told Marie. - They illuminate the best buildings.
- What kind of preparation? Marie asked.
She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.
“To the holiday,” the policeman said. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I've lived here since I was a kid, and I can't see enough of it every day. You stand at the post at night and sometimes you don’t know whether you are dreaming all this, or in reality. You will approach the house, you will look - the lantern with number burns; then you will calm down: it means that you are not dreaming.
Marie smiled shyly.
“I study at the rowing school,” the policeman said. - I leave on an outrigger Outrigger is a special type of racing light boat. in the sea. When you swim out in the evening, you can't see the city, it's in the fog. Some lanterns shine on the water. It's hard to even go back to shore.
- Where are you in the city? Marie asked.
- You, you see, are not Russian: your conversation is not ours.
- I'm Swedish.
“Ahhh…” said the policeman. “So you love it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.
At the pier near the river Krestovka Marie got off. The policeman went with her and escorted her home.
- I'm not afraid why! Marie was embarrassed. - You worked, you were tired.
“Don’t worry,” the policeman assured her. - I'm not going home. I'll go to the water station, I'll spend the night there. I still have to train for the holiday in the morning. There will be races. From here - straight to Sestroretsk. For endurance.
At the gate of her house, Marie said goodbye to the policeman. He shook her hand politely and left. Marie stood a little in the garden, then laughed. She wondered what her friends in Stockholm would say if she offered her hand to a police officer there.
By the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and architect.
Tikhonov got Peterhof. The holiday in Peterhof was given a maritime character. Teams of warships were supposed to arrive here from Kronstadt, and in the palace it was decided to arrange a ball for old and young sailors - a meeting of two generations.
After the incident on the pier, Tikhonov discovered new properties in himself. He began to notice things that he had previously passed indifferently. The world turned out to be filled with amazing colors, light, sounds. He, the artist, had never seen such a variety of colors before. They were everywhere, but most of all they shimmered in the sea water.
The world has become significant in everything. Tikhonov felt life in all its diversity of manifestations, as something unified, powerful, created for happiness.
He owed this full sense of life to his time. This feeling only intensified under the influence of a meeting at dawn with a young woman.
There was something about this meeting that defies description and story. That "something" was love. But Tikhonov did not yet admit this to himself. In his mind, everything merged into one sparkling circle: the distant whistle of an ocean steamer, the golden shimmer of the city in the morning mist, the stillness of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame caretaker of the pier and his words about the unusual Baltic summer.
In this state, Tikhonov began to work on decorating Peterhof. While working, he thought about his time, about the country and about her, a stranger.
He remembered the words of the famous writer, the one who once ruffled his hair and called him a "bubble". He read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer said to his young contemporary:
“When you write, think about her, even if she wasn’t there, and about excellent people to whom you, also an excellent person, sincerely and simply and very sincerely tell about what only you know, what she and everyone needs to know. them, do you understand?
She was. And Tikhonov thought about her, thought that she would pass here, see all the charm of the land adorned by him, and feel, like him, the breath of a free and cheerful country, where she came as a guest.
Nikanor Ilyich was terribly excited when he learned that Tikhonov had been assigned to decorate Peterhof. For several days he worried for nothing. There was no one to talk to. Matryona was hard to talk, and Tikhonov was too busy. Therefore, the old man was delighted to tears when Katya arrived in Peterhof. She came to her brother to talk about how to decorate her boats and yachts for the holiday.
From Tikhonov she went down to the old people, and Nikanor Ilyich immediately struck up a conversation with her.
"I love holidays," said Nikanor Ilyich. - A holiday, I believe, sometimes a person needs more than daily bread.
- Oh, my God! Matrena sighed. - No strength! At least take him away, Katyusha, the cursed one.
- Quiet! Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. - You yourself will wash and clean the house for the holiday. I suppose you can’t put on your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!
Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich took to his bed. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.
“Alyosha…” he said, and suddenly burst into tears.
Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.
“I have a weakness of the heart. Am I going to look around and see nothing? And I would, a fool, live and live. Curiosity is burning me. I tried to go up to you, look at the sketches - what did you come up with for the holiday - but I'm afraid to interfere.
Tikhonov brought sketches to the old man. Nikanor Ilyich looked at them for a long time, then patted Tikhonov on the shoulder.
“I love perfection in you, Alyosha,” he said. - You are real. My word is final.
Saying goodbye, he asked Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, to call on the customer and convey that the piano cover was ready and it could be picked up.
Only on the second day did Tikhonov find, at the address given by Nikanor Ilyich, a small house in a garden on Krestovsky Island. It was raining, the ground smelled of rain-beaten dust.
Tikhonov was opened by a blond old man without one arm - Wiener. Tikhonov asked Citizen Shchedrin. Viner led him into a room with the windows wide open.
On the wall Tikhonov saw two portraits of excellent work. One showed an officer in a black uniform, the other a young woman with nervous eyebrows flying high. There was a clearly tangible resemblance to the stranger met on the pier.
Tikhonov ran his hand over his forehead, as if trying to drive away an obsessive thought, but the woman looked at him with already familiar eyes, and he involuntarily came closer and closer to the portrait and peered into it more and more intently.
Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort on himself to tear himself away from the portrait.
Behind Tikhonov stood a tall, gray-haired sailor, looking at him attentively.
“I come to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” Tikhonov said. - He is sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano cover is ready. You can come for her.
“Sit down,” said the sailor, and showed Tikhonov to a chair.
If Tikhonov had sat in it, he would have found himself with his back to the portrait. Tikhonov stepped towards the armchair, but changed his mind and sat down in another one so that he could see the portrait.
The sailor was still looking attentively at Tikhonov.
“Thank you,” he said. - And what about Nikanor Ilyich?
“Heart,” Tikhonov answered curtly.
Are you his son?
No, I'm his former student.
Are you obviously an artist?
“I guessed when I saw you peering into this portrait.
- Wonderful job! Who is it?
“She is a beautiful woman, the daughter of an old skipper from the Åland Islands.
- Is she Swedish? Tikhonov asked quickly.
- Yes. Her name was Anna Jacobsen. Her life was connected with very tragic circumstances. This is the wife of officer Pavel Bestuzhev, who was killed in a duel on Aland at the beginning of the last century. She went crazy.
“My great-grandfather,” Tikhonov said, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel. He got busted. He was a simple soldier.
“Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was that?”
- I think that also at the beginning of the last century.
The sailor got up and went to the window. He looked at the rain that was pouring dust into puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:
- You are not from the village of Meghry on the Kovzha River?
“Yes,” Tikhonov said in surprise. – How do you know this?
The sailor did not answer.
“Your great-grandfather,” he said, “is buried in the same grave as Pavel Bestuzhev. Both of them were killed on the same day. They shared a common destiny. Is your surname Tikhonov?
- Finally! - The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook hands with Tikhonov. My name is Shchedrin. I was looking for you for a long time, then I left. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned a detailed story of the death of Pavel Bestuzhev. He was a freethinker. He saved a Decembrist from execution and was killed in a duel due to a collision with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was not buried alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out how these two people, Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev, were connected, but no one could explain this to me. The locals did not know anything, but I could not rummage through the archives. They would not have given me, and it was not at all up to it then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev's dying letter. In it, I found a request to inform his relatives about the death of soldier Tikhonov, in the village of Megry on the Kovzha River. During the Civil War, I accidentally ended up in Meghry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.
“She asked me about you,” Tikhonov interrupted.
- She died? the sailor asked.
“I found your mother, but she didn’t really know anything about this story. She gave me your address and asked me to find you, but the address disappeared in the battle with the Kolchak flotilla near Yelabuga. My memory is bad, I could not remember him in any way ... But still we met! Shchedrin laughed. “Well, I won’t let you out now. Let's have a hat.
He took away Tikhonov's hat, brought a bottle of wine, biscuits and cigarettes.
"Let's have a drink for the occasion," he said. “Good weak wine. It is especially pleasant to drink it in such gray weather.
Tikhonov drank and felt slightly dizzy. All the events of the past few days seemed incredible to him, and the meeting with Shchedrin further strengthened this feeling.
“Recently,” he said to Shchedrin, “I have fallen into a period of unusual encounters.
- All the better. Drink. Recently, my relative, a girl, great-granddaughter of Anna Jacobsen, arrived from the Aland Islands. Her name is Marie. She told me in more detail about the fate of your great-grandfather. The adoptive father of this girl - a decrepit eccentric doctor - started writing the history of the Aland Islands. He rummaged through all the archives and found indications that the soldier Tikhonov was notched with gauntlets because, together with Pavel Bestuzhev, he helped the Decembrist escape ... Let's drink to our grandfathers!
The wine seemed to Tikhonov like autumn leaves dissolved in cold water.
Tikhonov did not listen well to Shchedrin.
"That's her!" he said to himself, and his heart was beating painfully.
He wanted to hear women's footsteps in the rooms, but nothing could be heard except the sound of the wall clock and the distant horns of cars.
“Where is she? We must wait for her to end this terrible ignorance. Maybe it's completely different? Maybe a blond-haired girl with glasses and a loud voice will enter the room? I'm a fool, thought Tikhonov. - It's time for me to leave. It's time. You have to get up."
Tikhonov was about to get up and say goodbye to Shchedrin, but the thought of the portrait stopped him. The resemblance was too striking. He glanced at the portrait again and saw the same nervous, rising eyebrows and a small sad fold at the corner of his mouth.
- What's wrong with you? Shchedrin asked, noticing Tikhonov's distraction. - You look tired.
- I work a lot. I was assigned to decorate Peterhof. It is very difficult and even scary. How to decorate Rastrelli!
It was impossible to stay longer. Tikhonov got up. Shchedrin took his word from him that he would come to Krestovsky Island on the very first free evening, promised to visit the sick Nikolai Ilyich, and they parted.
Tikhonov walked through the garden, and as he walked this short distance, hundreds of thoughts flashed through his mind.
Tikhonov for the first time felt a connection with the past, with the village, where for hundreds of years his father, grandfather, great-grandfather picked cold clay, where in childhood his mother sprinkled his cuts with ashes from the stove, where they died from hernias, from childbirth, from starvation typhus. All this was long dead. If they remembered him, then with reluctance.
But now the past speaks in a different language. In him, in Alyosha Tikhonov, there was the blood of these people and the blood of his great-grandfather - a Nikolaev soldier who was killed for courage, for rebellion, for helping the Decembrists.
The idea that he should be a worthy descendant of an unwise peasant, drilled in the barracks, dressed in a worn soldier's overcoat, appeared in Tikhonov's mind.
The rain stopped. Clouds slowly rolled in to the south and opened a desert sky in the west.
At the gate Tikhonov ran into a woman. He stepped aside and raised his head. It was she, the Peterhof stranger.
She held on to the iron bars and looked at Tikhonov. Tikhonov took off his hat.
“It's good,” he said, “that I've met you again! The city is so big, and you must not be the only Swede in Leningrad.
Marie was silent. Her hand slowly unclenched, leaving a gray stain on the glove from the bars. She leaned against the fence and said quickly:
- Yes, yes ... Speak.
- What? Tikhonov asked. – What can I say now? You probably already know everything yourself.
“If I knew…” Marie said and smiled. - Let's go.
She firmly took Tikhonov's hand above the wrist and, like a boy, led him along. They walked silently down the street. The desert sky lay beneath their feet, reflected in puddles of rainwater.
“I was sure that I would meet you again,” Tikhonov said. - It was impossible not to meet.
Mari tilted her head, as if agreeing with him. They went out to the pier of the river boats.
"Let's go to town," said Marie. You will show me your favorite places. This city was created in order to wander through it all night long.
Marie had a slight headache. She often put her hand to her eyes and smiled painfully.
On the boat, Tikhonov told Marie about everything he had learned from Shchedrin: about Anna Jacobsen, about Pavel Bestuzhev, and about his great-grandfather.
“So Anna bequeathed you to me,” Marie said thoughtfully.
Until late at night they walked around the city. He was especially beautiful that evening. It arose in front of them with powerful colonnades of buildings, humpbacked arches of deserted bridges, bronze monuments and bushes of hundred-year-old lindens.
The Neva carried lights in deep water. The needle of the Admiralty shone over the river, sung by poets.
They stopped near the cast-iron gratings, looked through them at the twilight of the gardens, and Tikhonov spoke of the dreams come true of the famous architects who created this brilliant city in the northern swamps and forests. It was a city of great memories and no less great future.
They walked along the embankments of the Neva. The boys fished from the granite parapets. An old warship was moored by steel cables near a garden near the shore. Branches of lindens drooped over its deck and guns covered with tarpaulins.
“This is the Aurora,” Tikhonov said. - You know?
“I know,” Marie replied.
They passed through the square where the Bronze Horseman rode north and returned to the Moika.
On the Moika, among piles, tall buildings and green granite banks, there was a summer night silence. They leaned against the railing and looked at the water. A blue star trembled in it.
“Marie,” Tikhonov said, “look around: Pushkin died in this house.
Marie turned around. She looked at the windows, at the ledge of the house, which almost hung above the water, at the stone pedestals, worn down by centuries, at the dandelions that had sprouted among the flagstones along the sides of the narrow sidewalk.
Was he brought here when he was wounded? she asked.
- Yes. They brought him through this door.
“Maybe his blood was dripping here,” Marie said and looked at Tikhonov with a guilty smile.
“These were the years,” Tikhonov said, “when Pavel Bestuzhev and my great-grandfather were killed, and Anna died of grief. Pushkin himself spoke best of this time.
- How? Marie asked. - What did he say?
- Simple words: "And the gloomy year, in which so many brave, kind and beautiful victims fell, will hardly leave a memory of itself in some simple shepherd's song - dull and pleasant." Really, okay?
Marie did not allow Tikhonov to see her off. They parted at the Summer Garden. Marie held out both hands to Tikhonov, abruptly tore them away and quickly ran down the stone stairs to the pier.
... Thirty searchlights rose into the sky above Peterhof and confused their rays with the stars. Thus began the night party.
The destroyers, carrying chains of lights on their sides and masts, rushed, smashed the water of the bay into foam and, turning sharply, stopped near the Peterhof pier.
From the decks of the destroyers, the sailors saw an unprecedented spectacle. The palace was aflame with a crystal fire. Waterfalls flowed among marble and bronze.
Young sailors and old commanders climbed the stairs to the palace.
Glass cups, full of pure fire, burned on the sides. Fountains beat, lost in the darkness of overhanging trees. Here, in the park, one could clearly feel the heaviness and smell of foliage, the air of an unprecedented summer.
The windows of the palace were wide open.
On balconies, in blue and white halls, sailors stood, reflected in mirrors. Mirrors echoed their laughter, smiles, tanned faces.
Frightened birds rushed through this brilliance, went blind, hit the jets of fountains and flew away into the night, to the bay, in splashes and the noise of wings. There, the usual sky was reflected in the water, forgotten for this evening by people.
But soon the bay also spoke. Invisible forts thundered, throwing out flashes of fire: Kronstadt saluted with a hundred and one shots in honor of the great city.
Behind the roar of the cannonade, the voice of the planes was not heard, flying over all the points of the horizon and leaving light roads behind them.
Then, as if the starry sky began to fall to the ground: the planes dropped hundreds of fireballs. Air currents shook them above the ground and mixed them up. They either carried the balls to the bay with wide strokes - and the whole bay seemed to be ablaze, it seemed, to the very bottom with their reflections - then they condensed them into clouds of light shining over the shocked shores.
Leningrad sparkled over the Neva like a precious stone. Never before had the nobility of his prospects been so palpable.
Marie, Shchedrin and Viner arrived at Peterhof very early.
Nikanor Ilyich stopped Shchedrin on the terrace of Shchedrin's palace. Matryona, in a black silk dress, frightened and flushed, was led by the arm by the old man, blind from the lights and moving with difficulty.
“The people won great beauty for themselves, Alexander Petrovich,” the old man said to Shchedrin and furtively wiped away a tear. - Big beauty!
Shchedrin recalled the winter night when he and his sailors walked across the ice from Kronstadt to Peterhof and warmed themselves in the lodge of a Red Guard.
“Nikanor Ilyich,” he asked, “so it was you who guarded the palace in 1918?”
- Me, honey, me. And my share is in all this perfection.
Marie's eyes shone, but her face was stern and pale. Nikanor Ilyich looked at her. Marie smiled questioningly.
She took the old man by the arm and led him into the palace.
On the way they were met by Ackerman, shaven and lean, in full dress uniform. His eyes slyly laughed. He greeted everyone and said to Shchedrin:
- Sasha, I remember you once laughed at fairy tales. Are you ashamed, tell me?
- Shut up, fool! Shchedrin said. “It was you who did not believe that you would live to see good times.
“Tapping with a crutch,” said Ackerman, “he passed among the cliques of popular jubilation.
They entered the palace. The sailors parted. A restrained rumble passed through their ranks. Marie carefully led the decrepit worker. Behind was Matryona, followed by Shchedrin, Viner and Ackerman.
The whisper passed and subsided, then passed again: behind the excited young woman, the sailors saw the legendary captain Alexander Shchedrin, famous for his victories over the White flotilla, the creator of the famous theory about the return of the Miocene climate to Europe.
Tikhonov was waiting on the landing. He saw Marie, and it seemed to him that he could not endure the minutes of her approach. He thought that no art in the world could convey the beauty of a young woman, loving and happy.
The sailors gathered in a large gilded hall. The chandeliers chimed, and the candles lit for the feast trembled subtly.
Marie stopped with Tikhonov near the window. Shchedrin stepped forward and turned to the sailors. His gray head was white against the dark canvas of the painting that hung behind him. The picture depicted an old naval battle. An orchestra was playing at the back of the hall.
Shchedrin raised his hand. The orchestra is silent. Two generations of sailors held their breath.
- Friends! Shchedrin said. – Old and young sailors! Is it necessary to talk about what everyone wears in their hearts - to talk about pride in their era, their homeland! We are called upon to protect the country that creates happiness for working people. We fought for her. We have won in the past and we will always win. Each of us will give all our blood, strength, all courage so that our country and its culture can work in peace and prosper.
We weren't the only ones who created it. We, the generation of winners, cannot be ungrateful. We will always cherish in our hearts the memory of workers and peasants, poets and writers, scientists and artists, philosophers, soldiers and sailors who died for the happiness of the people in distant times, separated from us by tens and hundreds of years.
Let me instead of a celebratory speech tell you a simple story that happened more than a hundred years ago ...
The sailors stirred and fell silent. Shchedrin briefly told the story of the death of a soldier Semyon Tikhonov, Pavel Bestuzhev and Anna Jacobsen.
Sometimes he fell silent and ran his hand through his hair, trying not to betray his excitement.
– Pavel Bestuzhev left a letter before his death. I will read a few lines from it.
Shchedrin took out the letter. The light from the chandeliers was weak and difficult to read. The young sailor took a candelabra from the fireplace, stood next to Shchedrin, and the further Shchedrin read, the more noticeably the candelabra leaned and the more drops of wax fell on the parquet.
“I know,” Shchedrin read, “and you must know it with me, that times of great reckoning will come. Our torment and death,” Shchedrin read, and a slight rumble went through the ranks of the sailors, as if they were repeating the words of this letter after him in an undertone, like the words of an oath, “our torment and death will strike the hearts with languishing force. Disregard for the happiness of the people will be considered the most vile crime. Everything low will be crushed in the dust…” Mari shuddered. Hall sighed loudly, all the sailors stood up.
- “... will be crushed in the dust,” Shchedrin continued raising his voice, “and the happiness of a person will become the highest task of the people's tribunes, leaders and generals. I think about these times and envy beautiful women and brave men, whose love will bloom under the sky of a cheerful and free country ... ”The sailors listened while standing.
The hall was silent.
“Friends,” said Shchedrin, “just a few more words. A descendant of a soldier, Semyon Tikhonov, is one of our best artists. We owe the splendor of this holiday to him. The great-granddaughter of Anna Jacobsen, who died of grief, is among us. She came to our country. She found a new home and happiness here. I can't talk about him.
Shchedrin was silent. Then Ackerman stood up in the back of the hall and shouted:
- And the grandson of the saved Decembrist is you!
The hall shook with a storm of cheers.
A wide flame flashed in the windows. The sailors looked back. Hundreds of streams of light rose to the sky above Leningrad.
But Shchedrin did not look at the lights of Leningrad. He looked at Marie, because there is no greater beauty in the world than the face of a young woman, loving and happy.
“The socialist culture, won by bloodshed and created by the heroic work of the working people of the Union, is confidently advancing along the path of uninterrupted flourishing. The socialist era requires the creation of monumental monuments and works of art that could capture and pass on to posterity its greatness and its heroic essence. The creation of these monuments of art will make use of the various talents in which the peoples inhabiting the Union are so rich.
Our city - the city of Lenin - is not only the cradle of the revolution and the center of advanced industry, but also the city of famous masters of art.
The law of the assimilation of the cultural heritage by our society has the greatest grounds for its expression in our city. It is enough to recall the names of at least one of the architects - the builders of the city - Bazhenov, Rastrelli, Voronikhin, Zakharov and others, so that the idea becomes clear that it is here, in the city of Lenin, that a young socialist country can learn the laws of craftsmanship from glorious artists of the past.
Due to the fact that academies are being opened in Leningrad that train masters of architecture, sculpture, painting and engraving, masters of artistic processing of stone, wood and metal, porcelain and cutting, the Leningrad Council decided to arrange a big national holiday in Leningrad on June 24. The main idea that should mark this holiday is that the socialist city is not only a place of settlement for people and the center of state institutions, public organizations and factories, but also an independent work of art - a powerful factor in the artistic education of the masses.
- What is the conversation in this message, as I understand it? Nikanor Ilyich said. - About the nobility of the human soul. I have long noticed that people are different, depending on what they see around them.
- Where is your nobility, Matryona said from the corner, when the customer has already sent a telegram, she is worried, but your lid is not ready!
- Nothing will be done with him, with the customer. The customer will forgive me everything for this cover. He is a sailor, a diverse person. It's hard to talk to him, to be honest. I told him about the ebony, and he told me about the climate. I told him about dark varnish, and he told me about the climate. Tortured me with this climate!
- What about the climate? Tikhonov asked.
“Climate is a tricky business. If he succeeds, we shall be the happiest nation in the world. There is a cut of oak in his office; This oak tree is four hundred years old, if not more. Well, of course, there are annual layers on the oak. In our opinion, this is called "tree eye". Some layers are thicker, others are thinner, there are also very thin ones, not wider than a thread. So he asks: “What do you see in front of you, Nikitin, a wise man, an omniscient furniture maker?” – “Layers as layers, I say. The oak layer also has a beautiful appearance, if it is polished wisely. And he begins to argue: “It's not about polishing, but about accurate conclusions. I am, he says, a bit of a meteorologist and a botanist. Each year the layer grows depending on the moisture. In rainy summers, the layer grows more, in dry summers - less, and from this oak you can tell five hundred years ago what climate it was surrounded by. “What do you need to know? I ask. “Is there even the slightest benefit to our human brother?” – “There is, says, only to tell for a long time. For now, I’ll tell you one thing: we read from these sections and from all sorts of other signs a wonderful thing; and this thing is that there were times when we had a warm and cheerful climate, like in the island of Ceylon. Forests of magnolias grew all around along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. We, he says, will try to return this climate. To do this, he says, is possible, and there are no miracles in this.
- They won't let you die in peace! murmured Matrena. “They don’t have enough geraniums, old fools, give them magnolia!”
“Geranium vs. Magnolia – rubbish!” Nikanor Ilyich got angry. - The geranium has an annoying, woolly leaf. Don't mess with me, old lady!
The old people argued. Tikhonov said goodbye and went to his mezzanine. The bay was visible from the windows. The bird stirred in the damp branches and called cautiously, as if calling someone. The clock below hissed for a long time and finally struck two brass strikes.
Tikhonov stood in thought at the window, then carefully descended and went to the palace park.
I didn't want to sleep. It was impossible to read in the scattered brilliance of the white night, just as it was impossible to turn on the light. The electric fire seemed noisy. It seemed to stop the slow flow of the night, to destroy secrets that curled up like invisible furry animals in the corners of the room, to make things uncomfortably real, more real than they really were.
A greenish half-light froze in the alleys. Gilded statues gleamed. The fountains were silent at night, their quick rustle was not heard. Only individual drops of water fell, and their splashing carried very far.
The stone stairs near the palace were illuminated by the dawn; yellowish light fell on the ground, reflecting off the walls and windows.
The palace shone through the vague darkness of the trees, like a single golden leaf glowing in early autumn through the thick of still fresh and dark foliage.
Tikhonov went along the canal to the bay. Small fish swam in the canal between the stones overgrown with mud.
The bay was clean and calm. Silence lay over him. The sea has not yet woken up. Only the pink reflection of the water foreshadowed the approaching sunrise.
The ocean steamer was heading towards Leningrad. The dawn was already burning in its portholes, and a light smoke trailed behind the stern.
The steamer trumpeted, welcoming the great northern city, the end of the difficult sea route. Far away, in Leningrad, where the spire of the Admiralty was already glowing with pale gold, another ship answered him with a long cry.
There were boats in the canal. Young sailors were sleeping on them, covered with a tarpaulin. Tikhonov saw their faces ruddy from sleep, occasionally heard light snoring. The pre-dawn wind blew in from the sea and stirred the leaves overhead.
Tikhonov went ashore. There was no one there, only a woman was sitting on a wooden bench at the very end of the pier.
"What is she doing here at this hour?" thought Tikhonov. A shabby black cat walked cautiously along the damp decking of the pier, shaking its paw in disgust after each step.
Tikhonov stopped at the railing and looked into the water. The cat also looked in, and his eyes immediately turned black: near the piles, a flock of long silver fish moved their tails.
The woman got up and went to Tikhonov. He looked at her, and the closer she came, the more clearly, as if from a mist, the light steps sounded, and her embarrassed smile was already visible. The small hat cast a shadow over her forehead, and therefore her eyes seemed very shining. The sea-green silk dress gleamed and rustled, and Tikhonov thought that the woman must be cold - the predawn wind, no matter how warm, always carries with it the smell of snow.
The woman approached. Tikhonov looked into her face and guessed that she was a foreigner.
“Tell me…” the woman said slowly, and a slight wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. - Tell me, will there be a steamer to Leningrad soon?
She seemed to have difficulty choosing her words and pronouncing them with a strong accent.
- In two hours. You'll get there faster by train.
The woman shook her head negatively.
- No train. From the train, I can't find my way home in Leningrad.
Why are you here at this time? Tikhonov asked.
- I missed the last boat. Very stupid. I've been sitting here all night. Just me and this scary cat. She pointed to the black cat and laughed.
- Are you French? Tikhonov asked and blushed: the question seemed to him tactless.
The woman raised her head. There was something both French and Nordic about the hard oval of her face and small chin.
- Oh no! she said at length. - I'm Swedish. But I speak French.
Tikhonov looked at her, but thought of himself. He tried to present himself from the outside.
Despite his age, he felt like a boy and suffered in the company of adults. His peers were already venerable people both in appearance and in their mental disposition. Tikhonov, on the other hand, still had little faith in his talent and loved everything that boys love: fishing, trains, stations, skiing, steamboats and traveling.
In front of people equal to his age, he often got lost, felt bound, knew that he was not at all like that, that is how others imagine him. When he read about himself in the newspapers or heard fellow artists talking about his talent, he remained indifferent, as if it was not about him, but about his namesake or double.
He knew that until now his best picture had not yet been written, and therefore he was sincerely surprised at the noise that was increasingly rising around his things.
Now he thought about himself because he felt like a boy with special force. He was at a loss in front of an unfamiliar woman who was younger than him.
The woman was also embarrassed and, bending down to hide her face, stroked the shabby cat. The cat looked at her questioningly and meowed.
The sun has risen. The gardens began to glow, throwing off the dawn haze. A living light ran like wind across the woman's face, flashed in her eyes, illuminated her eyelashes and the nervous hand that clutched the railing.
The bay was covered with streaks of light and mist. Far across the water rolled the muffled cry of a steamer approaching from Oranienbaum. The steamer went to Leningrad.
A thin, lame marina keeper stepped out onto the boardwalk with his fishing rods. He greeted Tikhonov and asked:
- Why are you, Alexei Nikolaevich, going to Leningrad so early?
“No, I see you off,” Tikhonov answered.
The caretaker unrolled his fishing rods, sat down, dangling his legs from the pier, and began to fish. He occasionally glanced at Tikhonov and the unknown woman, and said to himself with a sigh:
"The thought of lost youth oppressed his decrepit heart."
He pecked, swore and pulled out a small fish.
An empty boat has arrived. Tikhonov escorted the woman to the gangway. She held out her hand to him and looked absently into his eyes. “Goodbye,” she said, and turned away. “Thank you.”
“Citizens passengers,” the captain said from the bridge, “it’s time!”
She went up the gangplank. The steamer yelled angrily, slowly backed away and turned her head into the sea. High milestones glittered on the water.
Tikhonov saw a stranger on deck. The wind blew the dress around her high legs and flapped the stern flag.
Tikhonov went to the shore. Near the caretaker, he looked back. The woman was still standing on the deck.
- What a summer! the caretaker said. – I have never seen such a summer in the Baltic. Solid sun.
Tikhonov agreed, slowly walked away from the pier, but when he disappeared behind the trees of the park, he quickly went to the station.
The first train to Leningrad left at six o'clock. Tikhonov was waiting for him, agitated and foolishly hoping that the train would leave earlier.
In Leningrad, he took a taxi and ordered to take himself to the Peterhof pier. The city was full of streaks of morning light and shadows. Watchmen watered the flowers in the squares. Slow rain fell from the canvas sleeves, scattering in the wind. On the bridges, the Neva wind beat through the windows of the car.
At the pier was a familiar steamer. It was empty. A barefoot sailor was washing the deck with a mop.
- Have you come from Peterhof for a long time? Tikhonov asked.
- Ten minutes.
Tikhonov went to the embankment. She was just here, maybe a minute ago. He knew it from the gleam of the water, from the sunlight that ran along the granite shores, from the kind eyes of the shoe-black who thought about his brushes, from the light flight of the clouds in the sky.
... Shchedrin lived in a new small house built near the water station on Krestovsky Island.
All the rooms in this house were located on different levels. Two or three steps led from room to room, and this gave it a special, maritime cosiness, especially since stairs with copper handrails resembling ladders rose to the second floor, and round windows in the corridor resembled portholes.
Shchedrin turned very gray, and when he wrote, he put on glasses. He taught meteorology and astronomy at the Naval Academy.
In his office there were many copper appliances and maps scribbled with blue and red pencils hung. The instruments glowed on clear days like candles.
The cleanliness in the house was ship-like. Wiener cleaned the rooms. In the battle near Yelabuga, he lost his arm and since then he could no longer drive his favorite cars.
Shchedrin corresponded with the Jacobsens and the doctor in Mariegamn. At the beginning of June, Maria Jacobsen came from Stockholm to stay for two months. Both Shchedrin and Viner called her Marie.
The presence of a cheerful young woman transformed the rooms, which until then had been calm and precise, like astronomical instruments. There was a slight, pleasant mess. Women's gloves lay on sextants, flowers fell on the desk, on manuscripts with calculations, the smell of perfume and fine fabrics penetrated everywhere from Marie's room on the second floor, silver chocolate paper lay on the sofa next to the book opened in the middle. Marie read voraciously in order to better learn Russian.
Next to the portraits of Anna Jacobsen, Pavel Bestuzhev, and Shchedrin's mother, Marie always placed bouquets of leaves, linden branches, and heliotrope flowers on the table. Previously, the house looked like a ship, now it has become more like a greenhouse.
Marie was reckless and disturbed Shchedrin by this. She remained the same as in Mariegamn when she ripped the gold stripe from his sleeve.
She rejoiced at freedom, was delighted that she could walk around the city alone, rejoiced at everything she saw in Leningrad: palaces and theaters, a life devoid of restrictive rules and moralizing, the simplicity of relations between men and women, between workers and scientists, and, finally, the fact that everywhere they looked at her with a smile. She smiled back, too, though she tried to keep the stern expression of a beautiful and slightly disappointed woman on her face.
Shchedrin was especially disturbed by Marie's walks. She got lost twice already. Once a thin pioneer brought her home, called her, handed her over from hand to hand and said to Wiener seriously:
Please don't let her go out alone. I lead it from the Smolny itself.
Marie kissed the pioneer, dragged him into the rooms, showed him the model of the "Brave", tools, maps, paintings depicting sea storms and calms. They gave the boy tea, gave him sweets, and he left happy and stunned.
The second case was much worse. Marie left for Peterhof, missed the last steamer, and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof wharf.
At two o'clock in the morning Shchedrin began calling all the police departments, roused dozens of people to their feet, and then, when Marie was found, he had to apologize and listen to the playful remarks of those on duty.
- Nonsense! Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was deadly sleepy - In your country, I'm not afraid of anything. I even boldly approached one person at the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.
- About what? Shchedrin asked.
“Everything,” Marie replied. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me like an old acquaintance.
- Yes, it must be Ackerman! exclaimed Shchedrin. - That's the old devil! Is he still fishing?
“Yes,” Marie said. - Along with a black cat. It's like a fairytale.
Marie slept until evening. The windows were open. The wind leafed through the book, forgotten on the window. He turned the pages back and forth, looking for his favorite lines, finally found them and fell silent: “From the realm of blizzards, from the realm of ice and snow, how pure and fresh your May flies.”
Marie was awakened by a rustle in the room. The wind tossed torn envelopes off the table. It was gloomy. Far away on the seashore, iron thunder rumbled and rolled into the abyss.
Marie jumped up. Lightning flared up outside the windows, trembled and died out in the depths of the noisy gardens.
Marie quickly washed, dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.
“Thunderstorm,” he said to Marie. - You slept nine hours.
- What are you playing? Marie asked and sat down in a chair, her legs crossed.
She looked out the window, where a hot wind was already raging in the gardens and throwing plucked leaves on the windowsills. One sheet fell on the piano. There was no lid on the piano, and the sheet got tangled in the steel strings. Shchedrin carefully took out the sheet and said:
- Tchaikovsky. If I were a composer, I would write a climate symphony.
Mari laughed.
"Don't laugh," Shchedrin told her and plucked the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return the Miocene climate to Europe. I don't know if you studied the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you must know that the Earth has experienced several terrible icings.
Marie cringed.
"We don't need any more," she said seriously.
“Of course not. The icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to make everything clear, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the climate of the Miocene will return to Europe.
- Warm?
“Very much,” Shchedrin replied. - The Gulf of Finland will smoke like fresh milk. Two crops will be harvested here. Magnolia forests will bloom on the Åland Islands. Can you imagine: white nights in magnolia forests! This can make you really crazy!
- What does it mean to be stupid? Marie asked.
- Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word - go crazy.
- Very well! Marie said. - But what is needed for this?
- Rubbish! We need a little revolution in Greenland. Enormous work must be begun in Greenland in order to melt, if only for a short time, a layer of ice one and a half meters high on the tops of the plateaus. This will be enough.
– How did you get to this point?
Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.
- What is this for? - he said. – You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.
The downpour roared outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles were bursting in the puddles in the garden, and maybe that's why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.
“Play,” said Marie. “Every day you tell me fairy tales like a stupid girl.
“These are not fairy tales,” said Shchedrin, and played the overture from Eugene Onegin. – Pushkin is also not a fairy tale. It's all real.
Marie sighed and thought. The morning meeting now seemed distant, like childhood. Was she? Who is this man - thin, with gray temples and a young face? Why didn't she ask him who he was? It is difficult to meet a second person in such a huge city.
The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly, rolling down from the leaves.
Marie quietly got up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The storm moved to the east. To the west, a rain-washed sunset burned.
Marie went to the Summer Garden.
She wandered along the damp alleys of the garden, went out to the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.
The ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in the silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly brighter than the night.
The majestic buildings that surrounded Marie seemed to be painted in watercolor. Only columns and powerful attics stood out, illuminated by diffused light. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was a reflection of the night in the canals, or a thin strip of dawn was still smoldering in the west, or the lanterns, mixing their brilliance with dusk, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, slight sadness.
Marie walked past the Hermitage. She was already in it and now she tried to imagine its night halls, the dim glow of the Neva outside the windows, the centuries-old silence of the pictures.
Marie went out into the square near the Winter Palace, stopped and clasped her hands. She did not know whose genius, whose delicate hand had created this world's most beautiful turn of colonnades, buildings, arches, cast-iron gratings, this expanse filled with greenish night coolness and majestic architectural thought.
Marie returned back by the last river boat. Glassy and empty, he carried her, swaying along the black Neva, past the Peter and Paul Fortress, past ravelins and crownworks, past piles, bridges and parks. The policeman was dozing in the corner of the cabin.
Behind the Freedom Bridge, a wide beam of a searchlight rose into the sky, smoking and fading. It descended and illuminated a white stone building on the shore, simple and majestic.
The policeman opened his eyes.
“Preparations are starting,” he told Marie. - They illuminate the best buildings.
- What kind of preparation? Marie asked.
She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.
“To the holiday,” the policeman said. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I've lived here since I was a kid, and I can't see enough of it every day. You stand at the post at night and sometimes you don’t know whether you are dreaming all this, or in reality. You will approach the house, you will look - the lantern with number burns; then you will calm down: it means that you are not dreaming.
Marie smiled shyly.
“I study at the rowing school,” the policeman said. - I'm going to sea in an outrigger. When you swim out in the evening, you can't see the city, it's in the fog. Some lanterns shine on the water. It's hard to even go back to shore.
- Where are you in the city? Marie asked.
- You, you see, are not Russian: your conversation is not ours.
- I'm Swedish.
“Ahhh…” said the policeman. “So you love it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.
At the pier near the river Krestovka Marie got off. The policeman went with her and escorted her home.
- I'm not afraid why! Marie was embarrassed. - You worked, you were tired.
“Don’t worry,” the policeman assured her. - I'm not going home. I'll go to the water station, I'll spend the night there. I still have to train for the holiday in the morning. There will be races. From here - straight to Sestroretsk. For endurance.
At the gate of her house, Marie said goodbye to the policeman. He shook her hand politely and left. Marie stood a little in the garden, then laughed. She wondered what her friends in Stockholm would say if she offered her hand to a police officer there.
By the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and architect.
Tikhonov got Peterhof. The holiday in Peterhof was given a maritime character. Teams of warships were supposed to arrive here from Kronstadt, and in the palace it was decided to arrange a ball for old and young sailors - a meeting of two generations.
After the incident on the pier, Tikhonov discovered new properties in himself. He began to notice things that he had previously passed indifferently. The world turned out to be filled with amazing colors, light, sounds. He, the artist, had never seen such a variety of colors before. They were everywhere, but most of all they shimmered in the sea water.
The world has become significant in everything. Tikhonov felt life in all its diversity of manifestations, as something unified, powerful, created for happiness.
He owed this full sense of life to his time. This feeling only intensified under the influence of a meeting at dawn with a young woman.
There was something about this meeting that defies description and story. That "something" was love. But Tikhonov did not yet admit this to himself. In his mind, everything merged into one sparkling circle: the distant whistle of an ocean steamer, the golden shimmer of the city in the morning mist, the stillness of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame caretaker of the pier and his words about the unusual Baltic summer.
In this state, Tikhonov began to work on decorating Peterhof. While working, he thought about his time, about the country and about her, a stranger.
He remembered the words of the famous writer, the one who once ruffled his hair and called him a "bubble". He read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer said to his young contemporary:
“When you write, think about her, even if she wasn’t there, and about excellent people to whom you, also an excellent person, sincerely and simply and very sincerely tell about what only you know, what she and everyone needs to know. them, do you understand?
She was. And Tikhonov thought about her, thought that she would pass here, see all the charm of the land adorned by him, and feel, like him, the breath of a free and cheerful country, where she came as a guest.
Nikanor Ilyich was terribly excited when he learned that Tikhonov had been assigned to decorate Peterhof. For several days he worried for nothing. There was no one to talk to. Matryona was hard to talk, and Tikhonov was too busy. Therefore, the old man was delighted to tears when Katya arrived in Peterhof. She came to her brother to talk about how to decorate her boats and yachts for the holiday.
From Tikhonov she went down to the old people, and Nikanor Ilyich immediately struck up a conversation with her.
"I love holidays," said Nikanor Ilyich. - A holiday, I believe, sometimes a person needs more than daily bread.
- Oh, my God! Matrena sighed. - No strength! At least take him away, Katyusha, the cursed one.
- Quiet! Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. - You yourself will wash and clean the house for the holiday. I suppose you can’t put on your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!
Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich took to his bed. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.
“Alyosha…” he said, and suddenly burst into tears.
Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.
“I have a weakness of the heart. Am I going to look around and see nothing? And I would, a fool, live and live. Curiosity is burning me. I tried to go up to you, look at the sketches - what did you come up with for the holiday - but I'm afraid to interfere.
Tikhonov brought sketches to the old man. Nikanor Ilyich looked at them for a long time, then patted Tikhonov on the shoulder.
“I love perfection in you, Alyosha,” he said. - You are real. My word is final.
Saying goodbye, he asked Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, to call on the customer and convey that the piano cover was ready and it could be picked up.
Only on the second day did Tikhonov find, at the address given by Nikanor Ilyich, a small house in a garden on Krestovsky Island. It was raining, the ground smelled of rain-beaten dust.
Tikhonov was opened by a blond old man without one arm - Wiener. Tikhonov asked Citizen Shchedrin. Viner led him into a room with the windows wide open.
On the wall Tikhonov saw two portraits of excellent work. One showed an officer in a black uniform, the other a young woman with nervous eyebrows flying high. There was a clearly tangible resemblance to the stranger met on the pier.
Tikhonov ran his hand over his forehead, as if trying to drive away an obsessive thought, but the woman looked at him with already familiar eyes, and he involuntarily came closer and closer to the portrait and peered into it more and more intently.
Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort on himself to tear himself away from the portrait.
Behind Tikhonov stood a tall, gray-haired sailor, looking at him attentively.
“I come to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” Tikhonov said. - He is sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano cover is ready. You can come for her.
“Sit down,” said the sailor, and showed Tikhonov to a chair.
If Tikhonov had sat in it, he would have found himself with his back to the portrait. Tikhonov stepped towards the armchair, but changed his mind and sat down in another one so that he could see the portrait.
The sailor was still looking attentively at Tikhonov.
“Thank you,” he said. - And what about Nikanor Ilyich?
“Heart,” Tikhonov answered curtly.
Are you his son?
No, I'm his former student.
Are you obviously an artist?
“I guessed when I saw you peering into this portrait.
- Wonderful job! Who is it?
“She is a beautiful woman, the daughter of an old skipper from the Åland Islands.
- Is she Swedish? Tikhonov asked quickly.
- Yes. Her name was Anna Jacobsen. Her life was connected with very tragic circumstances. This is the wife of officer Pavel Bestuzhev, who was killed in a duel on Aland at the beginning of the last century. She went crazy.
“My great-grandfather,” Tikhonov said, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel. He got busted. He was a simple soldier.
“Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was that?”
- I think that also at the beginning of the last century.
The sailor got up and went to the window. He looked at the rain that was pouring dust into puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:
- You are not from the village of Meghry on the Kovzha River?
“Yes,” Tikhonov said in surprise. – How do you know this?
The sailor did not answer.
“Your great-grandfather,” he said, “is buried in the same grave as Pavel Bestuzhev. Both of them were killed on the same day. They shared a common destiny. Is your surname Tikhonov?
- Finally! - The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook hands with Tikhonov. My name is Shchedrin. I was looking for you for a long time, then I left. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned a detailed story of the death of Pavel Bestuzhev. He was a freethinker. He saved a Decembrist from execution and was killed in a duel due to a collision with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was not buried alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out how these two people, Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev, were connected, but no one could explain this to me. The locals did not know anything, but I could not rummage through the archives. They would not have given me, and it was not at all up to it then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev's dying letter. In it, I found a request to inform his relatives about the death of soldier Tikhonov, in the village of Megry on the Kovzha River. During the Civil War, I accidentally ended up in Meghry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.
“She asked me about you,” Tikhonov interrupted.
- She died? the sailor asked.
“I found your mother, but she didn’t really know anything about this story. She gave me your address and asked me to find you, but the address disappeared in the battle with the Kolchak flotilla near Yelabuga. My memory is bad, I could not remember him in any way ... But still we met! Shchedrin laughed. “Well, I won’t let you out now. Let's have a hat.
In the dawn, in the dawn, there is something maidenly, chaste. At dawn, the grass is washed with dew, and in the villages it smells of warm fresh milk. And the shepherd's pity sing in the fogs beyond the outskirts.
Lights up quickly. In a warm house, silence, dusk. But then squares of orange light fall on the log walls, and the logs light up like layered amber. The sun is rising.
Autumn dawns are different - gloomy, slow. It’s reluctant to wake up during the day: anyway, you won’t warm the frozen earth and you won’t return the smiling sunlight. Everything goes down, only the person does not give up. Since dawn, the stoves in the huts have already been burning, the smoke is dangling over the villages and spreading along the ground. And then, you see, the early rain drummed on the misted windows. (According to K. Paustovsky.)
At the airport, they exchanged a few phrases that did not reconcile them, but on the plane, a absurd conversation again took place, and then, while having dinner, they were silent. After supper, Samsonov irritably leafed through an illustrated magazine, flipped through the glossy pages, thrust it into the pocket of his back, crossed his arms over his chest and, throwing his head back, seemed to doze off, wrinkling angrily.
The huge autumn moon, like a fiery crimson ball, visible in detail with distinct chiaroscuro, stood motionless behind the porthole in the black void of endless cold, and Nikitin could not tear himself away from it. She pulled him to her - magical and close, bright; in its icy brilliance, in its approximate size and inaccessibility, he imagined something secret, healing, soothing the pain in his heart, from which he was afraid to move.
The metal plane of the wing hung above the depth of the height, and there, below, lay a desert of silvery-bluish clouds that covered the night earth, and, not breaking through to the ground, all the moonlight, calmly furious, sparkled with an inanimate glare on the plane of the aircraft above the dip in depth, poured into the porthole , in its thick double panes. And sometimes Nikitin imagined that this moonlight seeped through the deep purple water, that it did not fly at a height of nine kilometers, but glided on a submarine under the oceanic waters, squeezed by them. (According to Yu. Bondarev.)
Peace and silence rest over the Vyborg side, over its unpaved streets, wooden sidewalks, over lean gardens, over ditches overgrown with nettles, where, under the fence, some goat, with a broken rope around its neck, diligently nibbles grass or dozes stupidly, but at noon they knock the smart, high heels of a clerk walking along the sidewalk; the face will also disappear, then the first will appear again and be replaced by the second; there is a squeal and laughter of girls swinging on a swing.
Everything is quiet in Pshenitsyna's house. You enter the courtyard and you will be embraced by a living idyll: hens and roosters will fuss and run to hide in corners; the dog will begin to jump on the chain, bursting into barking; Akulina will stop milking the cow, and the janitor will stop chopping wood, and both will look at the visitor with curiosity.
Who do you want? - he will ask and, having heard the name of Ilya Ilyich or the hostess of the house, he will silently point to the porch and begin to chop wood again, and the visitor will go along a clean, sandy path to the porch, on the steps of which a simple clean rug is laid.
183 words.
The village with its huts and stacks, green hemp plants and skinny willows from a distance seemed like an island among the boundless world of plowed black earth fields. In the middle of the village there was a small pond, forever covered with goose down, with muddy, pitted banks; a hundred paces from the pond, on the other side of the road, rose the master's wooden house, long empty and sadly leaning on its side; an abandoned garden stretched behind the house; in the garden grew old, barren apple trees, tall birches dotted with crows' nests; at the end of the main alley, in a small house (the former master's bath), lived a decrepit butler, and, grunting and coughing, every morning, according to his old habit, dragged himself through the garden to the master's chambers, although there was nothing to guard in them, except for a dozen white armchairs upholstered in a faded damask, two pot-bellied chests of drawers on crooked legs with copper handles, four pictures with holes in them, and one black alabaster with a broken nose. The owner of this house, a young and carefree man, lived either in St. Petersburg or abroad and completely forgot about his estate. He got it about eight years ago from an elderly uncle, once known throughout the neighborhood for his excellent liqueurs.
167 words.
The heat forced us to finally enter the grove. I rushed under a tall hazel bush, over which a young, slender maple spread its light branches beautifully. Kasyan sat down on the thick end of a felled birch. I looked at him. The leaves swayed feebly in the air, and their liquid-greenish shadows quietly glided back and forth over his frail body, somehow wrapped in a dark coat, over his small face. He did not raise his head. Bored with his silence, I lay down on my back and began to admire the peaceful play of tangled leaves in the distant bright sky.
It's amazingly pleasant to lie on your back in the forest and look up! It seems to you that you are looking into the bottomless sea, that it spreads wide under you, that the trees do not rise from the ground, but, like the roots of huge plants, descend, fall vertically into those glassy clear waves; the leaves on the trees either shine through with emeralds, or thicken into a golden, almost black green. Somewhere far, far away, ending with itself a thin branch, a separate leaf stands motionless on a blue patch of transparent sky, and next to it another sways, resembling the play of a fish pool with its movement, as if the movement is unauthorized and not produced by the wind.
175 words.
Splinters burn with red fire in the huts, sleepy voices are heard outside the gates. And meanwhile the dawn flares up; golden streaks have already stretched across the sky, vapors swirl in the ravines; the larks sing loudly, the pre-dawn wind blew, and the crimson sun quietly rises. The light will rush in like a stream; your heart will flutter like a bird. Fresh, fun, love! Visible all around. There is a village beyond the grove; over there is another one with a white church, over there is a birch forest on the mountain; behind it is a swamp, where are you going ... Quicker, horses, quicker! Big trot forward! .. Three versts left no more. The sun is rising fast, the sky is clear... The weather will be glorious. The herd stretched out of the village towards you. You climbed a mountain... What a view! The river winds for ten versts, dimly blue through the fog; behind it are watery-green meadows; gentle hills beyond the meadows; in the distance, lapwings, screaming, hover over the swamp through a damp sheen, spilled in the air, the distance clearly stands out ... not like in summer. How freely the chest breathes, how cheerfully the limbs move, how the whole person grows stronger, embraced by the fresh breath of spring!
161 words.
There is no wind, and there is no sun, no light, no shadow, no movement, no noise; in the soft air there is an autumn smell, like the smell of wine; a thin mist hangs in the distance over the yellow fields. Through the naked, brown boughs of the trees, the sky peacefully whitens motionless; in some places the last golden leaves hang on the linden trees. The damp earth is elastic underfoot; tall dry blades of grass do not move; long threads glitter on the pale grass. The chest breathes calmly, and a strange anxiety finds in the soul. You walk along the edge of the forest, you look after the dog, and meanwhile your favorite images, your favorite faces, dead and alive, come to mind, impressions that have long since fallen asleep suddenly wake up; the imagination flies and flies like a bird, and everything moves so clearly and stands before the eyes. The heart will suddenly tremble and beat, passionately rush forward, then irretrievably drown in memories. All life unfolds easily and quickly, like a scroll; man owns all his past, all his feelings, forces, all his soul. And nothing around him interferes - there is no sun, no wind, no noise ...
156 words.
But then the evening comes. The dawn blazed with fire and engulfed half the sky. The sun is setting. The air nearby is somehow especially transparent, like glass; in the distance lies a soft steam, warm in appearance; together with the dew, a scarlet gleam falls on the glades, until recently drenched in streams of liquid gold; long shadows ran from the trees, from the bushes, from the high stacks of hay... The sun had set; the star has lit up and trembles in the fiery sea of sunset.... Here it is turning pale; blue sky; separate shadows disappear, the air is filled with haze. It's time to go home to the village where you spend the night. Throwing your gun over your shoulders, you walk quickly, despite your fatigue ... And meanwhile, night comes: you can’t see it twenty paces away; the dogs barely turn white in the darkness. Over there, above the black bushes, the edge of the sky is vaguely clear... What is it? fire?.. No, it's the moon rising. And down below, to the right, the lights of the village are already flickering ... Here is your hut at last. Through the window you see a table covered with a white tablecloth, a burning candle, dinner...
144 words.
He [Levko] looked around: the night seemed even more brilliant before him. Some strange, intoxicating radiance was added to the brilliance of the moon. Never before had he seen the like. A silver mist fell over the surroundings. The smell from the blooming apple trees of night flowers poured over the whole earth. With amazement, he looked into the still waters of the pond: the old manor's house, overturned, was visible in it clean and in some clear grandeur. Instead of gloomy shutters, cheerful glass windows and doors looked out. Gilding flickered through the clear glass. And then it felt like a window had opened. Holding his breath, without flinching and without taking his eyes off the pond, he seemed to move into its depths and put his white elbow forward out the window, then a friendly head with shining eyes, quietly shining through the dark blond waves of hair, looked out and leaned on his elbow. And he sees: she shakes her head slightly, she waves, she smiles... His heart began to beat at once... The water trembled, and the window closed again.
144 words.
Throughout the vast expanse that stretched out in the distance, heaps of red-hot limestone, scattered in countless multitudes, glowed, on the surface of which bluish and green sulfuric fires flared every now and then ... These were burning lime kilns. Above the factory stood a huge red oscillating glow. Against its bloody background, the dark tops of the tall chimneys were drawn harmoniously and clearly, while their lower parts blurred in the gray mist coming from the ground. The open mouths of these giants ceaselessly belched thick clouds of smoke, which mingled into one continuous, chaotic, slowly creeping to the east cloud, in places white as lumps of stalemate, in places dirty gray, in places the yellowish color of iron rust. Above the thin, long chimneys, giving them the appearance of gigantic torches, bright sheaves of burning gas fluttered and rushed about. From their false reflection, the smoky cloud hanging over the plant, now flashing, now fading, took on strange and menacing shades. From time to time, when the hood of the blast furnace was lowered down by the sharp ringing of the signal hammer, from its mouth, with a roar like distant thunder, a whole storm of flame and soot burst out to the very sky.<...>Electric fires mixed their bluish dead brilliance with the purple light of red-hot iron... The unceasing clang and roar of iron rushed from there.
779 words.
Everywhere there was antique mahogany furniture with bronze inlays, expensive vases made of Siberian jasper, marble, malachite, bad paintings in heavy gilded frames - in a word, at every step one could feel the overwhelming influence of the most insane luxury. Privalov experienced a doubly unpleasant and heavy feeling: once - for those people who climbed out of their skin to pile up this useless and pathetic in their tastelessness likeness of a palace, and then he was crushed by the thought that he was the heir to this useless unsuitable rags. In his soul, a vague regret was awakened for those people close to him by blood who died under the unbearable burden of this insane luxury. Indeed, among them there were remarkable natures, bright minds, iron energy - and where did it all go? In order to pile this rubbish in several rooms ... Privalov looked in vain with his eyes for at least one living place where one could take a break from all this colossal painted and gilded nonsense, which was decomposing under the pressure of its own weight - vain efforts. In these luxurious chambers there was no such corner in which at least one warm childhood memory would be hidden, to which the last beggar has the right ... Every object in these rooms reminded Privalov of the horrors that were happening in them. The shadows of the famous Sashka, Stesha, and finally the father - this is what this situation resembled, on the reverse side of which the famous Privalovskaya stable and the schismatic prayer room were placed in rows.
215 words.-Siberian
It seemed as if the floors were being washed in the house and all the furniture had been piled up here for a while. On one table there was even a broken chair and next to it a clock with a stopped pendulum, to which a spider had already attached a web. Right there, leaning sideways against the wall, was a cupboard filled with antique silver, decanters, and Chinese china. On the bureau, lined with mother-of-pearl mosaics, which had already fallen out in places and left behind only yellowish grooves filled with glue, lay a lot of all sorts of things: a pile of finely written papers covered with a greenish marble press with an egg on top, some old book bound in leather with red cut, a lemon, all dried up, not more than a hazelnut, a broken armchair, a glass with some liquid and three flies, covered with a letter, a piece of sealing wax, a piece of a rag raised somewhere, two feathers stained with ink, dried up, as in consumption, a toothpick, completely yellowed, with which the owner, perhaps, picked his teeth even before the French invasion of Moscow.
Several paintings were hung very closely and stupidly on the walls: a long yellowed engraving of some battle, with huge drums, screaming soldiers in three-cornered hats and drowning horses, without glass, inserted in a mahogany frame with thin bronze stripes and bronze circles in the corners. . Next to them, half a wall was occupied by a huge blackened oil painting depicting flowers, fruits, a cut watermelon, a boar's face, and a duck hanging head down. From the middle of the ceiling hung a chandelier in a linen bag, the dust made it look like a silk cocoon in which a worm sits.<...>It would have been impossible to say that a living creature lived in this room, if the old, worn cap, lying on the table, did not herald his presence.
255 words.
The svetlitsa was removed in the taste of that time, about which living hints remained only in songs and in folk thoughts, no longer sung in Ukraine by bearded blind elders, accompanied by the quiet chirping of a bandura in the mind of the surrounding people; in the taste of that swearing, difficult time, when fights and battles began to play out in Ukraine for the union. Everything was clean, smeared with colored clay. On the walls are sabers, whips, nets for birds, nets and guns, a cunningly crafted horn for gunpowder, a golden bridle for a horse and fetters with silver plaques. The windows in the room were small, with round dull panes, such as are now found only in ancient churches, through which it was impossible to look through otherwise than by lifting up the sliding glass. There were red taps around the windows and doors. On the shelves in the corners stood jugs, bottles and flasks of green and blue glass, carved silver goblets, gilded cups of all kinds of work: Venetian, Turkish, Circassian, which entered Bulba’s room by all sorts of ways, through third and fourth hands, which was very common in those remote time. Birch bark benches all around the room; a huge table under the icons in the front corner; a wide stove with ovens, ledges and ledges, covered with colorful colorful tiles - all this was very familiar to our two fellows, who came home every year for vacation time; who came because they did not yet have horses, and because it was not customary to allow schoolchildren to ride. They had only long forelocks, for which any Cossack who carried a weapon could tear them out. Only when they were released did Bulba send them a pair of young stallions from his herd.
243 words.
The old, vast garden stretching behind the house, overlooking the village and then disappearing into the field, overgrown and decayed, it seemed that alone refreshed this vast village and alone was quite picturesque in its picturesque desolation. Green clouds and irregular quivering domes lay on the celestial horizon, the connected tops of trees that had grown in freedom. A colossal white birch trunk, devoid of a top broken off by a storm or a thunderstorm, rose from this green thicket and rounded in the air, like a regular marble sparkling column; its oblique pointed break, with which it ended upward instead of a capital, darkened against its snowy whiteness, like a hat or a black bird. The hops, which choked down the bushes of elderberry, mountain ash, and hazel, and then ran along the top of the entire palisade, finally ran up and twisted halfway around the broken birch. Having reached the middle of it, it hung down from there and already began to cling to the tops of other trees, or hung in the air, tying its swampy tenacious hooks in rings, easily swayed by the air. In places green thickets parted, illuminated by the sun, and showed an unlit depression between them, gaping like a dark mouth; it was all shrouded in shadow, and barely flickered in its black depths: a running narrow path, a collapsed railing, a staggering arbor, a hollow, decrepit trunk of a willow, a gray-haired chapyzhnik, fallen out from behind a willow with thick bristles, withered from a terrible wilderness, tangled and crossed leaves and twigs, and, finally, a young branch of a maple, stretching its green paws-leaves to the side, under one of which, climbing God knows how, the sun suddenly turned it into a transparent and fiery one, shining wonderfully in this thick darkness.
236 words.
There were still ten versts to the nearest village, and a large dark purple cloud, which had come from God knows where, without the slightest wind, but was quickly moving towards us. The sun, not yet hidden by clouds, brightly illuminates her gloomy figure and the gray stripes that go from her to the very horizon. Occasionally, lightning flashes in the distance, and a faint rumble is heard, gradually intensifying, approaching and turning into intermittent peals, embracing the entire sky. Vasily rises from the goat and lifts the top of the chaise; the coachmen put on their coats and at every clap of thunder take off their hats and cross themselves; the horses prick up their ears, flare their nostrils, as if sniffing the fresh air, which smells of an approaching cloud, and the britzka rolls faster along the dusty road. I get scared, and I feel the blood circulate faster in my veins. But now the advanced clouds are already beginning to cover the sun; here it looked out for the last time, illuminated the terribly gloomy side of the horizon and disappeared. The whole neighborhood suddenly changes and takes on a gloomy character. Here the aspen grove trembled; the leaves become some kind of white-cloudy color, brightly prominent against the lilac background of the clouds, rustle and spin; the tops of the big birches begin to sway, and tufts of dry grass fly across the road. Swifts and white-breasted swallows, as if with the intention of stopping us, hover around the britzka and fly under the very breasts of the horses; jackdaws with disheveled wings somehow fly sideways in the wind; the edges of the leather apron with which we buttoned up begin to rise, let gusts of damp wind pass towards us and, swinging, beat against the body of the britzka. Lightning flashes as if in the britzka itself, dazzles the eye and for a moment illuminates the gray cloth and the figure of Volodya pressed against the corner...
248 words.
Steamed, thick air stood in the hut; a lamp without a glass burned on the table, and the soot reached the very ceiling in a dark, quivering wick. Father was sitting near the table and sewing sheepskin coats; mother mended shirts or knitted mittens; her bowed face was at that time meek and affectionate. In a quiet voice she sang "old" songs that she had heard as a girl, and Tanya often wanted to cry from them. In the dark hut, covered with snow blizzards, Marya recalled her youth, recalled hot hayfields and evening dawns, when she walked in the girlish crowd along the field road with ringing songs, and behind the rumbles the sun went down and golden dust poured through the ears of its burning reflection ... Song she told her daughter that she would have the same dawns, that everything that passes so soon and for a long time will be replaced by village grief and care for a long time ...
When the mother was preparing to have dinner, Tanya, in one long shirt, pulled down from the stove and, often turning over her bare feet, ran to the table. Here she, like an animal, squatted down and quickly caught lard in a thick stew and ate cucumbers and potatoes. Fat Vaska ate slowly and rolled his eyes, trying to put a large spoon into his mouth... sweet sleep under the prayerful whisper of the mother.
216 words.
Behind the bridge, I climbed the hill, went to the city by a paved road.
There was not a single fire anywhere in the city, not a single living soul. Everything was silent and spacious, calm and sad - the sadness of the Russian steppe night, the sleeping steppe city. Some gardens gently trembled with foliage from the even current of a weak July wind, which pulled from somewhere in the fields, gently blew on me. I walked - the big moon also walked, rolling and passing through the blackness of the branches in a mirrored circle; the wide streets lay in shadow - only in the houses to the right, to which the shadow did not reach, white walls were lit and black windows shimmered with a mournful luster; and I walked in the shade, stepped on the spotty pavement - it was translucently covered with black silk lace. She had such an evening dress, very elegant, long and slender. It unusually went to her thin figure and black young eyes. She was mysterious in him and insultingly paid no attention to me. Where was it? Visiting who?
My goal was to visit Old Street. And I could go there by a different, middle way. But I turned into these spacious streets in the gardens because I wanted to look at the gymnasium. And, having reached it, he again wondered: and here everything remained the same as half a century ago; a stone fence, a stone yard, a large stone building in the yard - everything is just as bureaucratic, boring, as it once was with me. I hesitated at the gate, I wanted to evoke sadness in myself, the pity of memories - and I couldn’t: yes, a first grader with a comb-cut hair in a brand new blue cap with silver palms over the visor and in a new overcoat with silver buttons entered these gates, then a thin young man in gray jacket and smart trousers.
271 words
An elderly woman in a hospital gown opened the door for Danilevsky’s patients, they entered a spacious hallway, carpeted and furnished with heavy antique furniture, and the woman put on glasses, with a pencil in her hand, looked sternly into her diary and appointed the day and hour of the future appointment with one, and introduced others through the high doors of the reception room, and there they waited a long time to be called to the next office, for interrogation and examination by a young assistant in a sugar-white coat, and only after that did they get to Danilevsky himself, in his large office with a high bed against the back wall, on which he forced some of them to climb up and lie down in the most miserable and awkward position from fear; the patients were embarrassed by everything - not only the assistant and the woman in the hallway, where with such deathly slowness, shining, the copper disk of the pendulum in the old standing clock walked from side to side, but also the whole important order of this rich, spacious apartment, this expectant silence of the waiting room, where no one dared to take an extra breath, and they all thought that this was some very special, eternally lifeless apartment and that Danilevsky himself, tall, stout, rude, hardly ever smiles at least once a year. But they were wrong: in that residential part of the apartment, where double doors led from the hallway to the right, it was almost always noisy from the guests, the samovar did not leave the table in the dining room, the maid ran, adding cups and glasses to the table, then vases of jam, then crackers and buns, and Danilevsky, even during reception hours, would often run there on tiptoe down the hallway and, while the patients were waiting for him, thinking that he was terribly busy with some seriously ill patient, he sat and drank tea ...
254 words.
The thing that worried and worried everyone for so long was finally resolved: the Great Perevoz was immediately half empty.
Many white and blue huts were orphaned on this summer evening. Many people have left their native village forever - its green alleys between gardens, the dusty bazaar pasture, where it is so fun on a sunny Sunday morning, when there is talk all around, the inn is buzzing with abuse and disputes, the merchants are shouting, the beggars are singing, the violin is chirping, the lyre is buzzing melancholy, and important oxen, covering their eyes from the sun, sleepily chew hay to these discordant sounds; left the multi-colored gardens and dense verboses with matte-pale long foliage above the spring, when descending to the backwater of the river, where on quiet evenings in the water something groans muffled and monotonous, as if blowing into an empty barrel; forever left his homeland for the distant Ussuri lands and went "to the ends of the world ...".
When a wide, cool shadow fell on a village located in a valley from a mountain covering the west, and in the valley, towards the horizon, everything was reddened by the reflection of the sunset, the groves blushed, the bends of the river flashed with a scarlet gloss, and beyond the river the plains of sand sparkled like gold, the people, variegated in bright, festive attire, he gathered for a green decade, to an old white church, where Cossacks and Chumaks still prayed before their distant campaigns.
There, under the open sky, between the loaded carts, a prayer service began, and dead silence reigned in the crowd. The priest's voice sounded distinct and distinct, and every word of prayer penetrated to the depths of every heart...
And then the screams went up. And in the midst of a guttural conversation, weeping and shouting, the convoy moved along the road up the mountain. For the last time, the Great Transport appeared in his native valley - and disappeared ... And the convoy itself finally disappeared behind the bread, in the fields, in the brilliance of the low evening sun ...
256 words
It was a June night, there was a full moon, a small moon stood at its zenith, but its light, slightly pinkish, as happens on hot nights after brief daytime showers, so common at the time of lily bloom, still so brightly illuminated the passes of low mountains covered with undersized southern forest, so that the eye could clearly distinguish them at the very horizons.
A narrow valley ran between these passes to the north. And in the shadow of their heights in the dead silence of this desert night, a mountain stream roared monotonously and mysteriously floated and floated, steadily fading and measuredly flashing now with amethyst, now with topaz, Flying fireflies, lucioli. Opposite hills receded from the valley, and an ancient rocky road ran along the lowlands below them. It seemed just as ancient on it, on this lowland, and that stone town, where, at this rather late hour, a tall Moroccan in a wide burnous of white wool and a Moroccan fez rode on a bay stallion, crouching on his front right leg.
The town seemed dead, abandoned. Yes, he was. The Moroccan drove first along a shady street, between the stone skeletons of houses gaping with black voids in place of icons, with wild gardens behind them. But then he drove out into a bright square, on which there was a long pond with a canopy, a church with a blue statue of the Madonna above the portal, several houses still inhabited, and in front, already at the exit, an inn. There, on the lower floor, the small windows were lit, and the Moroccan, already dozing, woke up and pulled on the reins, which made the limping horse thump cheerfully on the bumpy stones of the square.
235 words.
It was the beginning of April. Twilight deepened imperceptibly to the eye. The poplars that lined the highway, the white, low houses with tiled roofs on the sides of the road, the figures of rare passers-by - everything turned black, lost color and perspective; all objects turned into black flat silhouettes, but their outlines stood with charming clarity in the swarthy air. To the west, outside the city, the dawn burned. As if into the mouth of a red-hot volcano, burning with liquid gold, heavy gray clouds fell down and glowed with blood-red, and amber, and violet lights. And above the volcano rose like a dome upwards, turning green with turquoise and aquamarine, the gentle evening spring sky.
Walking slowly along the highway, dragging his feet with difficulty in huge galoshes, Romashov gazed relentlessly at this magical fire. As always, since childhood, behind the bright evening dawn, he seemed to see some kind of mysterious, luminous life. Exactly there, far, far beyond the clouds and beyond the horizon, a wonderful, dazzlingly beautiful city blazed under the sun invisible from here, hidden from eyes by clouds imbued with inner fire. There, pavements of golden tiles sparkled with an intolerable brilliance, bizarre domes and towers with purple roofs rose, diamonds sparkled in the windows, bright multi-colored flags fluttered in the air. And it seemed that joyful, jubilant people live in this distant and fabulous city, whose whole life is like sweet music, in whom even thoughtfulness, even sadness is charmingly tender and beautiful. They walk through shining squares, through shady gardens, between flowers and fountains, they walk, god-like, bright, full of indescribable joy, knowing no barriers in happiness and desires, not overshadowed by either sorrow, or shame, or care ...
233 words.
The blizzard dispersed even stronger in the evening. Outside, someone furiously threw handfuls of fine, dry snow at the windows. The nearby forest murmured and hummed with a continuous, hidden, dull menace.
The wind climbed into the empty rooms and into the howling chimneys, and the old house, all shaky, full of holes, dilapidated, was suddenly enlivened by strange sounds, to which I listened with involuntary anxiety. It was as if something in the white hall sighed, sighed deeply, intermittently, sadly. Here the rotten floorboards, dried up somewhere far away, came in and creaked under someone's heavy and noiseless steps. Then it seems to me that next to my room, in the corridor, someone carefully and persistently presses the doorknob and then, suddenly furious, rushes around the house, madly shaking all the shutters and doors, or, climbing into the chimney, whines so plaintively , boring and incessant, now raising her voice ever higher, ever thinner, to a plaintive screech, then lowering it down to an animal growl. Sometimes, from God knows where, this terrible visitor burst into my room, ran a sudden cold down my back and shook the flame of a lamp that shone dimly under a green paper lampshade that was burnt on top.
A strange, vague unease came over me. Here, I thought, I was sitting on a deaf and rainy winter night in a dilapidated house, in the middle of a village, lost in forests and snowdrifts, hundreds of miles from city life, from society, from women's laughter, from human conversation ... And I began to imagine, that for years and decades this rainy evening will drag on, it will drag on until my death, and the wind will roar outside the windows in the same way, the lamp under the wretched green lampshade will burn just as dimly, I will walk up and down my room just as anxiously .
262 words
In the most deaf, remote thicket of the Troskino aspen forest, a peasant worked; he held an ax in both hands and chopped off the tall brushwood bushes that choked the forest in this place with an impenetrable clearing. It was winter time, cold; The man was stocking up on fuel. About five paces from him stood a tall cart harnessed to a well-fed piebald nag; in the distance, to the right, through the bare boughs of the trees, a half-naked boy could be seen climbing to the top of an old aspen crowned with jackdaw nests. Judging by the fallen face of the peasant, the hunched back and the faded gray eyes, one could safely give him fifty or even fifty-five years of age: he was tall, poor in chest, lean, with a sparse pale yellow beard, in which gray hair often showed through, and the same hair. The clothes on him corresponded perfectly to his appearance: everything was extremely flabby and dilapidated, from a fur hat to a short sheepskin sheepskin coat, belted with braid. The cold was strong; despite the fact that sweat was running down the peasant's face in copious streams; the work seemed to suit his heart. All around in the forest there was dead silence; the seal of a deep, severe autumn lay on everything: the leaves from the trees fell and covered the solidified earth in wet piles; bare trunks of trees were black everywhere, in places reddish bushes of willow and honeysuckle peeped out from behind them. To one side, a pit with stagnant water was covered with emerald mold: the water spider no longer glided over it, the croaking of the green frog did not resound; only mossy boughs sticking out, plastered with slimy mud, and a rotten, recently fallen birch trunk, mixed up with faded burdock and long shaggy grasses.
259 words.
The world opened up to Aksinya in its secret sound: green, with white lining, ash leaves and molded, in patterned carvings, oak leaves rustled in the wind; from the thickets of young aspen floated a continuous rumble; far, far away, indistinctly and sadly, the cuckoo counted the unlived years for someone; a crested lapwing flying over the lake insistently asked: “Whose are you, whose are you?” Some tiny gray bird a few steps from Aksinya was drinking water from the road rut, throwing back its head and screwing up its eye sweetly; velvety dusty bumblebees buzzed; swarthy wild bees swayed on the corollas of meadow flowers. They broke loose and carried a fragrant "flap" into the shady cool hollows. Juice dripped from the poplar branches. And from under the hawthorn bush oozed the musty and tart scent of rotting last year's foliage.
Aksinya, sitting motionless, inhaled the varied smells of the forest insatiably. Filled with a wonderful and many-voiced sound, the forest lived a powerful, primordial life. The floodplain soil of the meadow, abundantly saturated with spring moisture, swept and grew such a rich variety of herbs that Aksinya's eyes were lost in this most wonderful plexus of flowers and herbs.
Smiling and silently moving her lips, she carefully sorted through the stalks of nameless blue, modest flowers, then leaned over to sniff, and suddenly caught the lingering and sweet aroma of lily of the valley. Fumbling around with her hands, she found it. It grew right there, under a shady bush. Broad, once green leaves still jealously guarded from the sun a short hunchbacked stalk crowned with snow-white drooping cups of flowers.
207 words M. BUT. Sholokhov
Nowhere, no one has yet described in detail the "field" work of a folklorist; Few people know that it is as exciting as the search for an archaeologist or exploration geologist, and besides, it is extremely diverse in methods, and finally, it is often tense and impetuous.
Archaeologists operate in calmer conditions: fragments of wooden buildings, utensils, weapons that have lain in the ground for millennia will not change in a few years, and if there is no reason to be afraid of accidental excavations, the expedition can even be postponed for a year or more. And folklorists can never wait: folklore treasures are constantly, literally before our eyes, changing, and often forgotten, disappearing without a trace and irretrievably. Full of amazing cultural values, "folk mounds" melt like piles of snow in spring.
In his search, the folklorist has to constantly "reincarnate" and act either as an investigator, or as a tracker. To be in turn both a musicologist, and a literary critic, and an ethnographer, and a choreographer. The folklorist must be a tireless walker and technician, observer and experimenter.
The first stage of his work is the search for "rich deposits" of folklore. In the past, about two hundred years ago, when the first collections of folk songs were created, the search for material did not hinder the collectors. Every village was filled with folklore; then they simply took what “went into hands” itself, selecting the most popular or what could count on the greatest success in the city.
A century later, in the middle of the 19th century, the first tireless folklorist walkers appeared, like the famous song collector Pavel Yakushkin. Moving from village to village, they everywhere recorded songs (so far - only words), and fairy tales, and folk sayings, and conspiracies, and epics, and spiritual verses.
231 words. L. Kulakovsky
Original - layout and computer layout.
