Scarlet Sails / Алые паруса. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“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.

II. Gray

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. The casks are sunk six feet underground and covered with the ashes of grape vines. No one ever drank this wine, tasted it, or ever will.”

“I’ll drink it,” Gray said one day, stamping his foot. “What a brave young man!” Poldichoque said. “And will you drink it in Heaven?”

“Of course! Here’s Heaven! It’s here, see?” Gray laughed softly and opened his small fist. His delicate but well-formed palm was lit up by the sun, and then the boy curled his fingers into a fist again. “Here it is!

It’s here, and now it’s gone again!”

As he spoke he kept clenching and unclenching his fist. At last, pleased with his joke, he ran out, ahead of Poldichoque, onto the dark stairway leading to the ground floor corridor. Gray was absolutely forbidden to enter the kitchen, but once, having discovered this wonderful world of flaming hearths and soot, this hissing and bubbling of boiling liquids, chopping of knives and mouth-watering smells, the boy became a diligent visitor to the great chamber. The chefs moved in stony silence like some high priests; their white hats etched against the soot-blackened walls lent an air of solemn ritual to their movements; the fat, jovial dishwashers at their barrels of water scrubbed the tableware, making the china and silver ring; boys came in, bent under the weight of baskets of fish, oysters, lobsters and fruit. Laid out on a long table were rainbow-hued pheasants, grey ducks and brightly-feathered chickens; farther on was the carcass of a suckling pig with a tiny tail and eyes shut like a babe’s; then there were turnips, cabbages, nuts, raisins and sun-burnished peaches.

Gray always quailed slightly in the kitchen: he felt that some strange force was in charge here, and that its power was the mainspring of life in the castle; the shouts sounded like orders and invocations; the movements of the kitchen staff after years of practice had acquired that precise, measured rhythm that seems like inspiration. Gray was not yet tall enough to peep into the largest cauldron which bubbled like Mt. Vesuvius, but he felt a special respect for it; he watched in awe as two serving women handled it; at such times steaming froth would splash out onto the top of the stove, and the steam that rose from the hissing stove lid would billow out into the kitchen. On one occasion so much liquid splashed out it scalded one of the kitchen maid’s hands. The skin immediately turned red from the rush of blood, and Betsy (for that was her name) wept as she rubbed oil into the burned skin. Tears coursed down her round, frightened face uncontrollably.

Gray was petrified. As the other women fussed about Betsy, he was suddenly gripped by the pain of another person’s suffering which he could not himself experience.

“Does it hurt very much?” he asked.

“Try it, and you’ll see,” Betsy replied, covering her hand with her apron.

The boy frowned and climbed up onto a stool, dipped a long-handled spoon into the hot liquid (in this case it was lamb soup) and splashed some onto his wrist. The sensation was not faint, but the faintness resulting from the sharp pain made him sway. He was as pale as flour when he went up to Betsy, hiding his scalded hand in his pants pocket.

“I think it hurts you awfully,” he murmured, saying nothing of his own experiment. “Come to the doctor, Betsy. Come on!”

He tugged at her skirt insistently, though all the while the believers in home remedies were giving the girl all sorts of advice for treating the burn. However, she was in very great pain, and so she followed Gray. The doctor relieved her pain by applying some medication. Not before Betsy was gone did Gray show him his own hand.

This insignificant episode made twenty-year-old Betsy and ten-year-old Gray bosom friends. She would fill his pockets with sweets and apples, and he would tell her fairy-tales and other stories he had read in his books.

One day he discovered that Betsy could not marry Jim, the groom, because they had no money to set themselves up in a home of their own. Gray used his fireplace tongs to crack his china piggy-bank and shook out the contents, which amounted to nearly a hundred pounds. He rose early, and when the dowerless girl went off to the kitchen, sneaked into her room and placed his gift in her chest, laying a note on top: “This is yours, Betsy. (Signed) Robin Hood.” The commotion this caused in the kitchen was so great that Gray had to confess to the deed. He did not take the money back and did not want to have another word said about it.

His mother was one of those people whom life pours into a ready mould. She lived in the dream-world of prosperity that provided for every wish of an ordinary soul; therefore, she had no other occupation save to order around her dressmakers, doctor and butler. However, her passionate and ail-but religious attachment for her strange child was, one might assume, the only vent for those of her inclinations, chloroformed by her upbringing and fate, which were no longer fully alive, but simmered faintly, leaving the will idle. The high-born dame resembled a peacock hen that had hatched a swan’s egg. She was quiveringly aware of the magnificent uniqueness of her son; sadness, love and constraint filled her being when she pressed the boy to her breast, and her heart spoke unlike her tongue, which habitually reflected the conventional types of relationships and ideas. Thus does a cloud effect, concocted so weirdly by the sun’s rays, penetrate the symmetrical interior of a public building, divesting it of its banal merits; the eye sees but does not recognize the chamber; the mysterious nuances of light amongst paltriness create a dazzling harmony.

The high-born dame, whose face and figure, it seemed, could respond but in icy silence to the fiery voices of life and whose delicate beauty repelled rather than attracted, since one sensed her haughty effort of will, devoid of feminine attraction – this same Lillian Gray, when alone with the boy, was transformed into an ordinary mother speaking in a loving, gentle voice those endearments which refuse to be committed to paper; their power lies in the emotions, not in their meaning. She was positively unable to refuse her son anything. She forgave him everything: his visits to the kitchen, his abhorrence of his lessons, his disobedience and his many eccentricities.