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A FANTASY (translated by Fainna Glagoleva)
Origin: "Алые паруса"
Alexander Grin, "The Seeker of Adventure, Selected Stories",
М., Прогресс, 1978, 484 с.
OCR: Ivi
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Presented and dedicated to Nina Nikolayevna Grin
by the AUTHOR
November 23,' 1922 Petrograd
Longren, a sailor of the Orion, a rugged, three-hundred ton brig on
which he had served for ten years and to which he was attached more strongly
than some sons are to their mothers, was finally forced to give up the sea.
This is how it came about. During one of his infrequent visits home he
did not, as he always had, see his wife Mary from afar, standing on the
doorstep, throwing up her hands and then running breathlessly towards him.
Instead, he found a distraught neighbour woman by the crib, a new piece of
furniture in his small house.
"I tended her for three months, neighbour," the woman said. "Here's
your daughter."
Longren's heart was numb with grief as he bent down and saw an
eight-month-old mite peering intently at his long beard. Then he sat down,
stared at the floor and began to twirl his moustache. It was wet as from the
rain.
"When did Mary die?" he asked.
The woman recounted the sad tale, interrupting herself to coo fondly at
the child and assure him that Mary was now in Heaven. When Longren learned
the details, Heaven seemed to him not much brighter than the woodshed, and
he felt that the light of a plain lamp, were the three of them together now,
would have been a joy unsurpassed to the woman who had gone on to the
unknown Beyond.
About three months previously the young mother's finances had come to
an abrupt end. At least half of the money Longren had left her was spent on
doctors after her difficult confinement and on caring for the newborn
infant; finally, the loss of a small but vital sum had forced Mary to appeal
to Menners for a loan. Menners kept a tavern and shop and was considered a
wealthy man. Mary went to see him at six o'clock in the evening. It was
close to seven when the neighbour woman met her on the road to Liss. Mary
had been weeping and was very upset. She said she was going to town to pawn
her wedding ring. Then she added that Menners had agreed to lend her some
money but had demanded her love in return. Mary had rejected him.
"There's not a crumb in the house," she had said to the neighbour.
"I'll go into town. We'll manage somehow until my husband returns."
It was a cold, windy evening. In vain did the neighbour try to talk the
young woman out of going to Liss when night was approaching. "You'll get
wet, Mary. It's beginning to rain, and the wind looks as if it will bring on
a storm."
It was at least a three hours' brisk walk from the seaside village to
town, but Mary did not heed her neighbour's advice. "I won't be an eyesore
to you any more," she said. "As it is, there's hardly a family I haven't
borrowed bread, tea or flour from. I'll pawn my ring, and that will take
care of everything." She went into town, returned and the following day took
to her bed with a fever and chills; the rain and the evening frost had
brought on double pneumonia, as the doctor from town, called in by the
kind-hearted neighbour, had said. A week later there was an empty place in
Longren's double bed, and the neighbour woman moved into his house to care
for his daughter. She was a widow and all alone in the world, so this was
not a difficult task. "Besides," she added, "the baby fills my days."
Longren went off to town, quit his job, said goodbye to his comrades
and returned home to raise little Assol. The widow stayed on in the sailor's
house as a foster mother to the child until she had learned to walk well,
but as soon as Assol stopped falling when she raised her foot to cross the
threshold, Longren declared that from then on he intended to care for the
child himself and, thanking the woman for her help and kindness, embarked on
a lonely widower's life, focusing all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories
on the little girl.
Ten years of roaming the seas had not brought him much of a fortune. He
began to work. Soon the shops in town were offering his toys for sale,
finely-crafted small model boats, launches, one and two-deck sailing
vessels, cruisers and steamboats; in a word, all that he knew so well and
that, owing to the nature of the toys, partially made up for the hustle and
bustle of the ports and the adventures of a life at sea. In this way Longren
earned enough to keep them comfortable. He was not a sociable man, but now,
after his wife's death, he became something of a recluse. He was sometimes
seen in a tavern of a holiday, but he would never join anyone and would down
a glass of vodka at the bar and leave with a brief: "yes", "no", "hello",
"goodbye", "getting along", in reply to all his neighbours' questions and
greetings. He could not stand visitors and would get rid of them without
resorting to force, yet firmly, by hints and excuses which left the former
no choice but to invent a reason that prevented them from remaining further.
He, in turn, visited no one; thus, a wall of cold estrangement rose up
between him and his fellow-villagers, and if Longren's work, the toys he
made, had depended in any way on village affairs, he would have felt most
keenly the consequences of this relationship. He bought all his wares and
provisions in town, and Menners could not even boast of a box of matches he
had sold to Longren. Longren did all his own housework and patiently learned
the difficult art, so unusual for a man, of rearing a girl.
Assol was now five, and her father was beginning to smile ever more
gently as he looked upon her sensitive, kind little face when she sat in his
lap and puzzled over the mystery of his buttoned waistcoat or sang sailors'
chants, those wild, wind-blown rhymes. When sung by a child, with a lisp
here and there, the chants made one think of a dancing bear with a pale blue
ribbon around its neck. At about this time something occurred that, casting
its shadow upon the father, shrouded the daughter as well.
It was spring, an early spring as harsh as winter, but still unlike it.
A biting North off-shore wind whipped across the cold earth for about three
weeks.
The fishing boats, dragged up onto the beach, formed a long row of dark
keels which seemed like the backbones of some monstrous fish on the white
sand. No one dared to venture out to sea in such weather. The single village
street was deserted; the cold whirlwind, racing down from the hills along
the shore and off towards the vacant horizon, made the "open air" a terrible
torture. All the chimneys of Kaperna smoked from dawn till dusk, shaking the
smoke out over the steep roofs.
However, the days of the fierce North wind enticed Longren out of his
cozy little house more often than did the sun, which cast its coverlets of
spun gold over the sea and Kaperna on a clear day. Longren would go to the
very end of the long wooden pier and there he would smoke his pipe at
length, the wind carrying off the smoke, and watch the sandy bottom, bared
near the shore when the waves retreated, foam up in grey froth that barely
caught up with the waves whose rumbling progress towards the black, stormy
horizon filled the space between with flocks of weird, long-maned creatures
galloping off in wild abandon to their distant point of solace. The moaning
and the noise, the crashing thunder of the huge, upthrusted masses of water
and the seemingly visible currents of wind that whipped across the
vicinity--for so forceful was its unhampered course -- produced that
dulling, deafening sensation in Longren's tortured soul which, reducing
grief to undefin-able sadness, is equal in its effect to deep slumber.
On one such day Menners' twelve-year-old son Hin, noticing that his
father's boat was being buffeted against the piles under the pier and that
its sides were becoming battered, went off to tell his father of this. The
storm had but recently begun; Menners had forgotten to pull his boat up on
the sand. He hurried to the beach where he saw Longren standing at the end
of the pier with his back to him, smoking. There was not another soul in
sight. Menners walked halfway along the pier, climbed down into the wildly
splashing water and untied his boat; then, standing upright in it he began
moving towards the shore, pulling himself along from one pile to the next.
He had forgotten his oars, and as he stumbled and missed his hold on the
next pile, a strong gust of wind pulled the prow of his boat away from the
pier and towards the ocean. Now Menners could not have reached the nearest
pile even if he had stretched out to his full length. The wind and the
waves, rocking the boat, were carrying it off into the distance and doom.
Menners realized his predicament and wanted to dive into the water and swim
ashore, but this decision was too late in coming, for the boat was now
spinning about near the end of the pier where the considerable depth and
raging waves promised imminent death. There were only about twenty metres
between Longren and Menners, who was being swept off into the stormy
distance, and a rescue was still possible, for a coiled rope with a weighted
end hung on the pier beside Longren. The rope was there for any boat that
might land during a storm and was thrown to the boat from the pier.
"Longren!" Menners cried in terror. "Don't just stand there! Can't you
see I'm being carried away? Throw me the line!"
Longren said nothing as he gazed calmly upon the frantic man, although
he puffed harder on his pipe and then, to have a better view of what was
happening, removed it from his mouth.
"Longren!" Menners pleaded. "I know you can hear me. I'll be drowned!
Save me!"
But Longren said not a word; it seemed as though he had not heard the
frantic wail. He did not even shift his weight until the boat had been
carried so far out to sea that Menners' word-cries were barely audible.
Menners sobbed in terror, he begged the sailor to run to the fishermen
for help; he promised him a reward, he threatened and cursed him, but all
Longren did was walk to the very edge of the pier so as not to loose the
leaping, spinning boat from view too soon.
"Longren, save me!" The words came to him as they would to someone
inside a house from someone on the roof.
Then, filling his lungs with air and taking a deep breath so that not a
single word would be carried away by the wind, Longren shouted: "That's how
she pleaded with you! Think of it, Menners, while you're still alive, and
don't forget!"
Then the cries stopped, and Longren went home. Assol awakened to see
her rather sitting lost in thought before the lamp that was now burning low.
Hearing the child's voice calling to him, he went over to her, kissed her
affectionately and fixed the tumbled blanket.
"Go to sleep, dear. It's still a long way till morning," he said.
"What are you doing?"
"I've made a black toy, Assol. Now go to sleep."
The next day the village buzzed with the news of Menners'
dissappearance. Five days later he was brought back, dying and full of
malice. His story soon reached every village in the vicinity. Menners had
been in the open sea until evening; he had been battered against the sides
and bottom of the boat during his terrible battle with the crashing waves
that constantly threatened to toss the raving shopkeeper into the sea and
was picked up by the Lucretia, plying towards Kasset. Exposure and the
nightmare he had experienced put an end to Menners' days. He did not live a
full forty-eight hours, calling down upon Longren every calamity possible on
earth and in his imagination. Menners' story of the sailor watching his
doom, having refused him help, the more convincing since the dying man could
barely breathe and kept moaning, astounded the people of Kaperna. To say
nothing of the fact that hardly a one of them would remember an insult even
greater than the one inflicted upon Longren or to grieve as he was to grieve
for Mary till the end of his days--they were repulsed, puzzled and stunned
by Longren's silence. Longren had stood there in silence until those last
words he had shouted to Menners; he had stood there without moving, sternly
and silently, as a judge, expressing his utter contempt of Menners--there
was something greater than hatred in his silence and they all sensed this.
If he had shouted, expressed his gloating through gesture or bustling
action, or had in any other way shown his triumph at the sight of Menners'
despair, the fishermen would have understood him, but he had acted
differently than they would have -- he had acted impressively and strangely
and had thus placed himself above them -- in a word, he had done that which
is not forgiven. No longer did anyone salute him in the street or offer him
his hand, or cast a friendly glance of recognition and greeting his way.
From now and to the end he was to remain aloof from the affairs of the
village; boys catching sight of him in the street would shout after him:
"Longren drowned Menners!" He paid no attention to this. Nor did it seem
that he noticed the fact that in the tavern or on the beach among the boats
the fishermen would stop talking in his presence and would move away as from
someone who had the plague. The Menners' affair had served to strengthen
their formerly partial alienation. Becoming complete, it created an
unshakeable mutual hatred, the shadow of which fell upon Assol as well.
The little girl grew up without friends. The two or three dozen
children of her age in the village, which was saturated like a sponge is
with water with the crude law of family rule, the basis of which is the
unquestioned authority of the parents, imitative like all children in the
world, excluded little Assol once and for all from the circle of their
protection and interest. Naturally, this came about gradually, through the
admonitions and scolding of the adults, and assumed the nature of a terrible
taboo which, increased by idle talk and rumour, burgeoned in the children's
minds to become a fear of the sailor's house.
Besides, the secluded life Longren led now gave vent to the hysterical
tongues of gossip; it was implied that the sailor had murdered someone
somewhere and that, they said, was why he was no longer signed up on any
ship, and he was so sullen and unsociable because he was "tormented by a
criminal conscience". When playing, the children would chase Assol away if
she came near, they would sling mud at her and taunt her by saying that her
father ate human flesh and was now a counterfeiter. One after another her
naive attempts at making friends ended in bitter tears, bruises, scratches
and other manifestations of public opinion; she finally stopped feeling
affronted, but would still sometimes ask her father:
"Why don't they like us? Tell me."
"Ah, Assol, they don't know how to like or love. One must be able to
love, and that is something they cannot do."
"What do you mean by 'be able to'?"
"This!"
At which he would swing the child up and fondly kiss her sad eyes which
she would shut tight with sweet pleasure.
Assol's favourite pastime was to climb up on her father's lap of an
evening or on a holiday, when he had set aside his pots of glue, his tools
and unfinished work and, having taken off his apron, sat down to rest, pipe
clenched between his teeth. Twisting and turning within the protective
circle of her father's arm, she would finger the various parts of the tovs,
questioning him as to the purpose of each. Thus would begin a peculiar,
fantastic lecture on life and people -- a lecture in which, due to Longren's
former way of life, all sorts of chance occurrences and chance in general,
strange, amazing and unusual events, were given a major role. As Longren
told his daughter the names of the various ropes, sails and rigging, he
would gradually become carried away, progressing from simple explanations to
various episodes in which now a windlass, now a rudder and now a mast, or
this or the other type of craft and such like had played a part, and from
these isolated illustrations he would go on to sweeping descriptions of
nautical wanderings, interweaving superstition with reality and reality with
images created by his imagination. Herein appeared the tiger cat, that
herald of shipwreck, the talking flying fish which one had to obey on pain
of losing one's course, and the Flying Dutchman and his wild crew, signs,
ghosts, mermaids and pirates -- in a word, all the fables that help a sailor
while away the time during a calm spell or in some favourite tavern. Longren
also spoke of shipwrecked crews, of men who had become savages and had
forgotten how to talk, of mysterious buried treasure, of convict mutinies,
and of much else which the little girl listened to more raptly than did,
perhaps, Columbus' first audience to his tale of a new continent. "Tell me
more," Assol pleaded when Longren, lost in thought, would fall silent, and
she would fall asleep on his breast with a head full of wonderful dreams.
The appearance of the clerk from the toy shop in town, which was glad
to buy whatever Longren had made, was a great and always a materially
important treat to her. In order to get into the father's good graces and
strike a good bargain, the clerk would bring along a couple of apples, a bun
and a handfull of nuts for the girl. Longren usually asked for the true
price of a toy, for he detested bargaining, but the clerk would lower the
price. "Why," Longren would say, "i1'5 taken me a week to make this boat.
(The boat was five inches long.) See how strong and trim it is, and mark the
draught. Why, it'll hold fifteen men in a storm." In the end, the little
girl's soft murmurings and fussing with her apple would weaken Longren's
determination and desire to argue; he would give in, and the clerk, having
filled his basket with well-made, excellent toys, would leave, laughing up
his sleeve.
Longren did all the work about the house himself: he chopped wood,
carried water, made the stove, cooked, washed clothes and ironed and,
besides, found time to earn their keep. When Assol was eight years old her
father taught her to read and write. He began taking her to town now and
then, and after a while even sent her alone if he had to borrow some money
from the shop or had some new toys to deliver. This did not happen often,
although Liss was only four miles from Kaperna, but the road lay through the
forest, and there is much in a forest that can frighten a child beside the
actual physical danger which, it is true, one would hardly find in such
close proximity to a town, but should still keep in mind. That was why
Longren would let her go to town alone only on fine days, in the morning,
when the woods along the road were filled with showers of sunshine, flowers
and stillness, so that Assol's impressionability was not threatened by any
phantoms conjured up by her imagination.
One day, in the middle of such a journey to town, the child sat down by
the roadside to have a bun she had brought along for her lunch. As she
munched on the bun she picked up each toy in turn; two or three were new to
her: Longren had made them during the night. One of the new toys was a
miniature racing yacht; the little white craft had crimson sails made of
scraps of silk which Longren used to cover the cabin walls in toys intended
for wealthy customers. Here, however, having completed the yacht, he had not
found any suitable cloth for the sails and had used what had come to hand --
some scraps of crimson silk. Assol was delighted. The flaming, cheerful
colour burned so brightly in her hand she fancied she was holding fire. A
stream straddled by a little bridge of nailed poles crossed the road; to the
right and left the stream flowed off into the forest. "If I put it in the
water for just a little while it won't get wet," Assol was thinking, "and
then I can wipe it dry." She went off downstream into the forest a ways, and
carefully placed the boat that had caught her fancy into the stream at the
water's edge; the clear water immediately reflected the crimson of the
sails; the light streaming through the cloth lay as a shimmering pink glow
upon the white stones of the bottom. "Where'd you come from, Captain?" Assol
inquired in a most serious voice of an imaginary character and, answering
her own question, replied, "I've come from.... from ... from China." "And
what have you brought?" "That's something I shan't tell you." "Oh, so you
won't, Captain? Well then, back into the basket you go." Just as the captain
was about to repent and say he had only been teasing, and would gladly show
her an elephant, the mild backlash of a wave that had washed against the
bank turned the yacht's bow into the stream and, like a real vessel, it left
the bank at full speed and sailed off with the current. The scale of her
surroundings changed instantly: the stream now seemed like a great river to
the child, and the yacht a large, distant vessel towards which, nearly
falling into the water, she stretched forth her hands in dumb terror. "The
captain got frightened," she decided and ran after the disappearing toy,
hoping that it would be washed up on the bank farther on. As she hastened
along, dragging the light but cumbersome basket, Assol kept repeating,
"Goodness! How could it have happened? What an accident...." Trying not to
lose sight of the beautiful triangle of the sails that was drifting off so
gracefully, she stumbled, fell, and ran on again.
Never before had Assol ventured so far into the woods. Being completely
absorbed by an impatient desire to catch up with the toy, she paid no
attention to her surroundings; there were more than enough obstacles on the
bank to claim her attention as she scurried along. Mossy trunks of fallen
trees, pits, tall-standing ferns, briar roses, jasmine and hazel bushes
blocked her every step; in overcoming them she gradually tired, stopping
ever more often to catch her breath or brush a wisp of clinging cobweb from
her face. When, in the wider stretches, there appeared thickets of sedge and
reeds, Assol nearly lost sight of the crimson-gleaming sails, but hurrying
round a bend she would catch sight of them again, running with the wind so
majestically and steadfastly. Once she looked back, and the great mass of
the forest with its many hues, changing from the hazy columns of light in
the leaves to the dark slashes of dense gloom, astounded her. For a moment
she became frightened, but then recalled the toy and, letting out several
deep "phew's", ran on as fast as she could.
Nearly an hour passed in this futile and frantic chase, and then Assol
was surprised and relieved to see the trees part widely up ahead, letting in
a blue expanse of sea, clouds and the edge of a sandy yellow bluff onto
which she came running, nearly dropping from exhaustion. This was the mouth
of the little river; spreading here, not broadly, and shallowly, so that the
streaming blue of the rocks on the bottom could be seen, it disappeared into
the oncoming waves of the sea. Standing at the edge of the low, root-gnarled
bluff, Assol saw a man sitting on a large, flat stone by the stream with his
back to her, holding the runaway yacht and turning it in his hands with the
curiosity of an elephant that had caught a butterfly. Somewhat calmed by the
sight of the rescued toy, Assol slid down the slope, came up beside the
stranger and studied him closely while waiting for him to raise his head.
However, the stranger was so absorbed in examining the forest's surprise
that the child had a chance to inspect him from head to toe, deciding that
never before had she ever seen anyone like him.
The man was in fact Egle, the well-known collector of songs, legends
and fairy-tales, who was on a walking tour. His grey locks fell in waves
from under his straw hat; his grey blouse tucked into his blue trousers and
his high boots made him look like a hunter; his white collar, tie,
silver-studded belt, walking stick and leather pouch with the shiny,
nickel-plated buckle showed him to be a city-dweller. His face, if one can
call a face a nose, lips and eyes that peep out of a bushy, spiked beard and
luxuriant, fiercely twirled moustache, would have seemed flabbily
translucent, if not for the eyes that were as grey as sand and as shiny as
pure steel, with a gaze that was bold and powerful.
"Now give it back," the little girl said timidly. "You've played with
it long enough. How did you catch it?"
Egle looked up and dropped the yacht, for Assol's excited voice had
broken the stillness so unexpectedly. For a moment the old man gazed at her,
smiling and slowly running his beard through his large, curled hand. An
oft-washed little cotton dress just barely covered the girl's skinny,
sunburned knees. Her thick dark hair tied up in a lace kerchief had got
undone and fell to her shoulders. Every one of Assol's features was
finely-chiselled and as delicate as a swallow's flight. There was a sad,
questioning look in her dark eyes which seemed older than her face; its
irregular oval was touched with the lovely sunburn peculiar to a healthy
whiteness of the skin. Her small parted lips were turned up in a gentle
smile.
"I swear by the Brothers Grimm, Aesop and Andersen," Egle said, looking
from the girl to the yacht, "that there's something very special here!
Listen, you, flower! This is yours, isn't it?"
"Yes. I ran all the way down along the stream after it; I thought I'd
die. Did it come here?"
"Right to my feet. The shipwreck has made it possible for me, acting as
an off-shore pirate, to present you with this prize. The yacht, abandoned by
its crew, was tossed up on the beach by a three-inch wave -- landing between
my left heel and the tip of my stick." He thumped his stick. "What's your
name, child?"
"Assol," the girl replied, tucking the toy Egle had handed her into the
basket.
"That's fine." The old man continued his obscure speech, never taking
his eyes, in the depths of which a kindly, friendly chuckle glinted, from
her. "Actually, I shouldn't have asked you your name. I'm glad it's such an
unusual one, so sibilant and musical, like the whistle of an arrow or the
whispering of a seashell; what would I have done if your name had been one
of those pleasant but terribly common names which are so alien to Glorious
Uncertainty? Still less do I care to know who you are, who your parents are,
or what sort of life you lead. Why break the spell? I was sitting here on
this stone comparing Finnish and Japanese story plots ... when suddenly the
stream washed up this yacht, and then you appeared. Just as you are. I'm a
poet at heart, my dear, even though I've never written anything. What's in
your basket?"
"Boats," Assol said, shaking the basket, "and a steamship, and three
little houses with flags. Soldiers live in them."
"Excellent. You've been sent to sell them. And on the way you stopped
to play. You let the yacht sail about a bit, but it ran off instead. Am I
right?"
"Were you watching?" Assol asked doubtfully as she tried to recall
whether she had not told him about it herself. "Did somebody tell you? Or
did you guess?"
"I knew it."
"How?"
"Because I'm the greatest of all magicians."
Assol was embarrassed; the tension she felt at these words of Egle's
overstepped fear. The deserted beach, the stillness, the tiring adventure of
the yacht, the strange speech of the old man with the glittering eyes, the
magnificence of his beard and hair now seemed to the child as a brew of the
supernatural and reality. If Egle had grimaced or shouted now, the child
would have raced off, weeping and faint from fear. However, upon noticing
how wide her eyes had grown, Egle made a sharp turn.
"You've no reason to be afraid of me," he said in a serious voice. "On
the contrary, I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you."
Now at last did he see what it was in her face that had struck him so.
"An unwitting expectation of the beautiful, of a blissful fate," he decided.
"Ah, why wasn't I born a writer? What a wonderful theme for a story."
"Now then," Egle continued, trying to round off his original thesis (a
penchant for myth-making--the result of his everyday work--was greater than
the fear of tossing seeds of great dreams upon unknown soil), "now then,
Assol, listen carefully. I've just been in the village you are probably
coming from; in a word, in Kaperna. I like fairy-tales and songs, and I
spent the whole day in that village hoping to hear something no one had
heard before. But no one in these parts tells fairy-tales. No one here sings
songs. And if they do tell stories and sing songs, you know, they are tales
about conniving peasants and soldiers, with the eternal praise of roguery,
they are as filthy as unwashed feet and as crude as a rumbling stomach,
these short, four-line ditties sung to a terrible tune.... Wait, I've got
carried away. I'll start again."
He was silent for a while and then continued thus:
"I don't know how many years will pass, but a fairy-tale will blossom
in Kaperna and will remain in the minds of the people for long. You'll be
grown-up then, Assol. One morning a crimson sail will gleam in the sun on
the far horizon. The shimmering pile of crimson sails on a white ship will
head straight towards you, cutting through the waves. This wonderful ship
will sail in silently; there will be no shouting or salvoes; a great crowd
will gather on the beach. Everyone will be amazed and astounded; and you'll
be there, too. The ship will sail majestically up to the very shore to the
strains of beautiful music; a swift boat decked out in rugs, flowers and
gold will be lowered from the ship. "Why have you come? Whom are you
searching for?" the people on the beach will say. Then you'll see a brave
and handsome prince; he'll be standing there and stretching forth his hands
towards you. "Hello, Assol!" he'll say. "Far, far away from here I saw you
in a dream and have come to take you away to my kingdom forever. You will
live with me there in a deep rose valley. You shall have everything your
heart desires; we shall be so happy together your soul will never know the
meaning of tears or sadness." He'll take you into his boat, bring you to the
ship, and you'll sail away forever to a glorious land where the sun comes up
and where the stars will descend from the sky to greet you upon your
arrival."
"And will it all be for me?" the girl asked softly.
Her grave eyes became merry and shone trustingly. Obviously, no
dangerous magician would ever speak thus; she came closer.
"Maybe it's already come ... that ship?"
"Not so fast," Egle objected. "First, as I've said, you have to grow
up. Then ... what's the use of talking? It will be, and that's all there is
to it. What will you do then?"
"Me?" She looked into the basket but apparently did not find anything
there worthy of being a suitable reward. "I'd love him," she said quickly
and then added rather hesitantly, "if he won't fight."
"No, he won't," the magician said, winking at her mysteriously. "He
won't. I can vouch for it. Go, child, and don't forget what I've told you
between two sips of flavoured vodka and my musings over the songs of
convicts. Go. And may there be peace for your fluffy head!"
Longren was working in his small garden, hilling the potato plants.
Raising his head, he saw Assol, who was running towards him with a joyous,
impatient look on her face.
"Listen..." she said, trying to control her rapid breathing and
clutching her father's apron with both hands. "Listen to what I'm going to
tell you.... On the beach there, far away, there's a magician...."
She began her tale by telling him of the magician and his wonderful
prophesy. Her excitement made it hard for her to recount the events
coherently. She then proceeded to describe the magician and, in reverse
order, her chase after the runaway yacht.
Longren listened to her story without once interrupting and without a
smile, and when she ended it his imagination quickly conjured up a picture
of the stranger, an old man holding a flask of flavoured vodka in one hand
and the toy in the other. He turned away, but recalling that at momentous
times of a child's life one had to be serious and amazed, nodded solemnly
and uttered:
"I see.... It looks like he really is a magician. I'd like to have a
look at him.... But when you go again, don't turn off the road: it's easy to
get lost in the woods."
He laid aside his hoe, sat down by the low wattle fence and took the
child onto his lap. She was terribly tired and tried to add a few more
details, but the heat, excitement and exhaustion made her drowsy. Her lids
drooped, her head leaned against her father's hard shoulder, and in another
instant she would have been carried off to the Land of Nod, when abruptly,
perturbed by sudden doubt, Assol sat up straight with her eyes still shut
and, thrusting her little fists at Longren's waistcoat, exclaimed:
"Do you think the magical ship will really come for me?"
"It'll come," the sailor replied calmly. "If you've been told it will,
it means it will."
"She'll forget all about it by the time she grows up," he said to
himself, "and, meanwhile ... one should not take such a toy from you. You
will see so many sails in the future, and they will not be crimson, but
filthy and treacherous: from afar they'll seem gleaming and white, but from
close-up they'll be ragged and brazen. A traveller chose to jest with my
girl. So what? It was a kindly jest! It was a good jest! My, how tired you
are,-- half a day spent in the woods, in the heart of the forest. As for the
crimson sails, think of them as I do: you will have your crimson sails."
Assol slept. Longren took out his pipe with his free hand, lit it, and
the wind carried the smoke off through the fence into a bush that grew
outside the garden. Sitting by the bush with his back to the fence and
chewing on a slice of meat pie was a young beggar. The overheard
conversation between the father and daughter had put him in a cheerful mood,
and the smell of good tobacco had awakened the sponger in him.
"Give a poor man a smoke, sir," he said, speaking through the fence.
"Compared to yours, my tobacco is pure poison."
"I'd certainly give you some," Longren replied in an undertone, "but my
pouch is in my other pocket. And I don't want to waken my daughter."
"What a disaster, indeed! She'll wake up and go right back to sleep
again, but you'll have given a wayfarer a smoke."
"It's not as if you were all out of tobacco," Longren retorted, "and
the child's exhausted. Come by later, if you wish."
The beggar spat in disgust, hung his sack on his stick and sneered:
"Naturally, she's a princess. Filling her head with all sorts of
fairy-tale ships! You really are a queer fish, and you a man of property!"
"Listen," Longren whispered, "I think I will waken her, but it'll only
be because I'll be bashing your face in. Now get going!"
Half an hour later the beggar was seated in a tavern in the company of
a dozen fishermen. Sitting behind them, now tugging at a husband's sleeve,
now stretching a hand over a shoulder to reach for a glass of vodka--for
themselves, naturally--were some buxom women with shaggy brows. The muscles
of their arms were as big as paving stones. The beggar, fuming from the
affront, was relating his tale:
"...and he wouldn't give me a smoke. 'Now when you get to be of age,'
he says, 'a special red ship'll come for you. That's on account of how
you're fated to marry a prince. And,' he says, 'you mind what that magician
said.' But I say, 'Go on, wake her up, so's you can reach over and get your
pouch.' And, you know, he chased me halfway down the road."
"What? Who? What's he talking about?" the women's curious voices
demanded.
The fishermen turned their heads slightly to tell them what it was all
about, smiling wryly as they did:
"Longren and his daughter have become wild as animals, and maybe
they're even touched in the head, that's what the man here's saying. A
sorcerer came to see them, he says. And now they're waiting--ladies, see you
don't miss your chance! -- for a prince from some foreign land, and he'll be
sailing under crimson sails to boot!"
Three days later, as Assol was returning home from the toy shop in
town, she first heard the taunts:
"Hey, you gallows-bird! Assol! Look over here! See the crimson sails
coming in!"
The child started and involuntarily shielded her eyes as she gazed off
towards the sea. Then she turned back to where the shouting had come from;
twenty feet away she saw a group of children; they were making faces and
sticking their tongues out at her. The little girl sighed and hurried off
home.
If Caesar considered that it was better to be the first in a village
than the second in Rome, Arthur Gray did not have to envy Caesar as far as
his sagacious wish was concerned. He was born a captain, desired to be one,
and became one.
The great manor in which Gray was born was sombre inside and
magnificent without. The manor looked on flower gardens and a part of the
park. The very best imaginable tulips -- silver-blue, lavender and black
with a brush of pink -- snaked through the garden like strings of
carelessly-strewn beads. The old trees in the park slumbered in the sifting
gloom above the sedge of a meandering stream. The castle fence, for the
manor was actually a castle, was made of spiral cast-iron posts connected by
iron grillwork. Each post was crowned by a cast-iron lily blossom; on
festive occasions the cups were filled with oil and burned brightly into the
night as a far-stretching, fiery line.
Gray's parents were arrogant slaves of their social position, wealth
and the laws of that society, referring to which they could say "we". The
part of their souls that was centred on the gallery of their ancestors is
not really worth describing, while the other part--an imaginary continuation
of the gallery--began with little Gray, who was preordained to live out his
life and die in such a manner as to have his portrait hung on the wall
without detriment to the family honour. A small error had crept into the
plan, however: Arthur Gray was born with a lively spirit, and was in no way
disposed to continue the line of the family tracing.
This liveliness, this complete unorthodoxy in the boy became most
evident in his eighth year; a knightly type affected by strange impressions,
a seeker and miracle worker, that is, a person who had chosen from amongst
the countless roles in life the most dangerous and touching one--the role of
Providence, became apparent in Gray
from the time he pushed a chair up against the wall to reach a painting
of the Crucifixion and removed the nails from Christ's bloody hands, that
is, he simply covered them over with blue paint he had stolen from a house
painter. Thus altered, he found the painting to be more bearable. Carried
away by this strange occupation, he had begun covering over Christ's feet as
well, but was surprised by his father. The old man jerked the boy off the
chair by his ears and asked:
"Why have you ruined the painting?"
"I haven't ruined it."
"It is the work of a famous painter."
"I don't care. I can't allow nails to be sticking out of someone's
hands, making them bleed. I don't want it to be."
Hiding his smile in his moustache, Lionel Gray recognized himself in
his son's reply and did not punish him.
Gray diligently went about studying the castle, and his discoveries
were amazing. Thus, in the attic he came upon a knight's steel armour-junk,
books bound in iron and leather, crumbling vestments and flocks of pigeons.
In the cellar, where the wine was kept, he gleaned interesting information
about Laffitte, Madeira and sherry. Here in the murky light of the lancet
windows that were squeezed in between the slanting triangles of the stone
vaults there were large and small casks; the largest, in the shape of a flat
circle, took up all of the shorter wall of the cellar; the hundred-year-old
black oak of the cask gleamed like highly-polished wood. Paunchy green and
dark-blue bottles rested in wicker baskets among the casks. Grey fungi' on
spindly stalks grew on the stones and on the earthen floor;
everywhere--there was mould, moss dampness and a sour, stuffy smell. A great
cobweb glittered like gold in a far corner when, towards evening, the sun's
last ray searched it out. Two casks of the finest Alicant that existed in
the days of Cromwell were sunk into the ground in one spot, and the
cellar-keeper, pointing out a vacant corner to Gray, did not miss the chance
to recount the story of the famous grave in which lay a dead man more live
than a pack of fox terriers. As he began his tale, the story-teller would
never forget to check on the spigot of the large cask and would walk away
from it apparently with an easier heart, since unwonted tears of too-strong
joy glistened in his suddenly merry eyes.
"Now then," Poldichoque would say to Gray, sitting down on an empty
crate and putting a pinch of snuff up his sharp nose, "do you see that spot?
The kind of wine that's buried there would make many a drunkard agree to
having his tongue cut off if he'd be given just a little glass of it. Each
cask holds a hundred litres of a substance that makes your soul explode and
your body turn into a blob of dough. It's darker than a cherry, and it won't
pour out of a bottle. It's as thick as heavy cream. It's locked away in
casks of black oak that're as strong as iron. They have double rows of
copper hoops. And the lettering on the hoops is in Latin and says, 'A Gray
will drink me when he'll be in Heaven.' There were so many opinions as to
what it means that your greatgrandfather, Simeon Gray, had a country estate
built and named it 'Heaven' and thought in that way he could reconcile the
mysterious inscription and reality by means of some harmless wit. And what
do you know? He died of a heart attack as soon as the first hoops were
knocked off. That's how excited the old gourmet was. Ever since then
nobody's as much as touched the cask. They say the precious wine will bring
misfortune. Indeed, not even the Egyptian Sphinx asked such riddles. True,
it did ask a sage: 'Will I devour you like I devour everyone else? Tell me
the truth, and you'll live', but only after giving it some concerted
thought...."
"I think the spigot's leaking again," Poldichoque would say,
interrupting himself, and would head at a slant towards the corner from
whence, having tightened the spigot, he would return with a bland, beaming
face. "Yes. After giving it some thought and, most important, taking his
time about it, the sage might have said to the Sphinx: 'Let's go and have a
drink, my good fellow, and you'll forget all about such nonsense.' 'A Gray
will drink me when he's in Heaven!' How's one to understand that? Does it
mean he'll drink it after he's dead? That's very strange. Which means he's a
saint, which means he doesn't drink either wine or spirits. Let's say that
'Heaven' means happiness. But if the question
is posed like that, any joy will lose half of its shiny leathers when
the happy fellow has to ask himself sincerely: is this Heaven? That's the
rub. In order to drink from this cask with an easy heart and laugh, my boy,
really laugh, one has to have one foot on the ground and the other in the
sky. There's also a third theory: that one day a Gray will get heavenly
drunk and will brazenly empty the little cask. However, this, my boy, would
not be carrying out the prophesy, it would be a tavern row."
Having checked once again on the working order of the spigot in the big
cask, Poldichoque ended his story looking glum and intent:
"Your ancestor, John Gray, brought these casks over from Lisbon on the
Beagle in 1793; he paid two thousand gold piasters for the wine. The
gunsmith Benjamin Ellian from Pondisherry did the inscription on the casks.
A FANTASY (translated by Fainna Glagoleva)
Origin: "Алые паруса"
Alexander Grin, "The Seeker of Adventure, Selected Stories",
М., Прогресс, 1978, 484 с.
OCR: Ivi
---------------------------------------------------------------
Presented and dedicated to Nina Nikolayevna Grin
by the AUTHOR
November 23,' 1922 Petrograd
Longren, a sailor of the Orion, a rugged, three-hundred ton brig on
which he had served for ten years and to which he was attached more strongly
than some sons are to their mothers, was finally forced to give up the sea.
This is how it came about. During one of his infrequent visits home he
did not, as he always had, see his wife Mary from afar, standing on the
doorstep, throwing up her hands and then running breathlessly towards him.
Instead, he found a distraught neighbour woman by the crib, a new piece of
furniture in his small house.
"I tended her for three months, neighbour," the woman said. "Here's
your daughter."
Longren's heart was numb with grief as he bent down and saw an
eight-month-old mite peering intently at his long beard. Then he sat down,
stared at the floor and began to twirl his moustache. It was wet as from the
rain.
"When did Mary die?" he asked.
The woman recounted the sad tale, interrupting herself to coo fondly at
the child and assure him that Mary was now in Heaven. When Longren learned
the details, Heaven seemed to him not much brighter than the woodshed, and
he felt that the light of a plain lamp, were the three of them together now,
would have been a joy unsurpassed to the woman who had gone on to the
unknown Beyond.
About three months previously the young mother's finances had come to
an abrupt end. At least half of the money Longren had left her was spent on
doctors after her difficult confinement and on caring for the newborn
infant; finally, the loss of a small but vital sum had forced Mary to appeal
to Menners for a loan. Menners kept a tavern and shop and was considered a
wealthy man. Mary went to see him at six o'clock in the evening. It was
close to seven when the neighbour woman met her on the road to Liss. Mary
had been weeping and was very upset. She said she was going to town to pawn
her wedding ring. Then she added that Menners had agreed to lend her some
money but had demanded her love in return. Mary had rejected him.
"There's not a crumb in the house," she had said to the neighbour.
"I'll go into town. We'll manage somehow until my husband returns."
It was a cold, windy evening. In vain did the neighbour try to talk the
young woman out of going to Liss when night was approaching. "You'll get
wet, Mary. It's beginning to rain, and the wind looks as if it will bring on
a storm."
It was at least a three hours' brisk walk from the seaside village to
town, but Mary did not heed her neighbour's advice. "I won't be an eyesore
to you any more," she said. "As it is, there's hardly a family I haven't
borrowed bread, tea or flour from. I'll pawn my ring, and that will take
care of everything." She went into town, returned and the following day took
to her bed with a fever and chills; the rain and the evening frost had
brought on double pneumonia, as the doctor from town, called in by the
kind-hearted neighbour, had said. A week later there was an empty place in
Longren's double bed, and the neighbour woman moved into his house to care
for his daughter. She was a widow and all alone in the world, so this was
not a difficult task. "Besides," she added, "the baby fills my days."
Longren went off to town, quit his job, said goodbye to his comrades
and returned home to raise little Assol. The widow stayed on in the sailor's
house as a foster mother to the child until she had learned to walk well,
but as soon as Assol stopped falling when she raised her foot to cross the
threshold, Longren declared that from then on he intended to care for the
child himself and, thanking the woman for her help and kindness, embarked on
a lonely widower's life, focusing all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories
on the little girl.
Ten years of roaming the seas had not brought him much of a fortune. He
began to work. Soon the shops in town were offering his toys for sale,
finely-crafted small model boats, launches, one and two-deck sailing
vessels, cruisers and steamboats; in a word, all that he knew so well and
that, owing to the nature of the toys, partially made up for the hustle and
bustle of the ports and the adventures of a life at sea. In this way Longren
earned enough to keep them comfortable. He was not a sociable man, but now,
after his wife's death, he became something of a recluse. He was sometimes
seen in a tavern of a holiday, but he would never join anyone and would down
a glass of vodka at the bar and leave with a brief: "yes", "no", "hello",
"goodbye", "getting along", in reply to all his neighbours' questions and
greetings. He could not stand visitors and would get rid of them without
resorting to force, yet firmly, by hints and excuses which left the former
no choice but to invent a reason that prevented them from remaining further.
He, in turn, visited no one; thus, a wall of cold estrangement rose up
between him and his fellow-villagers, and if Longren's work, the toys he
made, had depended in any way on village affairs, he would have felt most
keenly the consequences of this relationship. He bought all his wares and
provisions in town, and Menners could not even boast of a box of matches he
had sold to Longren. Longren did all his own housework and patiently learned
the difficult art, so unusual for a man, of rearing a girl.
Assol was now five, and her father was beginning to smile ever more
gently as he looked upon her sensitive, kind little face when she sat in his
lap and puzzled over the mystery of his buttoned waistcoat or sang sailors'
chants, those wild, wind-blown rhymes. When sung by a child, with a lisp
here and there, the chants made one think of a dancing bear with a pale blue
ribbon around its neck. At about this time something occurred that, casting
its shadow upon the father, shrouded the daughter as well.
It was spring, an early spring as harsh as winter, but still unlike it.
A biting North off-shore wind whipped across the cold earth for about three
weeks.
The fishing boats, dragged up onto the beach, formed a long row of dark
keels which seemed like the backbones of some monstrous fish on the white
sand. No one dared to venture out to sea in such weather. The single village
street was deserted; the cold whirlwind, racing down from the hills along
the shore and off towards the vacant horizon, made the "open air" a terrible
torture. All the chimneys of Kaperna smoked from dawn till dusk, shaking the
smoke out over the steep roofs.
However, the days of the fierce North wind enticed Longren out of his
cozy little house more often than did the sun, which cast its coverlets of
spun gold over the sea and Kaperna on a clear day. Longren would go to the
very end of the long wooden pier and there he would smoke his pipe at
length, the wind carrying off the smoke, and watch the sandy bottom, bared
near the shore when the waves retreated, foam up in grey froth that barely
caught up with the waves whose rumbling progress towards the black, stormy
horizon filled the space between with flocks of weird, long-maned creatures
galloping off in wild abandon to their distant point of solace. The moaning
and the noise, the crashing thunder of the huge, upthrusted masses of water
and the seemingly visible currents of wind that whipped across the
vicinity--for so forceful was its unhampered course -- produced that
dulling, deafening sensation in Longren's tortured soul which, reducing
grief to undefin-able sadness, is equal in its effect to deep slumber.
On one such day Menners' twelve-year-old son Hin, noticing that his
father's boat was being buffeted against the piles under the pier and that
its sides were becoming battered, went off to tell his father of this. The
storm had but recently begun; Menners had forgotten to pull his boat up on
the sand. He hurried to the beach where he saw Longren standing at the end
of the pier with his back to him, smoking. There was not another soul in
sight. Menners walked halfway along the pier, climbed down into the wildly
splashing water and untied his boat; then, standing upright in it he began
moving towards the shore, pulling himself along from one pile to the next.
He had forgotten his oars, and as he stumbled and missed his hold on the
next pile, a strong gust of wind pulled the prow of his boat away from the
pier and towards the ocean. Now Menners could not have reached the nearest
pile even if he had stretched out to his full length. The wind and the
waves, rocking the boat, were carrying it off into the distance and doom.
Menners realized his predicament and wanted to dive into the water and swim
ashore, but this decision was too late in coming, for the boat was now
spinning about near the end of the pier where the considerable depth and
raging waves promised imminent death. There were only about twenty metres
between Longren and Menners, who was being swept off into the stormy
distance, and a rescue was still possible, for a coiled rope with a weighted
end hung on the pier beside Longren. The rope was there for any boat that
might land during a storm and was thrown to the boat from the pier.
"Longren!" Menners cried in terror. "Don't just stand there! Can't you
see I'm being carried away? Throw me the line!"
Longren said nothing as he gazed calmly upon the frantic man, although
he puffed harder on his pipe and then, to have a better view of what was
happening, removed it from his mouth.
"Longren!" Menners pleaded. "I know you can hear me. I'll be drowned!
Save me!"
But Longren said not a word; it seemed as though he had not heard the
frantic wail. He did not even shift his weight until the boat had been
carried so far out to sea that Menners' word-cries were barely audible.
Menners sobbed in terror, he begged the sailor to run to the fishermen
for help; he promised him a reward, he threatened and cursed him, but all
Longren did was walk to the very edge of the pier so as not to loose the
leaping, spinning boat from view too soon.
"Longren, save me!" The words came to him as they would to someone
inside a house from someone on the roof.
Then, filling his lungs with air and taking a deep breath so that not a
single word would be carried away by the wind, Longren shouted: "That's how
she pleaded with you! Think of it, Menners, while you're still alive, and
don't forget!"
Then the cries stopped, and Longren went home. Assol awakened to see
her rather sitting lost in thought before the lamp that was now burning low.
Hearing the child's voice calling to him, he went over to her, kissed her
affectionately and fixed the tumbled blanket.
"Go to sleep, dear. It's still a long way till morning," he said.
"What are you doing?"
"I've made a black toy, Assol. Now go to sleep."
The next day the village buzzed with the news of Menners'
dissappearance. Five days later he was brought back, dying and full of
malice. His story soon reached every village in the vicinity. Menners had
been in the open sea until evening; he had been battered against the sides
and bottom of the boat during his terrible battle with the crashing waves
that constantly threatened to toss the raving shopkeeper into the sea and
was picked up by the Lucretia, plying towards Kasset. Exposure and the
nightmare he had experienced put an end to Menners' days. He did not live a
full forty-eight hours, calling down upon Longren every calamity possible on
earth and in his imagination. Menners' story of the sailor watching his
doom, having refused him help, the more convincing since the dying man could
barely breathe and kept moaning, astounded the people of Kaperna. To say
nothing of the fact that hardly a one of them would remember an insult even
greater than the one inflicted upon Longren or to grieve as he was to grieve
for Mary till the end of his days--they were repulsed, puzzled and stunned
by Longren's silence. Longren had stood there in silence until those last
words he had shouted to Menners; he had stood there without moving, sternly
and silently, as a judge, expressing his utter contempt of Menners--there
was something greater than hatred in his silence and they all sensed this.
If he had shouted, expressed his gloating through gesture or bustling
action, or had in any other way shown his triumph at the sight of Menners'
despair, the fishermen would have understood him, but he had acted
differently than they would have -- he had acted impressively and strangely
and had thus placed himself above them -- in a word, he had done that which
is not forgiven. No longer did anyone salute him in the street or offer him
his hand, or cast a friendly glance of recognition and greeting his way.
From now and to the end he was to remain aloof from the affairs of the
village; boys catching sight of him in the street would shout after him:
"Longren drowned Menners!" He paid no attention to this. Nor did it seem
that he noticed the fact that in the tavern or on the beach among the boats
the fishermen would stop talking in his presence and would move away as from
someone who had the plague. The Menners' affair had served to strengthen
their formerly partial alienation. Becoming complete, it created an
unshakeable mutual hatred, the shadow of which fell upon Assol as well.
The little girl grew up without friends. The two or three dozen
children of her age in the village, which was saturated like a sponge is
with water with the crude law of family rule, the basis of which is the
unquestioned authority of the parents, imitative like all children in the
world, excluded little Assol once and for all from the circle of their
protection and interest. Naturally, this came about gradually, through the
admonitions and scolding of the adults, and assumed the nature of a terrible
taboo which, increased by idle talk and rumour, burgeoned in the children's
minds to become a fear of the sailor's house.
Besides, the secluded life Longren led now gave vent to the hysterical
tongues of gossip; it was implied that the sailor had murdered someone
somewhere and that, they said, was why he was no longer signed up on any
ship, and he was so sullen and unsociable because he was "tormented by a
criminal conscience". When playing, the children would chase Assol away if
she came near, they would sling mud at her and taunt her by saying that her
father ate human flesh and was now a counterfeiter. One after another her
naive attempts at making friends ended in bitter tears, bruises, scratches
and other manifestations of public opinion; she finally stopped feeling
affronted, but would still sometimes ask her father:
"Why don't they like us? Tell me."
"Ah, Assol, they don't know how to like or love. One must be able to
love, and that is something they cannot do."
"What do you mean by 'be able to'?"
"This!"
At which he would swing the child up and fondly kiss her sad eyes which
she would shut tight with sweet pleasure.
Assol's favourite pastime was to climb up on her father's lap of an
evening or on a holiday, when he had set aside his pots of glue, his tools
and unfinished work and, having taken off his apron, sat down to rest, pipe
clenched between his teeth. Twisting and turning within the protective
circle of her father's arm, she would finger the various parts of the tovs,
questioning him as to the purpose of each. Thus would begin a peculiar,
fantastic lecture on life and people -- a lecture in which, due to Longren's
former way of life, all sorts of chance occurrences and chance in general,
strange, amazing and unusual events, were given a major role. As Longren
told his daughter the names of the various ropes, sails and rigging, he
would gradually become carried away, progressing from simple explanations to
various episodes in which now a windlass, now a rudder and now a mast, or
this or the other type of craft and such like had played a part, and from
these isolated illustrations he would go on to sweeping descriptions of
nautical wanderings, interweaving superstition with reality and reality with
images created by his imagination. Herein appeared the tiger cat, that
herald of shipwreck, the talking flying fish which one had to obey on pain
of losing one's course, and the Flying Dutchman and his wild crew, signs,
ghosts, mermaids and pirates -- in a word, all the fables that help a sailor
while away the time during a calm spell or in some favourite tavern. Longren
also spoke of shipwrecked crews, of men who had become savages and had
forgotten how to talk, of mysterious buried treasure, of convict mutinies,
and of much else which the little girl listened to more raptly than did,
perhaps, Columbus' first audience to his tale of a new continent. "Tell me
more," Assol pleaded when Longren, lost in thought, would fall silent, and
she would fall asleep on his breast with a head full of wonderful dreams.
The appearance of the clerk from the toy shop in town, which was glad
to buy whatever Longren had made, was a great and always a materially
important treat to her. In order to get into the father's good graces and
strike a good bargain, the clerk would bring along a couple of apples, a bun
and a handfull of nuts for the girl. Longren usually asked for the true
price of a toy, for he detested bargaining, but the clerk would lower the
price. "Why," Longren would say, "i1'5 taken me a week to make this boat.
(The boat was five inches long.) See how strong and trim it is, and mark the
draught. Why, it'll hold fifteen men in a storm." In the end, the little
girl's soft murmurings and fussing with her apple would weaken Longren's
determination and desire to argue; he would give in, and the clerk, having
filled his basket with well-made, excellent toys, would leave, laughing up
his sleeve.
Longren did all the work about the house himself: he chopped wood,
carried water, made the stove, cooked, washed clothes and ironed and,
besides, found time to earn their keep. When Assol was eight years old her
father taught her to read and write. He began taking her to town now and
then, and after a while even sent her alone if he had to borrow some money
from the shop or had some new toys to deliver. This did not happen often,
although Liss was only four miles from Kaperna, but the road lay through the
forest, and there is much in a forest that can frighten a child beside the
actual physical danger which, it is true, one would hardly find in such
close proximity to a town, but should still keep in mind. That was why
Longren would let her go to town alone only on fine days, in the morning,
when the woods along the road were filled with showers of sunshine, flowers
and stillness, so that Assol's impressionability was not threatened by any
phantoms conjured up by her imagination.
One day, in the middle of such a journey to town, the child sat down by
the roadside to have a bun she had brought along for her lunch. As she
munched on the bun she picked up each toy in turn; two or three were new to
her: Longren had made them during the night. One of the new toys was a
miniature racing yacht; the little white craft had crimson sails made of
scraps of silk which Longren used to cover the cabin walls in toys intended
for wealthy customers. Here, however, having completed the yacht, he had not
found any suitable cloth for the sails and had used what had come to hand --
some scraps of crimson silk. Assol was delighted. The flaming, cheerful
colour burned so brightly in her hand she fancied she was holding fire. A
stream straddled by a little bridge of nailed poles crossed the road; to the
right and left the stream flowed off into the forest. "If I put it in the
water for just a little while it won't get wet," Assol was thinking, "and
then I can wipe it dry." She went off downstream into the forest a ways, and
carefully placed the boat that had caught her fancy into the stream at the
water's edge; the clear water immediately reflected the crimson of the
sails; the light streaming through the cloth lay as a shimmering pink glow
upon the white stones of the bottom. "Where'd you come from, Captain?" Assol
inquired in a most serious voice of an imaginary character and, answering
her own question, replied, "I've come from.... from ... from China." "And
what have you brought?" "That's something I shan't tell you." "Oh, so you
won't, Captain? Well then, back into the basket you go." Just as the captain
was about to repent and say he had only been teasing, and would gladly show
her an elephant, the mild backlash of a wave that had washed against the
bank turned the yacht's bow into the stream and, like a real vessel, it left
the bank at full speed and sailed off with the current. The scale of her
surroundings changed instantly: the stream now seemed like a great river to
the child, and the yacht a large, distant vessel towards which, nearly
falling into the water, she stretched forth her hands in dumb terror. "The
captain got frightened," she decided and ran after the disappearing toy,
hoping that it would be washed up on the bank farther on. As she hastened
along, dragging the light but cumbersome basket, Assol kept repeating,
"Goodness! How could it have happened? What an accident...." Trying not to
lose sight of the beautiful triangle of the sails that was drifting off so
gracefully, she stumbled, fell, and ran on again.
Never before had Assol ventured so far into the woods. Being completely
absorbed by an impatient desire to catch up with the toy, she paid no
attention to her surroundings; there were more than enough obstacles on the
bank to claim her attention as she scurried along. Mossy trunks of fallen
trees, pits, tall-standing ferns, briar roses, jasmine and hazel bushes
blocked her every step; in overcoming them she gradually tired, stopping
ever more often to catch her breath or brush a wisp of clinging cobweb from
her face. When, in the wider stretches, there appeared thickets of sedge and
reeds, Assol nearly lost sight of the crimson-gleaming sails, but hurrying
round a bend she would catch sight of them again, running with the wind so
majestically and steadfastly. Once she looked back, and the great mass of
the forest with its many hues, changing from the hazy columns of light in
the leaves to the dark slashes of dense gloom, astounded her. For a moment
she became frightened, but then recalled the toy and, letting out several
deep "phew's", ran on as fast as she could.
Nearly an hour passed in this futile and frantic chase, and then Assol
was surprised and relieved to see the trees part widely up ahead, letting in
a blue expanse of sea, clouds and the edge of a sandy yellow bluff onto
which she came running, nearly dropping from exhaustion. This was the mouth
of the little river; spreading here, not broadly, and shallowly, so that the
streaming blue of the rocks on the bottom could be seen, it disappeared into
the oncoming waves of the sea. Standing at the edge of the low, root-gnarled
bluff, Assol saw a man sitting on a large, flat stone by the stream with his
back to her, holding the runaway yacht and turning it in his hands with the
curiosity of an elephant that had caught a butterfly. Somewhat calmed by the
sight of the rescued toy, Assol slid down the slope, came up beside the
stranger and studied him closely while waiting for him to raise his head.
However, the stranger was so absorbed in examining the forest's surprise
that the child had a chance to inspect him from head to toe, deciding that
never before had she ever seen anyone like him.
The man was in fact Egle, the well-known collector of songs, legends
and fairy-tales, who was on a walking tour. His grey locks fell in waves
from under his straw hat; his grey blouse tucked into his blue trousers and
his high boots made him look like a hunter; his white collar, tie,
silver-studded belt, walking stick and leather pouch with the shiny,
nickel-plated buckle showed him to be a city-dweller. His face, if one can
call a face a nose, lips and eyes that peep out of a bushy, spiked beard and
luxuriant, fiercely twirled moustache, would have seemed flabbily
translucent, if not for the eyes that were as grey as sand and as shiny as
pure steel, with a gaze that was bold and powerful.
"Now give it back," the little girl said timidly. "You've played with
it long enough. How did you catch it?"
Egle looked up and dropped the yacht, for Assol's excited voice had
broken the stillness so unexpectedly. For a moment the old man gazed at her,
smiling and slowly running his beard through his large, curled hand. An
oft-washed little cotton dress just barely covered the girl's skinny,
sunburned knees. Her thick dark hair tied up in a lace kerchief had got
undone and fell to her shoulders. Every one of Assol's features was
finely-chiselled and as delicate as a swallow's flight. There was a sad,
questioning look in her dark eyes which seemed older than her face; its
irregular oval was touched with the lovely sunburn peculiar to a healthy
whiteness of the skin. Her small parted lips were turned up in a gentle
smile.
"I swear by the Brothers Grimm, Aesop and Andersen," Egle said, looking
from the girl to the yacht, "that there's something very special here!
Listen, you, flower! This is yours, isn't it?"
"Yes. I ran all the way down along the stream after it; I thought I'd
die. Did it come here?"
"Right to my feet. The shipwreck has made it possible for me, acting as
an off-shore pirate, to present you with this prize. The yacht, abandoned by
its crew, was tossed up on the beach by a three-inch wave -- landing between
my left heel and the tip of my stick." He thumped his stick. "What's your
name, child?"
"Assol," the girl replied, tucking the toy Egle had handed her into the
basket.
"That's fine." The old man continued his obscure speech, never taking
his eyes, in the depths of which a kindly, friendly chuckle glinted, from
her. "Actually, I shouldn't have asked you your name. I'm glad it's such an
unusual one, so sibilant and musical, like the whistle of an arrow or the
whispering of a seashell; what would I have done if your name had been one
of those pleasant but terribly common names which are so alien to Glorious
Uncertainty? Still less do I care to know who you are, who your parents are,
or what sort of life you lead. Why break the spell? I was sitting here on
this stone comparing Finnish and Japanese story plots ... when suddenly the
stream washed up this yacht, and then you appeared. Just as you are. I'm a
poet at heart, my dear, even though I've never written anything. What's in
your basket?"
"Boats," Assol said, shaking the basket, "and a steamship, and three
little houses with flags. Soldiers live in them."
"Excellent. You've been sent to sell them. And on the way you stopped
to play. You let the yacht sail about a bit, but it ran off instead. Am I
right?"
"Were you watching?" Assol asked doubtfully as she tried to recall
whether she had not told him about it herself. "Did somebody tell you? Or
did you guess?"
"I knew it."
"How?"
"Because I'm the greatest of all magicians."
Assol was embarrassed; the tension she felt at these words of Egle's
overstepped fear. The deserted beach, the stillness, the tiring adventure of
the yacht, the strange speech of the old man with the glittering eyes, the
magnificence of his beard and hair now seemed to the child as a brew of the
supernatural and reality. If Egle had grimaced or shouted now, the child
would have raced off, weeping and faint from fear. However, upon noticing
how wide her eyes had grown, Egle made a sharp turn.
"You've no reason to be afraid of me," he said in a serious voice. "On
the contrary, I want to have a heart-to-heart talk with you."
Now at last did he see what it was in her face that had struck him so.
"An unwitting expectation of the beautiful, of a blissful fate," he decided.
"Ah, why wasn't I born a writer? What a wonderful theme for a story."
"Now then," Egle continued, trying to round off his original thesis (a
penchant for myth-making--the result of his everyday work--was greater than
the fear of tossing seeds of great dreams upon unknown soil), "now then,
Assol, listen carefully. I've just been in the village you are probably
coming from; in a word, in Kaperna. I like fairy-tales and songs, and I
spent the whole day in that village hoping to hear something no one had
heard before. But no one in these parts tells fairy-tales. No one here sings
songs. And if they do tell stories and sing songs, you know, they are tales
about conniving peasants and soldiers, with the eternal praise of roguery,
they are as filthy as unwashed feet and as crude as a rumbling stomach,
these short, four-line ditties sung to a terrible tune.... Wait, I've got
carried away. I'll start again."
He was silent for a while and then continued thus:
"I don't know how many years will pass, but a fairy-tale will blossom
in Kaperna and will remain in the minds of the people for long. You'll be
grown-up then, Assol. One morning a crimson sail will gleam in the sun on
the far horizon. The shimmering pile of crimson sails on a white ship will
head straight towards you, cutting through the waves. This wonderful ship
will sail in silently; there will be no shouting or salvoes; a great crowd
will gather on the beach. Everyone will be amazed and astounded; and you'll
be there, too. The ship will sail majestically up to the very shore to the
strains of beautiful music; a swift boat decked out in rugs, flowers and
gold will be lowered from the ship. "Why have you come? Whom are you
searching for?" the people on the beach will say. Then you'll see a brave
and handsome prince; he'll be standing there and stretching forth his hands
towards you. "Hello, Assol!" he'll say. "Far, far away from here I saw you
in a dream and have come to take you away to my kingdom forever. You will
live with me there in a deep rose valley. You shall have everything your
heart desires; we shall be so happy together your soul will never know the
meaning of tears or sadness." He'll take you into his boat, bring you to the
ship, and you'll sail away forever to a glorious land where the sun comes up
and where the stars will descend from the sky to greet you upon your
arrival."
"And will it all be for me?" the girl asked softly.
Her grave eyes became merry and shone trustingly. Obviously, no
dangerous magician would ever speak thus; she came closer.
"Maybe it's already come ... that ship?"
"Not so fast," Egle objected. "First, as I've said, you have to grow
up. Then ... what's the use of talking? It will be, and that's all there is
to it. What will you do then?"
"Me?" She looked into the basket but apparently did not find anything
there worthy of being a suitable reward. "I'd love him," she said quickly
and then added rather hesitantly, "if he won't fight."
"No, he won't," the magician said, winking at her mysteriously. "He
won't. I can vouch for it. Go, child, and don't forget what I've told you
between two sips of flavoured vodka and my musings over the songs of
convicts. Go. And may there be peace for your fluffy head!"
Longren was working in his small garden, hilling the potato plants.
Raising his head, he saw Assol, who was running towards him with a joyous,
impatient look on her face.
"Listen..." she said, trying to control her rapid breathing and
clutching her father's apron with both hands. "Listen to what I'm going to
tell you.... On the beach there, far away, there's a magician...."
She began her tale by telling him of the magician and his wonderful
prophesy. Her excitement made it hard for her to recount the events
coherently. She then proceeded to describe the magician and, in reverse
order, her chase after the runaway yacht.
Longren listened to her story without once interrupting and without a
smile, and when she ended it his imagination quickly conjured up a picture
of the stranger, an old man holding a flask of flavoured vodka in one hand
and the toy in the other. He turned away, but recalling that at momentous
times of a child's life one had to be serious and amazed, nodded solemnly
and uttered:
"I see.... It looks like he really is a magician. I'd like to have a
look at him.... But when you go again, don't turn off the road: it's easy to
get lost in the woods."
He laid aside his hoe, sat down by the low wattle fence and took the
child onto his lap. She was terribly tired and tried to add a few more
details, but the heat, excitement and exhaustion made her drowsy. Her lids
drooped, her head leaned against her father's hard shoulder, and in another
instant she would have been carried off to the Land of Nod, when abruptly,
perturbed by sudden doubt, Assol sat up straight with her eyes still shut
and, thrusting her little fists at Longren's waistcoat, exclaimed:
"Do you think the magical ship will really come for me?"
"It'll come," the sailor replied calmly. "If you've been told it will,
it means it will."
"She'll forget all about it by the time she grows up," he said to
himself, "and, meanwhile ... one should not take such a toy from you. You
will see so many sails in the future, and they will not be crimson, but
filthy and treacherous: from afar they'll seem gleaming and white, but from
close-up they'll be ragged and brazen. A traveller chose to jest with my
girl. So what? It was a kindly jest! It was a good jest! My, how tired you
are,-- half a day spent in the woods, in the heart of the forest. As for the
crimson sails, think of them as I do: you will have your crimson sails."
Assol slept. Longren took out his pipe with his free hand, lit it, and
the wind carried the smoke off through the fence into a bush that grew
outside the garden. Sitting by the bush with his back to the fence and
chewing on a slice of meat pie was a young beggar. The overheard
conversation between the father and daughter had put him in a cheerful mood,
and the smell of good tobacco had awakened the sponger in him.
"Give a poor man a smoke, sir," he said, speaking through the fence.
"Compared to yours, my tobacco is pure poison."
"I'd certainly give you some," Longren replied in an undertone, "but my
pouch is in my other pocket. And I don't want to waken my daughter."
"What a disaster, indeed! She'll wake up and go right back to sleep
again, but you'll have given a wayfarer a smoke."
"It's not as if you were all out of tobacco," Longren retorted, "and
the child's exhausted. Come by later, if you wish."
The beggar spat in disgust, hung his sack on his stick and sneered:
"Naturally, she's a princess. Filling her head with all sorts of
fairy-tale ships! You really are a queer fish, and you a man of property!"
"Listen," Longren whispered, "I think I will waken her, but it'll only
be because I'll be bashing your face in. Now get going!"
Half an hour later the beggar was seated in a tavern in the company of
a dozen fishermen. Sitting behind them, now tugging at a husband's sleeve,
now stretching a hand over a shoulder to reach for a glass of vodka--for
themselves, naturally--were some buxom women with shaggy brows. The muscles
of their arms were as big as paving stones. The beggar, fuming from the
affront, was relating his tale:
"...and he wouldn't give me a smoke. 'Now when you get to be of age,'
he says, 'a special red ship'll come for you. That's on account of how
you're fated to marry a prince. And,' he says, 'you mind what that magician
said.' But I say, 'Go on, wake her up, so's you can reach over and get your
pouch.' And, you know, he chased me halfway down the road."
"What? Who? What's he talking about?" the women's curious voices
demanded.
The fishermen turned their heads slightly to tell them what it was all
about, smiling wryly as they did:
"Longren and his daughter have become wild as animals, and maybe
they're even touched in the head, that's what the man here's saying. A
sorcerer came to see them, he says. And now they're waiting--ladies, see you
don't miss your chance! -- for a prince from some foreign land, and he'll be
sailing under crimson sails to boot!"
Three days later, as Assol was returning home from the toy shop in
town, she first heard the taunts:
"Hey, you gallows-bird! Assol! Look over here! See the crimson sails
coming in!"
The child started and involuntarily shielded her eyes as she gazed off
towards the sea. Then she turned back to where the shouting had come from;
twenty feet away she saw a group of children; they were making faces and
sticking their tongues out at her. The little girl sighed and hurried off
home.
If Caesar considered that it was better to be the first in a village
than the second in Rome, Arthur Gray did not have to envy Caesar as far as
his sagacious wish was concerned. He was born a captain, desired to be one,
and became one.
The great manor in which Gray was born was sombre inside and
magnificent without. The manor looked on flower gardens and a part of the
park. The very best imaginable tulips -- silver-blue, lavender and black
with a brush of pink -- snaked through the garden like strings of
carelessly-strewn beads. The old trees in the park slumbered in the sifting
gloom above the sedge of a meandering stream. The castle fence, for the
manor was actually a castle, was made of spiral cast-iron posts connected by
iron grillwork. Each post was crowned by a cast-iron lily blossom; on
festive occasions the cups were filled with oil and burned brightly into the
night as a far-stretching, fiery line.
Gray's parents were arrogant slaves of their social position, wealth
and the laws of that society, referring to which they could say "we". The
part of their souls that was centred on the gallery of their ancestors is
not really worth describing, while the other part--an imaginary continuation
of the gallery--began with little Gray, who was preordained to live out his
life and die in such a manner as to have his portrait hung on the wall
without detriment to the family honour. A small error had crept into the
plan, however: Arthur Gray was born with a lively spirit, and was in no way
disposed to continue the line of the family tracing.
This liveliness, this complete unorthodoxy in the boy became most
evident in his eighth year; a knightly type affected by strange impressions,
a seeker and miracle worker, that is, a person who had chosen from amongst
the countless roles in life the most dangerous and touching one--the role of
Providence, became apparent in Gray
from the time he pushed a chair up against the wall to reach a painting
of the Crucifixion and removed the nails from Christ's bloody hands, that
is, he simply covered them over with blue paint he had stolen from a house
painter. Thus altered, he found the painting to be more bearable. Carried
away by this strange occupation, he had begun covering over Christ's feet as
well, but was surprised by his father. The old man jerked the boy off the
chair by his ears and asked:
"Why have you ruined the painting?"
"I haven't ruined it."
"It is the work of a famous painter."
"I don't care. I can't allow nails to be sticking out of someone's
hands, making them bleed. I don't want it to be."
Hiding his smile in his moustache, Lionel Gray recognized himself in
his son's reply and did not punish him.
Gray diligently went about studying the castle, and his discoveries
were amazing. Thus, in the attic he came upon a knight's steel armour-junk,
books bound in iron and leather, crumbling vestments and flocks of pigeons.
In the cellar, where the wine was kept, he gleaned interesting information
about Laffitte, Madeira and sherry. Here in the murky light of the lancet
windows that were squeezed in between the slanting triangles of the stone
vaults there were large and small casks; the largest, in the shape of a flat
circle, took up all of the shorter wall of the cellar; the hundred-year-old
black oak of the cask gleamed like highly-polished wood. Paunchy green and
dark-blue bottles rested in wicker baskets among the casks. Grey fungi' on
spindly stalks grew on the stones and on the earthen floor;
everywhere--there was mould, moss dampness and a sour, stuffy smell. A great
cobweb glittered like gold in a far corner when, towards evening, the sun's
last ray searched it out. Two casks of the finest Alicant that existed in
the days of Cromwell were sunk into the ground in one spot, and the
cellar-keeper, pointing out a vacant corner to Gray, did not miss the chance
to recount the story of the famous grave in which lay a dead man more live
than a pack of fox terriers. As he began his tale, the story-teller would
never forget to check on the spigot of the large cask and would walk away
from it apparently with an easier heart, since unwonted tears of too-strong
joy glistened in his suddenly merry eyes.
"Now then," Poldichoque would say to Gray, sitting down on an empty
crate and putting a pinch of snuff up his sharp nose, "do you see that spot?
The kind of wine that's buried there would make many a drunkard agree to
having his tongue cut off if he'd be given just a little glass of it. Each
cask holds a hundred litres of a substance that makes your soul explode and
your body turn into a blob of dough. It's darker than a cherry, and it won't
pour out of a bottle. It's as thick as heavy cream. It's locked away in
casks of black oak that're as strong as iron. They have double rows of
copper hoops. And the lettering on the hoops is in Latin and says, 'A Gray
will drink me when he'll be in Heaven.' There were so many opinions as to
what it means that your greatgrandfather, Simeon Gray, had a country estate
built and named it 'Heaven' and thought in that way he could reconcile the
mysterious inscription and reality by means of some harmless wit. And what
do you know? He died of a heart attack as soon as the first hoops were
knocked off. That's how excited the old gourmet was. Ever since then
nobody's as much as touched the cask. They say the precious wine will bring
misfortune. Indeed, not even the Egyptian Sphinx asked such riddles. True,
it did ask a sage: 'Will I devour you like I devour everyone else? Tell me
the truth, and you'll live', but only after giving it some concerted
thought...."
"I think the spigot's leaking again," Poldichoque would say,
interrupting himself, and would head at a slant towards the corner from
whence, having tightened the spigot, he would return with a bland, beaming
face. "Yes. After giving it some thought and, most important, taking his
time about it, the sage might have said to the Sphinx: 'Let's go and have a
drink, my good fellow, and you'll forget all about such nonsense.' 'A Gray
will drink me when he's in Heaven!' How's one to understand that? Does it
mean he'll drink it after he's dead? That's very strange. Which means he's a
saint, which means he doesn't drink either wine or spirits. Let's say that
'Heaven' means happiness. But if the question
is posed like that, any joy will lose half of its shiny leathers when
the happy fellow has to ask himself sincerely: is this Heaven? That's the
rub. In order to drink from this cask with an easy heart and laugh, my boy,
really laugh, one has to have one foot on the ground and the other in the
sky. There's also a third theory: that one day a Gray will get heavenly
drunk and will brazenly empty the little cask. However, this, my boy, would
not be carrying out the prophesy, it would be a tavern row."
Having checked once again on the working order of the spigot in the big
cask, Poldichoque ended his story looking glum and intent:
"Your ancestor, John Gray, brought these casks over from Lisbon on the
Beagle in 1793; he paid two thousand gold piasters for the wine. The
gunsmith Benjamin Ellian from Pondisherry did the inscription on the casks.