The story contains memories young dreamer fascinated by the sea. It tells about events and people, each of which influenced further fate young sailor.
Among them are relatives and friends of the protagonist and amazing people who met on life path hero. These people are simple at first glance, whether they are a boatman, a midshipman or a cab driver, but they delighted the hero, excited his childish imagination. People and events are intertwined with detailed description the magnificent nature of the Caucasus, sea adventures and travels in the impenetrable dense forest.
Picture or drawing Tale of life
Other retellings for the reader's diary
- Summary of Gogol Notes of a Madman
An official of the 9th grade Poprishchin Aksenty Ivanovich painfully tries to understand: why is he a titular adviser, and not, say, a count?
- Summary of Venus of Illes Merimee
One lover of antiquity decided to visit a small town, he was accompanied by a Catalan. On the way, they started talking and the scientist learned that Mr. Peyrehorade, to whom he was going, should have a wedding the other day.
- Summary Paustovsky Storyteller
- Summary In the first circle Solzhenitsyn
The action of the novel "In the First Circle", written in 1958, takes place in Moscow in 1949. In the center of the plot is an extraordinary act of one of the heroes - Innokenty Volodin. As a Soviet diplomat
- Summary Schwartz Shadow
The protagonist of the work of E. Schwartz Shadow is a young scientist caught in the center of events. The hero is named Christian Theodore. He studies history. In the hotel he settles in former number Andersen
distant years
My life, or did you dream of me?
Sergey YeseninFather's death
I was a high school student in the last class of the Kyiv gymnasium when a telegram arrived that my father was dying in the Gorodishche estate, near the White Church.
The next day I arrived at Belaya Tserkov and stayed with an old friend of my father, the head of the post office, Feoktistov. He was a long-bearded, short-sighted old man in thick glasses, in a shabby post office jacket with crossed copper horns and zippers on the buttonholes.
March ended. It drizzled rain. The bare poplars stood in the mist.
Feoktistov told me that during the night the ice broke on the stormy river Ros. The estate where my father was dying stood on an island in the middle of this river, twenty versts from Belaya Tserkov. A stone dam led to the estate across the river - rowing.
Hollow water is now flowing through the rowing shaft, and no one, of course, will agree to transport me to the island, even the most desperate joker - a cabby.
Feoktistov pondered for a long time which of the Belaya Tserkov cab drivers was the most desperate. In the semi-dark living room, Feoktistov's daughter, the schoolgirl Zina, was diligently playing the piano. The ficus leaves trembled from the music. I looked at the pale, squeezed slice of lemon on a saucer and was silent.
Well, let's call Bregman, the inveterate old man, - Feoktistov finally decided. “The devil himself is not his brother.
Soon, the driver Bregman, “the most inveterate old man” in Belaya Tserkov, entered Feoktistov’s office, littered with volumes of the Niva in gold-embossed bindings. He was a stout dwarf Jew with a sparse beard and blue cat eyes. His weathered cheeks turned red like heavenly apples. He twirled a small whip in his hand and listened mockingly to Feoktistov.
Oh, misfortune! he finally said in a falsetto. - Oh, trouble, pane Feoktistov! My fiton is light, and the horses are weak. Gypsy horses! They won't pull us over the row. The horses will drown, and the fiton, and the young man, and the old joker. And no one will even print about this death in " Kievan thought". That's what I can't bear, pan Feoktistov. And of course you can go. Why not go? You yourself know that the life of a joker is worth only three karbovanets - I will not swear that five or, let's say, ten.
Thank you, Bregman, - said Feoktistov. - I knew you would agree. You are the bravest person in the White Church. For this, I will write you a Niva before the end of the year.
Well, if I'm so brave, - Bregman squeaked, grinning, - so you'd better write me "Russian invalid". There, at least, I read about the cantonists and the Knights of St. George. In an hour the horses will be at the porch, sir.
Bregman left.
In the telegram I received in Kyiv, there was a strange phrase: "Bring a priest or a priest from Belaya Tserkov - it doesn't matter who, as long as he agrees to go."
I knew my father, and therefore this phrase disturbed and embarrassed me. The father was an atheist. He had constant clashes because of ridicule of priests and priests with my grandmother, a Polish woman, fanatical, like almost all Polish women.
I guessed that my father's sister, Feodosia Maksimovna, or, as everyone called her, Aunt Dozya, had insisted on the priest's arrival.
She denied all church rites, except for the absolution of sins. The Bible was replaced by Shevchenko's "Kobzar" hidden in a shackled chest, the same yellowed and dripped with wax as the Bible. Aunt Dozya got him out occasionally at night, read Katerina by candlelight, and kept wiping her eyes with a dark handkerchief.
She mourned the fate of Katerina, similar to her own. In the damp grove behind the hut, the grave of her son, the “little lad”, who died many years ago, when Aunt Dozya was still very young, was green. This boy was, as they said then, her "illegitimate" son.
A loved one deceived Aunt Dozya. He abandoned her, but she was faithful to him to death and kept waiting for him to return to her, for some reason he would certainly be sick, a beggar, offended by life, and she, scolding him properly, would finally shelter and warm him.
None of the priests agreed to go to Gorodische, pleading sickness and deeds. Only the young priest agreed. He warned me that we would go to the church to get the holy gifts for the communion of the dying, and that it was impossible to talk to the person who was carrying the holy gifts.
The priest was wearing a black long coat with a velvet collar and a strange, also black, round hat.
It was dark and cold in the church. Hanging at the foot of the crucifix were hanging very red paper roses. Without candles, without the ringing of bells, without the peals of organ, the church resembled a theatrical backstage in the dull daylight.
At first we drove in silence. Only Bregman smacked and urged the bony bay horses. He shouted at them, as all jokers shout: not “but”, but “vie!”. The rain rumbled in the low gardens. The priest held a monstrance wrapped in black twill. My gray gymnasium greatcoat was wet and blackened.
In the smoke of the rain rose, it seemed - to the very sky, the famous Alexandrian gardens of Countess Branitskaya. These were vast gardens, equal in size, as Feoktistov told me, to Versailles. The snow melted in them, clouding the trees with a cold steam. Bregman, turning around, said that there were wild deer in these gardens.
Mickiewicz was very fond of these gardens,” I said to the priest, forgetting that he must be silent all the way.
I wanted to say something nice to him in gratitude for agreeing to this difficult and dangerous trip. The priest smiled back.
There was rainwater in the muddy fields. Flying jackdaws were reflected in it. I turned up the collar of my overcoat and thought about my father, about how little I knew him. He was a statistician and served almost all his life in various railways- Moscow-Brest, Petersburg-Warsaw, Kharkov-Sevastopol and South-West.
We often moved from city to city - from Moscow to Pskov, then to Vilna, then to Kyiv. Everywhere the father did not get along with the authorities. He was a very proud, hot and kind person.
A year ago, my father left Kyiv and joined the statistician at the Bryansk plant in the Oryol province. After serving for a short time, my father unexpectedly, for no apparent reason, left the service and left for the old grandfather's estate Gorodishche. His brother Ilko, a village teacher, and aunt Dozya lived there.
The inexplicable act of my father embarrassed all the relatives, but most of all my mother. She lived at that time with my older brother in Moscow.
A month after his arrival in Gorodishche, his father fell ill and is now dying.
The road went down a ravine. At the end of it was the persistent sound of water. Bregman fidgeted on the box.
Rowing opened suddenly around the corner. The priest got up and grabbed Bregman by the red, faded sash.
The water rushed easily, squeezed by granite rocks. In this place, the river Ros broke through, raging, through the Avratyn mountains. Water went through the stone dam in a transparent shaft, fell down with a roar and drizzled with cold dust.
Across the river, on the other side of the rowing, as if huge poplars were flying up to the sky and a small house was white. I recognized the manor on the island where I lived in early childhood, - its levadas and wattle fences, yokes of crane wells and rocks near the shore. They cut the river water into separate mighty streams. From these rocks, my father and I used to catch mustachioed minnows.
Bregman stopped the horses near rowing, tears, straightened the harness with a whip, looked at his carriage in disbelief and shook his head. Then for the first time the priest broke his vow of silence.
Uh! Bregman replied. - How do I know how? Sit still. Because the horses are already shaking.
The bay horses, with their muzzles upturned, snoring, entered the swift water. She roared and pushed the light carriage to the unfenced edge of the row. The carriage went sideways, askew, gnashing iron tires. The horses trembled, rested, almost lay down on the water so that it would not knock them down. Bregman twirled his whip over his head.
In the middle of rowing, where the water flowed most strongly and even rang, the horses stopped. Foamy waterfalls beat around them thin legs. Bregman cried out in a weeping voice and began whipping the horses mercilessly. They backed away and moved the carriage to the very edge of the row.
Then I saw Uncle Ilko. He rode a gray horse from the estate to rowing. He was shouting something and waving a bundle of thin rope over his head.
He rode into the rowing and threw a rope at Bregman. Bregman hurriedly tied him somewhere under the goats, and three horses - two bay and a gray one - finally dragged the carriage to the island.
The priest crossed himself wide catholic cross. Bregman winked at Uncle Ilko and said that for a long time people would remember such a joker as old Bregman, and I asked how his father was.
Still alive, - answered Ilko and kissed me, scratching his beard. - Waiting. And where is mother - Maria Grigorievna?
I sent her a telegram to Moscow. Must be coming tomorrow.
Uncle Ilko looked at the river.
It's coming, he said. - Bad, my dear Kostya. Well, maybe it will. Let's go!
Aunt Dozya met us on the porch, all in black, with dry, weepy eyes.
The stuffy rooms smelled of mint. I did not immediately recognize my father in the yellow old man, overgrown with gray bristles. My father was only fifty years old. I always remembered him a little stooped, but slender, graceful, dark-haired, with his unusual sad smile and gray attentive eyes.
Now he was sitting in an armchair, breathing hard, looking at me without stopping, and a tear slipped down his dry cheek. It got stuck in her beard, and Aunt Dozy wiped it off with a clean handkerchief.
The father could not speak. He was dying of throat cancer. I spent the whole night sitting next to my father. Everyone was asleep. The rain is over. The stars burned gloomily outside the windows. The river roared louder and louder. The water rose quickly. Bregman and the priest were unable to cross back and got stuck on the island.
In the middle of the night, my father stirred, opened his eyes. I leaned towards him. He tried to wrap his arms around my neck, but he couldn't, and said in a whistling whisper:
I'm afraid ... will destroy you ... spinelessness.
No, I replied quietly. - It will not happen.
You will see your mother, - his father whispered. - I am guilty before her ... Let her forgive ...
He paused and squeezed my hand weakly.
I did not understand his words then, and only much later, after many years, did their bitter meaning become clear to me. Also, much later, I realized that my father was, in fact, not a statistician at all, but a poet.
At dawn, he died, but I did not immediately guess about it. I thought he fell asleep peacefully.
On the island we lived old grandfather Nechipor. He was called to read the Psalter over his father.
Nechipor often interrupted his reading to go out into the hallway to smoke shag. There he whispered to me simple stories that shocked his imagination: about the bottle of wine he drank last summer in Belaya Tserkov, about the fact that he saw Skobelev himself under Plevna so close, “like before that fence”, and about the amazing American winnowing machine, powered by a lightning rod. Grandfather Nechipor was, as they said on the island, " easy man"- a liar and a talker.
He read the Psalter all day and all the next night, picking off the soot from the candle with his black nails, fell asleep standing up, snoring, and, waking up, again muttered inaudible prayers.
At night, on the other side of the river, someone started waving a lantern and screaming. I went ashore with Uncle Ilko. The river roared. The water flowed through the rowing like a cold waterfall. The night was late, deaf, not a single star was overhead. The wild freshness of the flood, the thawed earth, blew in my face. And all the time someone waved a lantern on the other side and shouted, but the words could not be made out over the noise of the river.
It must be Mom, - I said to Uncle Ilko.
But he didn't answer me.
Let's go," he said after a pause. - It's cold on the beach. You'll catch a cold.
I didn't want to go into the house. Uncle Ilko was silent a little longer and left, and I stood and looked at the distant lantern. The wind blew stronger and stronger, swaying the poplars, carrying from somewhere the sweetish smoke of straw.
In the morning my father was buried. Nechipor and Uncle Ilko dug a grave in a grove on the edge of a ravine. From there the forests beyond Ros' and the whitish March sky could be seen far away.
The coffin was carried out of the house on wide embroidered towels. A priest walked ahead. He looked straight ahead with gray calm eyes and spoke Latin prayers in an undertone.
When the coffin was carried out onto the porch, I saw on the other side of the river an old carriage, horses unharnessed and tied to it, and a little woman in black - my mother. She stood motionless on the shore. She saw from there how her father was carried out. Then she knelt down and dropped her head on the sand.
A tall, skinny driver approached her, leaned over her and said something, but she still lay motionless.
Then she jumped up and ran along the shore to row. The driver grabbed her. She sank helplessly to the ground and covered her face with her hands.
Father was carried along the road to the grove. At the turn I looked back. Mother sat still, covering her face with her hands.
Everyone was silent. Only Bregman patted his boot with a whip.
Near the grave, the priest raised his gray eyes to the cold sky and distinctly and slowly said in Latin:
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis!
“Give them eternal rest and eternal light, O Lord!”
The priest fell silent and listened. The river roared, and tits whistled overhead in the branches of old elms. The priest sighed and again spoke of the eternal yearning for happiness and the valley of tears. These words were surprisingly suited to the life of my father. My heart sank from them. Later on I often experienced this oppression of the heart, faced with the thirst for happiness and with the imperfection of human relationships.
The river roared, birds whistled cautiously, and the coffin, showering damp earth and rustling, slowly lowered into the grave on towels.
I was then seventeen years old.
- How did the narrator's meeting with the garde-marine take place? Tell the whole episode close to the text and find in the text words that emphasize the benevolence of the midshipman, who noticed, understood, and supported the teenager's passion for the sea.
- How did the meeting with the midshipman affect the dream and the storyteller's games? Did she show the boy's creative nature or was it clear before?
- The narrator compiled a list of steamboats " consonant names". Why did he consider the names he chose "sonorous"? Can you explain this?
- Tell, keeping the dialogues, about how the narrator acquired "a habit to the sea." Try to imagine yourself in the same situation. What do you think you would experience?
- The chapter "What Paradise Looks Like" is dedicated to both the sea and the mountains of the Caucasus. How can you explain its name? Does it apply to both the sea and the mountains, or just the mountains? After all, the phrase about paradise was uttered by a cab driver who drove vacationers to the mountains. material from the site
Chapter - part big book memoirs of the writer. In Gelendzhik, for the first time, he saw and fell in love with the sea and there he fell in love with the mountains. Of course, only the mountains and their surroundings could look like paradise. But the feeling of delight that the surroundings aroused in the hero embraced, of course, everything that he managed to see and learn, master in this new and wonderful world.
- The author writes: "Since then, in my imagination, I have become the owner of another magnificent country - the Caucasus." Is there at least one “magnificent country” in your imagination? Could you tell about it, embellishing your story with descriptions and narrative, and then with reasoning that will help you understand its features?
Let's follow how the narrator saw his hero: “A tall midshipman with a tanned, calm face walked easily along the alley. A straight black broadsword hung from his lacquered belt. Black ribbons with bronze anchors fluttered in the calm wind. He was all in black. Only the bright gold of the stripes set him off strict form". The midshipman passed by, and the narrator followed him. The midshipman noticed this and looked back, then looked back again. Finally, he stopped and called his unexpected companion. Of course, he immediately understood everything: "Everything is clear: he dreams of being a sailor."
The creative nature and rich imagination of the narrator were immediately obvious - they were already expressed in what kind of dream he cherished and how he reacted to the appearance of the midshipman. But after this meeting, the narrator came up with difficult game. He composed long list steamships from sonorous names: "Polar Star", "Walter Scott", "Khingan", "Sirius". Then he came up with a list of flights for his ships and followed their "movements". This required serious knowledge, and the narrator read numerous reference books.
In addition to those names that we gave above, there were "Admiral Istomin", "Flying Dutchman". All these names were, of course, very sonorous, that is, they were immediately remembered, were associated with people or events that are known to everyone. Such names, as it were, cast a glimpse of fame on the ships themselves. By the way, we can say that the one who invented them was a very well-read person.
Gelendzhik was "a dusty and hot town without any vegetation." But it had a very beautiful bay. And the elderly boatman Anastas helped our hero get used to the sea: he went with him quite far out to sea and showed what his boat was capable of. At the same time, the sail tilted, and the boat rushed so that the water rushed past at the level of the side. The horror and delight of the boy were boundless, and, according to Anastas, he acquired "a habit to the sea."
In the imagination of every reader, probably, there is such a country. For example, in one family there are two such territories - Bezhin meadow in the Oryol region and the Georgian Military Road in the Caucasus, which they visited in different years. One girl from childhood fell in love with Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin places. It is worth remembering these memorable places and discuss them with classmates.
Didn't find what you were looking for? Use the search
On this page, material on the topics:
- Questions and answers to the story The Tale of Life author Paustovsky
- a story about life how do you explain why in the chapter on paradise part 2
- What does Paustovsky paradise look like
- paustovsky story about life who called the mountain paradise? how do you explain this assertion of the carrier?
- Paustovsky midshipman
One spring I was sitting in the Mariinsky Park and reading Stevenson's Treasure Island. Sister Galya sat nearby and also read. Her summer hat with green ribbons lay on the bench. The wind stirred the ribbons, Galya was short-sighted, very trusting, and it was almost impossible to get her out of a good-natured state.
It had rained in the morning, but now the clear spring sky shone above us. Only belated drops of rain fell from the lilacs.
A girl with bows in her hair stopped in front of us and started jumping over the rope. She made it difficult for me to read. I shook the lilac. A little rain fell noisily on the girl and on Galya. The girl stuck her tongue out at me and ran away, while Galya shook the raindrops off the book and continued to read.
And at that moment I saw a man who poisoned me for a long time with dreams of my unrealizable future.
A tall midshipman with a tanned, calm face walked lightly along the alley. A straight black broadsword hung from his lacquered belt. Black ribbons with bronze anchors fluttered in the quiet wind. He was all in black. Only the bright gold of the stripes set off his strict form.
In overland Kyiv, where we hardly saw sailors, it was a stranger from a distant legendary world winged ships, the frigate Pallas, from the world of all oceans, seas, all port cities, all winds and all the charms that were associated with the picturesque work of navigators. An old broadsword with a black hilt seemed to have appeared in the Mariinsky Park from the pages of Stevenson.
The midshipman passed by, crunching on the sand. I got up and followed him. Due to myopia, Galya did not notice my disappearance.
All my dream of the sea was embodied in this man. I often imagined the seas, foggy and golden from the evening calm, distant voyages, when the whole world is replaced, like a fast kaleidoscope, behind the windows of the porthole. My God, if someone would have guessed to give me at least a piece of petrified rust, beaten off from an old anchor! I would keep it like a treasure.
The midshipman looked back. On the black ribbon of his peakless cap, I read the mysterious word: "Azimuth." Later I learned that this was the name of the training ship of the Baltic Fleet.
I followed him along Elizavetinskaya Street, then along Institutskaya and Nikolaevskaya. The midshipman saluted the infantry officers gracefully and casually. I was ashamed in front of him for these baggy Kyiv warriors.
Several times the midshipman looked back, but at the corner of Meringovskaya he stopped and called me.
Boy, he asked mockingly, why were you trailing me in tow?
I blushed and didn't answer.
Everything is clear: he dreams of being a sailor, - the midshipman guessed, speaking for some reason about me in the third person.
Let's get to Khreshchatyk.
We went side by side. I was afraid to raise my eyes and saw only the midshipman's strong boots polished to an incredible shine.
On Khreshchatyk, the midshipman went with me to the Semadeni coffee shop, ordered two servings of pistachio ice cream and two glasses of water. We were served ice cream on a small three-legged marble table. It was very cold and covered with figures: stock exchange dealers gathered at Semadeni and counted their profits and losses on the tables.
We ate ice cream in silence. The midshipman took from his wallet a photograph of a magnificent corvette with sailing equipment and a wide pipe and handed it to me.
Take it as a memento. This is my ship. I rode it to Liverpool.
He shook my hand firmly and left. I sat for a while longer, until the sweaty neighbors in the boater began to look back at me. Then I awkwardly got out and ran to the Mariinsky Park. The bench was empty. Galya left. I guessed that the midshipman took pity on me, and for the first time I learned that pity leaves a bitter residue in the soul.
After this meeting, the desire to become a sailor tormented me for many years. I rushed to the sea. The first time I saw him briefly was in Novorossiysk, where I went for a few days with my father. But that wasn't enough.
For hours I sat over the atlas, examined the coasts of the oceans, looked for unknown seaside towns, capes, islands, estuaries.
I came up with a difficult game. I made a long list of steamships with sonorous names: the Polar Star, the Walter Scott, the Khingan, the Sirius. This list is growing every day. I was the owner of the largest fleet in the world.
Of course, I was sitting in my shipping office, in the smoke of cigars, among colorful posters and timetables. Wide windows overlooked, of course, the embankment. The yellow masts of steamships stuck out near the windows, and good-natured elms rustled behind the walls. The steamer's smoke flew freely through the windows, mingling with the smell of rotten brine and new, cheerful matting.
I came up with a list of amazing voyages for my steamboats. There was not the most forgotten corner of the earth, wherever they went. They even visited the island of Tristan da Cunha.
I rented boats from one voyage and sent them to another. I followed the navigation of my ships and knew unmistakably where the Admiral Istomin was today, and where Flying Dutchman”: Istomin loads bananas in Singapore, and Flying Dutchman unloads flour in the Faroe Islands.
In order to manage such a vast shipping enterprise, I needed a lot of knowledge. I read guidebooks, ship handbooks and everything that had even a remote connection with the sea.
That was the first time I heard the word “meningitis” from my mother.
He will go to god knows what with his games, - my mother once said. - As if all this did not end with meningitis.
I heard that meningitis is a disease of boys who have learned to read too early. So I just chuckled at my mother's fears.
It all ended with the fact that the parents decided to go with the whole family for the summer to the sea.
Now I guess that my mother hoped to cure me of my excessive passion for the sea with this trip. She thought that I would be disappointed, as I always do, at a direct encounter with what I so passionately sought in my dreams. And she was right, but only partly.
One day, my mother solemnly announced that one of these days we were leaving for the Black Sea for the whole summer, in small town Gelendzhik, near Novorossiysk.
Couldn't have chosen best place than Gelendzhik, in order to disappoint me in my passion for the sea and the south.
Gelendzhik was then a very dusty and hot town without any vegetation. All the greenery for many kilometers around was destroyed by the cruel Novorossiysk winds - the Nord-Osts. Only thorny bushes of the tree and stunted acacia with yellow dry flowers grew in the front gardens. From high mountains sultry. At the end of the bay, a cement plant smoked.
But the Gelendzhik bay was very good. In its clear and warm water they swam like roses and blue flowers, big jellyfish. Spotted flounders and goby-eyed gobies lay on the sandy bottom. The surf washed ashore with red algae, rotten balber floats from fishing nets, and pieces of dark green bottles rolled by the waves.
The sea after Gelendzhik has not lost its charm for me. It only became simpler and therefore more beautiful than in my fancy dreams.
In Gelendzhik, I became friends with an elderly boatman, Anastas. He was a Greek, originally from the city of Volo. He had a new sailboat, white with a red keel and grating washed to gray.
Anastas rode summer residents on a boat. He was famous for his dexterity and composure, and my mother sometimes let me go alone with Anastas.
Once Anastas came out of the bay with me into the open sea. I will never forget the horror and delight that I experienced when the sail, inflated, heeled the boat so low that the water rushed at the level of the side. Noisy huge shafts rolled towards them, translucent with greenery and dousing their faces with salty dust.
I grabbed the shrouds, I wanted to go back to the shore, but Anastas, clamping the pipe between his teeth, purred something, and then asked:
How much did your mom pay for these dudes? Hey good dudes!
He nodded at my soft Caucasian shoes - dudes. My legs were trembling. I didn't answer. Anastas yawned and said:
Nothing! small shower, warm shower. You will dine with gusto. No need to ask - eat for mom and dad!
He turned the boat casually and confidently. She scooped up water, and we rushed into the bay, diving and jumping out on the crests of the waves. They left from under the stern with a menacing noise. My heart sank and died.
Suddenly Anastas began to sing. I stopped shaking and listened to this song in bewilderment:
From Batum to Sukhum - Ai-wai-wai!
From Sukhum to Batum - Ai-wai-wai!
A boy was running, dragging a box - Ai-wai-wai!
The boy fell, broke the box - Ai-wai-wai!
To this song, we lowered the sail and with acceleration quickly approached the pier, where the pale mother was waiting. Anastas picked me up, put me on the pier and said:
Now you have it salty, madam. Already has a habit to the sea.
Once my father hired a ruler, and we drove from Gelendzhik to the Mikhailovsky Pass.
At first, the gravel road went along the slope of bare and dusty mountains. We passed bridges over ravines where there was not a drop of water. On the mountains all day, clinging to the peaks, the same clouds of gray dry cotton wool lay.
I was thirsty. The red-haired Cossack driver turned around and told me to wait until the pass - there I would get drunk and tasty. cold water. But I didn't trust the driver. The dryness of the mountains and the lack of water frightened me. I longingly looked at the dark and fresh strip of the sea. You couldn't drink from it, but at least you could swim in its cool water.
The road rose higher and higher. Suddenly, a breath of freshness hit our face.
The most pass! - said the driver, stopped the horses, got down and put iron brakes under the wheels.
From the crest of the mountain we saw huge and dense forests. They waved over the mountains to the horizon. In some places, red granite cliffs protruded from the greenery, and in the distance I saw a peak burning with ice and snow.
Nord-Ost does not reach here, - said the driver. - It's heaven!
The line began to descend. Immediately a thick shadow covered us. In the impenetrable thicket of trees we heard the murmur of water, the whistle of birds and the rustle of leaves stirred by the midday wind.
The lower we descended, the denser the forest became and the shadier the Road. A clear stream was already running along its side. He washed colorful stones, touched with his jet purple flowers and made them bow and tremble, but he could not tear them off the rocky ground and carry them down into the gorge with him.
Mom took water from the stream in a mug and gave me a drink. The water was so cold that the mug was immediately covered with sweat.
It smells like ozone, - said the father.
I took a deep breath. I did not know what it smelled like around, but it seemed to me that I was heaped with a pile of branches moistened with fragrant rain.
Creepers clung to our heads. And here and there, on the slopes of the road, some shaggy flower poked out from under the stone and looked with curiosity at our line and at the gray horses, who lifted their heads and performed solemnly, as in a parade, so as not to break loose and roll the line.
There the lizard! Mom said. Where?
Over there. Do you see the hazel? And to the left is a red stone in the grass. See above. Do you see the yellow halo? This is an azalea. A little to the right of the azaleas, on a fallen beech, near the very root. There, you see, such a shaggy red root in the dry earth and some tiny blue colors? So next to him.
I saw a lizard. But while I found it, I made a wonderful journey through hazel, redstone, azalea flower and fallen beech.
“So this is what it is, the Caucasus!” I thought.
Here is paradise! repeated the driver, turning off the highway into a grassy narrow clearing in the forest. - Now let's unharness the horses, we'll swim.
We drove into such a thicket and the branches hit us so hard in the face that we had to stop the horses, get off the line and continue on foot. The line moved slowly behind us.
We came to a clearing in a green gorge. Like white islands, crowds of tall dandelions stood in the lush grass. Under thick beeches we saw an old empty barn. He stood on the bank of a noisy mountain stream. She tightly poured transparent water over the stones, hissed and dragged away many air bubbles along with the water.
While the driver was unharnessing and walking with my father for brushwood for the fire, we washed ourselves in the river. Our faces burned with heat after washing.
We wanted to immediately go up the river, but my mother spread a tablecloth on the grass, took out provisions and said that until we had eaten, she would not let us go anywhere.
I ate ham sandwiches and cold rice porridge with raisins, choking, but it turned out that I was in no hurry - the stubborn copper kettle did not want to boil on the fire. It must be because the water from the river was completely icy.
Then the kettle boiled so unexpectedly and violently that it flooded the fire. We drank strong tea and began to rush father to go to the forest. The driver said that we must be on our guard, because there are many wild boar. He explained to us that if we see small holes dug in the ground, then these are the places where the boars sleep at night.
Mom was agitated - she could not go with us, she had shortness of breath - but the driver reassured her, noting that the boar had to be teased on purpose so that he would rush at the man.
We went up the river. We made our way through the thicket, stopping every minute and calling each other to show granite pools carved by the river - trout swept in with blue sparks - huge green beetles with long whiskers, foamy grumbling waterfalls, horsetails taller than our height, thickets of forest anemones and clearings with peonies.
Borya came across a small dusty pit that looked like a baby bath. We walked carefully around it. Obviously, this was the place where the wild boar spent the night.
The father went ahead. He started calling us. We made our way to it through the buckthorn, bypassing the huge mossy boulders.
Father was standing near a strange building, overgrown with blackberries. Four smoothly hewn gigantic stones were covered, like a roof, by the fifth hewn stone. It turned out to be a stone house. There was a hole punched in one of the side stones, but so small that even I could not fit through it. There were several such stone buildings around.
These are dolmens, - said the father. - Ancient burial grounds of the Scythians. Or maybe they are not burial grounds at all. Until now, scientists cannot find out who, for what and how built these dolmens.
I was sure that dolmens are the dwellings of long-extinct dwarf people. But I did not tell my father about this, since Borya was with us: he would have ridiculed me.
We returned to Gelendzhik completely burned by the sun, drunk from fatigue and forest air. I fell asleep and through my sleep I felt a breath of heat over me, and heard the distant murmur of the sea.
Since then, in my imagination, I have become the owner of another magnificent country - the Caucasus. The passion for Lermontov, abreks, Shamil began. Mom was worried again.
Now in adulthood, I gratefully recall my childhood hobbies. They taught me a lot.
But I was not at all like the noisy and carried away boys choking with saliva from excitement, who give no rest to anyone. On the contrary, I was very shy and with my hobbies I did not pester anyone.
One spring I was sitting in the Mariinsky Park and reading Stevenson's Treasure Island. Sister Galya sat nearby and also read. Her summer hat with green ribbons lay on the bench. The wind stirred the ribbons, Galya was short-sighted, very trusting, and it was almost impossible to get her out of a good-natured state.
It had rained in the morning, but now the clear spring sky shone above us. Only belated drops of rain fell from the lilacs.
A girl with bows in her hair stopped in front of us and started jumping over the rope. She made it difficult for me to read. I shook the lilac. A little rain fell noisily on the girl and on Galya. The girl stuck her tongue out at me and ran away, while Galya shook the raindrops off the book and continued to read.
And at that moment I saw a man who poisoned me for a long time with dreams of my unrealizable future.
A tall midshipman with a tanned, calm face walked lightly along the alley. A straight black broadsword hung from his lacquered belt. Black ribbons with bronze anchors fluttered in the quiet wind. He was all in black. Only the bright gold of the stripes set off his strict form.
In overland Kiev, where we hardly saw sailors, it was a stranger from the distant legendary world of winged ships, the Pallada frigate, from the world of all oceans, seas, all port cities, all winds and all the charms that were associated with the picturesque work of seafarers . An old broadsword with a black hilt seemed to have appeared in the Mariinsky Park from the pages of Stevenson.
The midshipman passed by, crunching on the sand. I got up and followed him. Due to myopia, Galya did not notice my disappearance.
All my dream of the sea was embodied in this man. I often imagined the seas, foggy and golden from the evening calm, distant voyages, when the whole world is replaced, like a fast kaleidoscope, behind the windows of the porthole. My God, if someone would have guessed to give me at least a piece of petrified rust, beaten off from an old anchor! I would keep it like a treasure.
The midshipman looked back. On the black ribbon of his peakless cap, I read the mysterious word: "Azimuth." Later I learned that this was the name of the training ship of the Baltic Fleet.
I followed him along Elizavetinskaya Street, then along Institutskaya and Nikolaevskaya. The midshipman saluted the infantry officers gracefully and casually. I was ashamed in front of him for these baggy Kyiv warriors.
Several times the midshipman looked back, but at the corner of Meringovskaya he stopped and called me.
Boy, he asked mockingly, why were you trailing me in tow?
I blushed and didn't answer.
Everything is clear: he dreams of being a sailor, - the midshipman guessed, speaking for some reason about me in the third person.
Let's get to Khreshchatyk.
We went side by side. I was afraid to raise my eyes and saw only the midshipman's strong boots polished to an incredible shine.
On Khreshchatyk, the midshipman went with me to the Semadeni coffee shop, ordered two servings of pistachio ice cream and two glasses of water. We were served ice cream on a small three-legged marble table. It was very cold and covered with figures: stock exchange dealers gathered at Semadeni and counted their profits and losses on the tables.
We ate ice cream in silence. The midshipman took from his wallet a photograph of a magnificent corvette with sailing equipment and a wide pipe and handed it to me.
Take it as a memento. This is my ship. I rode it to Liverpool.
He shook my hand firmly and left. I sat for a while longer, until the sweaty neighbors in the boater began to look back at me. Then I awkwardly got out and ran to the Mariinsky Park. The bench was empty. Galya left. I guessed that the midshipman took pity on me, and for the first time I learned that pity leaves a bitter residue in the soul.
After this meeting, the desire to become a sailor tormented me for many years. I rushed to the sea. The first time I saw him briefly was in Novorossiysk, where I went for a few days with my father. But that wasn't enough.
For hours I sat over the atlas, examined the coasts of the oceans, looked for unknown seaside towns, capes, islands, estuaries.
I came up with a difficult game. I made a long list of steamships with sonorous names: the Polar Star, the Walter Scott, the Khingan, the Sirius. This list is growing every day. I was the owner of the largest fleet in the world.
Of course, I was sitting in my shipping office, in the smoke of cigars, among colorful posters and timetables. Wide windows overlooked, of course, the embankment. The yellow masts of steamships stuck out near the windows, and good-natured elms rustled behind the walls. The steamer's smoke flew freely through the windows, mingling with the smell of rotten brine and new, cheerful matting.
I came up with a list of amazing voyages for my steamboats. There was not the most forgotten corner of the earth, wherever they went. They even visited the island of Tristan da Cunha.
I rented boats from one voyage and sent them to another. I followed the navigation of my ships and knew unmistakably where the Admiral Istomin was today and where the Flying Dutchman was: the Istomin was loading bananas in Singapore, and the Flying Dutchman was unloading flour on the Faroe Islands.
In order to manage such a vast shipping enterprise, I needed a lot of knowledge. I read guidebooks, ship handbooks and everything that had even a remote connection with the sea.
That was the first time I heard the word “meningitis” from my mother.
He will go to god knows what with his games, - my mother once said. - As if all this did not end with meningitis.
I heard that meningitis is a disease of boys who have learned to read too early. So I just chuckled at my mother's fears.
It all ended with the fact that the parents decided to go with the whole family for the summer to the sea.
Now I guess that my mother hoped to cure me of my excessive passion for the sea with this trip. She thought that I would be disappointed, as I always do, at a direct encounter with what I so passionately sought in my dreams. And she was right, but only partly.
One day, my mother solemnly announced that the other day we were leaving for the Black Sea for the whole summer, to the small town of Gelendzhik, near Novorossiysk.
Perhaps it was impossible to choose a better place than Gelendzhik in order to disappoint me in my passion for the sea and the south.
Gelendzhik was then a very dusty and hot town without any vegetation. All the greenery for many kilometers around was destroyed by the cruel Novorossiysk winds - the Nord-Osts. Only thorny bushes of the tree and stunted acacia with yellow dry flowers grew in the front gardens. From the high mountains it was hot. At the end of the bay, a cement plant smoked.
But the Gelendzhik bay was very good. In its clear and warm water, large jellyfish swam like pink and blue flowers. Spotted flounders and goby-eyed gobies lay on the sandy bottom. The surf washed ashore with red algae, rotten balber floats from fishing nets, and pieces of dark green bottles rolled by the waves.
The sea after Gelendzhik has not lost its charm for me. It only became simpler and therefore more beautiful than in my fancy dreams.
In Gelendzhik, I became friends with an elderly boatman, Anastas. He was a Greek, originally from the city of Volo. He had a new sailboat, white with a red keel and grating washed to gray.
Anastas rode summer residents on a boat. He was famous for his dexterity and composure, and my mother sometimes let me go alone with Anastas.
Once Anastas came out of the bay with me into the open sea. I will never forget the horror and delight that I experienced when the sail, inflated, heeled the boat so low that the water rushed at the level of the side. Noisy huge shafts rolled towards them, translucent with greenery and dousing their faces with salty dust.
I grabbed the shrouds, I wanted to go back to the shore, but Anastas, clamping the pipe between his teeth, purred something, and then asked:
How much did your mom pay for these dudes? Hey good dudes!
He nodded at my soft Caucasian shoes - dudes. My legs were trembling. I didn't answer. Anastas yawned and said:
Nothing! Small shower, warm shower. You will dine with gusto. No need to ask - eat for mom and dad!
He turned the boat casually and confidently. She scooped up water, and we rushed into the bay, diving and jumping out on the crests of the waves. They left from under the stern with a menacing noise. My heart sank and died.
Suddenly Anastas began to sing. I stopped shaking and listened to this song in bewilderment:
From Batum to Sukhum - Ai-wai-wai!
From Sukhum to Batum - Ai-wai-wai!
A boy was running, dragging a box - Ai-wai-wai!
The boy fell, broke the box - Ai-wai-wai!
To this song, we lowered the sail and with acceleration quickly approached the pier, where the pale mother was waiting. Anastas picked me up, put me on the pier and said:
Now you have it salty, madam. Already has a habit to the sea.
Once my father hired a ruler, and we drove from Gelendzhik to the Mikhailovsky Pass.
At first, the gravel road went along the slope of bare and dusty mountains. We passed bridges over ravines where there was not a drop of water. On the mountains all day, clinging to the peaks, the same clouds of gray dry cotton wool lay.
I was thirsty. The red-haired Cossack driver turned around and told me to wait until the pass - there I would drink tasty and cold water. But I didn't trust the driver. The dryness of the mountains and the lack of water frightened me. I longingly looked at the dark and fresh strip of the sea. You couldn't drink from it, but at least you could swim in its cool water.
The road rose higher and higher. Suddenly, a breath of freshness hit our face.
The most pass! - said the driver, stopped the horses, got down and put iron brakes under the wheels.
From the crest of the mountain we saw huge and dense forests. They waved over the mountains to the horizon. In some places, red granite cliffs protruded from the greenery, and in the distance I saw a peak burning with ice and snow.
Nord-Ost does not reach here, - said the driver. - It's heaven!
The line began to descend. Immediately a thick shadow covered us. In the impenetrable thicket of trees we heard the murmur of water, the whistle of birds and the rustle of leaves stirred by the midday wind.
The lower we descended, the denser the forest became and the shadier the Road. A clear stream was already running along its side. He washed multi-colored stones, touched purple flowers with his jet and made them bow and tremble, but he could not tear them off the rocky ground and take them down into the gorge with him.
Mom took water from the stream in a mug and gave me a drink. The water was so cold that the mug was immediately covered with sweat.
It smells like ozone, - said the father.
I took a deep breath. I did not know what it smelled like around, but it seemed to me that I was heaped with a pile of branches moistened with fragrant rain.
Creepers clung to our heads. And here and there, on the slopes of the road, some shaggy flower poked out from under the stone and looked with curiosity at our line and at the gray horses, who lifted their heads and performed solemnly, as in a parade, so as not to break loose and roll the line.
There the lizard! Mom said. Where?
Over there. Do you see the hazel? And to the left is a red stone in the grass. See above. Do you see the yellow halo? This is an azalea. A little to the right of the azaleas, on a fallen beech, near the very root. There, you see such a shaggy red root in dry earth and some tiny blue flowers? So next to him.
I saw a lizard. But while I found it, I made a wonderful journey through hazel, redstone, azalea flower and fallen beech.
“So this is what it is, the Caucasus!” I thought.
Here is paradise! repeated the driver, turning off the highway into a grassy narrow clearing in the forest. - Now let's unharness the horses, we'll swim.
We drove into such a thicket and the branches hit us so hard in the face that we had to stop the horses, get off the line and continue on foot. The line moved slowly behind us.
We came to a clearing in a green gorge. Like white islands, crowds of tall dandelions stood in the lush grass. Under thick beeches we saw an old empty barn. He stood on the bank of a noisy mountain stream. She tightly poured transparent water over the stones, hissed and dragged away many air bubbles along with the water.
While the driver was unharnessing and walking with my father for brushwood for the fire, we washed ourselves in the river. Our faces burned with heat after washing.
We wanted to immediately go up the river, but my mother spread a tablecloth on the grass, took out provisions and said that until we had eaten, she would not let us go anywhere.
I ate ham sandwiches and cold rice porridge with raisins, choking, but it turned out that I was in no hurry - the stubborn copper kettle did not want to boil on the fire. It must be because the water from the river was completely icy.
Then the kettle boiled so unexpectedly and violently that it flooded the fire. We drank strong tea and began to rush father to go to the forest. The driver said that we must be on our guard, because there are many wild boars in the forest. He explained to us that if we see small holes dug in the ground, then these are the places where the boars sleep at night.
Mom was agitated - she could not go with us, she had shortness of breath - but the driver reassured her, noting that the boar had to be teased on purpose so that he would rush at the man.
We went up the river. We made our way through the thicket, stopping every minute and calling each other to show granite pools carved by the river - trout swept in with blue sparks - huge green beetles with long whiskers, foamy grumbling waterfalls, horsetails taller than our height, thickets of forest anemones and clearings with peonies.
Borya came across a small dusty pit that looked like a baby bath. We walked carefully around it. Obviously, this was the place where the wild boar spent the night.
The father went ahead. He started calling us. We made our way to it through the buckthorn, bypassing the huge mossy boulders.
Father was standing near a strange building, overgrown with blackberries. Four smoothly hewn gigantic stones were covered, like a roof, by the fifth hewn stone. It turned out to be a stone house. There was a hole punched in one of the side stones, but so small that even I could not fit through it. There were several such stone buildings around.
These are dolmens, - said the father. - Ancient burial grounds of the Scythians. Or maybe they are not burial grounds at all. Until now, scientists cannot find out who, for what and how built these dolmens.
I was sure that dolmens are the dwellings of long-extinct dwarf people. But I did not tell my father about this, since Borya was with us: he would have ridiculed me.
We returned to Gelendzhik completely burned by the sun, drunk from fatigue and forest air. I fell asleep and through my sleep I felt a breath of heat over me, and heard the distant murmur of the sea.
Since then, in my imagination, I have become the owner of another magnificent country - the Caucasus. The passion for Lermontov, abreks, Shamil began. Mom was worried again.
Now, in adulthood, I gratefully recall my childhood hobbies. They taught me a lot.
But I was not at all like the noisy and carried away boys choking with saliva from excitement, who give no rest to anyone. On the contrary, I was very shy and with my hobbies I did not pester anyone.
