Lightning lit up outside the windows and trembled. Tale of life - northern tale

For several days it poured down, without ceasing, cold rain. A damp wind blew in the garden. At four o'clock in the afternoon we were already lighting kerosene lamps, and it involuntarily seemed that the summer was over forever and the earth was moving farther and farther into dense fogs, into uncomfortable darkness and cold.

It was the end of November - the saddest time in the village. The cat slept all day, curled up in an old armchair, and shuddered in his sleep when dark water lashed at the windows.

The roads were washed out. A yellowish foam, like a downed squirrel, was carried along the river. The last birds hid under the eaves, and for more than a week no one has visited us: neither grandfather Mitriy, nor Vanya Malyavin, nor the forester.

The best time was in the evenings. We fired up the stoves. The fire roared, crimson reflections trembled on the log walls and on the old engraving - a portrait of the artist Bryullov.

Leaning back in his chair, he looked at us, and it seemed, just like us, putting down the open book, thinking about what he had read and listening to the hum of rain on the boarded roof. The lamps burned brightly, and the invalid copper samovar sang and sang its simple song. As soon as it was brought into the room, it immediately became comfortable in it - perhaps because the glasses were fogged up and one could not see the lone birch branch that knocked on the window day and night.

After tea we sat by the stove and read. On such evenings, it was most pleasant to read very long and touching novels by Charles Dickens or leaf through the heavy volumes of the Niva and Picturesque Review magazines from the old years.

At night, Funtik, a little red dachshund, often cried in his sleep. I had to get up and wrap him up with a warm woolen rag. Funtik thanked through a dream, carefully licked his hand and, sighing, fell asleep. The darkness rustled behind the walls with the splashing of rain and the blows of the wind, and it was terrible to think of those who might have been caught by this rainy night in the impenetrable forests.

One night I woke up with a strange sensation.

I thought I went deaf in my sleep. I lay with my eyes closed, listened for a long time, and finally realized that I had not gone deaf, but simply that there had been an extraordinary silence outside the walls of the house. Such silence is called "dead". The rain died, the wind died, the noisy, restless garden died. All you could hear was the cat snoring in his sleep.

I opened my eyes. White and even light filled the room. I got up and went to the window - behind the panes everything was snowy and silent. In the foggy sky, a lone moon stood at a dizzying height, and a yellowish circle shimmered around it.

When did the first snow fall? I approached the walkers. It was so bright that the arrows were clearly black. They showed two hours.

I fell asleep at midnight. This means that in two hours the earth has changed so unusually, in two short hours the fields, forests and gardens have been fascinated by the cold.

Through the window, I saw a large gray bird perched on a maple branch in the garden. The branch swayed, snow fell from it. The bird slowly got up and flew away, and the snow continued to fall like glass rain falling from a Christmas tree. Then everything was quiet again.

Reuben woke up. He looked out the window for a long time, sighed and said:

— The first snow is very befitting the earth.

The earth was ornate, like a shy bride.

And in the morning everything crunched around: frozen roads, leaves on the porch, black nettle stalks sticking out from under the snow.

Grandfather Mitriy came to tea and congratulated me on the first trip.

- So the earth was washed, - he said, - with snow water from a silver trough.

— Where did you get that, Mitriy, such words? Reuben asked.

- Is there something wrong? grandfather chuckled. - My mother, the deceased, told me that in ancient times, beauties washed themselves with the first snow from a silver jug, and therefore their beauty never withered. It was before Tsar Peter, my dear, when robbers ruined merchants through the local forests.

It was hard to stay at home on the first winter day. We went to the forest lakes. Grandfather walked us to the edge. He also wanted to visit the lakes, but "did not let the bones ache."

It was solemn, light and quiet in the forests.

The day seemed to be dozing. Lonely snowflakes occasionally fell from the cloudy high sky. We carefully breathed on them, and they turned into pure drops of water, then became cloudy, froze and rolled to the ground like beads.

We wandered through the forests until dusk, walked around familiar places. Flocks of bullfinches sat, ruffled, on snow-covered mountain ash.

We plucked several bunches of red rowan, caught in the frost - this was the last memory of summer, of autumn. On a small lake - it was called Larin's Pond - there was always a lot of duckweed swimming. Now the water in the lake was very black, transparent - all the duckweed sank to the bottom by winter.

A glass strip of ice has grown along the coast. The ice was so transparent that even up close it was hard to see. I saw a flock of boats in the water near the shore and threw a small stone at them. The stone fell on the ice, rang, the rafts, flashing with scales, rushed into the depths, and a white granular trace from the impact remained on the ice. That's the only reason we guessed that a layer of ice had already formed near the shore. We broke off individual pieces of ice with our hands. They crunched and left a mixed smell of snow and lingonberries on the fingers.

Here and there in the meadows birds flew and chirped plaintively. The sky overhead was very bright, white, and towards the horizon it thickened, and its color resembled lead. From there were slow, snow clouds.

It grew darker and quieter in the forests, and finally, thick snow began to fall. He melted in the black water of the lake, tickled his face, powdered the forest with gray smoke.

Winter began to take over the land, but we knew that under the loose snow, if you rake it with your hands, you can still find fresh forest flowers, we knew that fire would always crackle in the ovens, that tits stayed with us to winter, and winter seemed to us the same as beautiful as summer.

VERIFICATION DICTATIONS

The army marched along the left bank of the Euphrates.

The plain, wide and smooth as the sea, was covered with silvery wormwood. There were no trees to be seen. The bushes and herbs had an aromatic smell. Occasionally a herd of wild donkeys, raising dust, appeared at the edge of the sky. Ostriches were running. The fat, tasty meat of the steppe bustard smoked over dinner on soldiers' fires. Jokes and songs did not stop until late at night. The hike felt like a walk. With airy lightness, almost without touching the ground, thin-legged gazelles rushed by; they had sad, tender eyes, like beautiful women. The desert met warriors who sought glory, prey and blood with silent caress, starry nights, quiet dawns, fragrant haze, saturated with the smell of bitter wormwood.

But as soon as they passed, silence again closed over the plain, like water over a sunken ship, and the stalks of grass, trampled down by the feet of the soldiers, quietly rose.

Suddenly the desert became formidable. Clouds covered the sky. Lightning killed a soldier who was leading his horses to water.

At the end of April, hot days began, comrades envied that of the soldiers who walked in the shade falling from a camel or from a loaded cart with a linen canopy. People of the far north, Gauls and Scythians, were dying from sunstroke. The plain became sad, bare, here and there covered only with pale tufts of scorched grass.

Sudden whirlwinds swooped in with such force that banners and tents were torn down; people and horses fell down. Then again there was dead silence, which seemed to the frightened soldier more terrible than any storm. But the warriors went further and further, not finding enemies. (D. Merezhkovsky.)

A man without a hat, in gray canvas trousers, leather sandals worn on bare feet like a monk, and a collarless white shirt, bowing his head, stepped out of the low gate of house number sixteen. Finding himself on a sidewalk paved with bluish stone slabs, he stopped and said in a low voice: “Today is Friday. So, we have to go to the station again.”

After saying those words, the man in the sandals quickly turned around. It seemed to him that a citizen with a zinc muzzle was a spy standing behind him. But Little Tangent Street was completely empty.

June morning has just begun to form. The acacias trembled, dropping cold tin dew on the flat stones. Street birds clicked some cheerful rubbish. At the end of the street, below, behind the roofs of the houses, the molten, heavy sea burned. Young dogs, sadly looking around and clattering their claws, climbed onto the dustbins. The hour of the janitors has already passed, the hour of the milkmaids has not yet begun.

There was that interval between five and six o'clock when the janitors, having swung their prickly brooms to their heart's content, had already dispersed to their tents; the city is bright, clean and quiet, like in a state bank. At such a moment, I want to cry and believe that curdled milk is actually useful; but distant thunder is already heard: milkmaids with cans are being unloaded from suburban trains. Now they will rush into the city and on the platforms of the back stairs will start the usual brawl

with housewives. Workers with purses will appear for a moment and immediately disappear through the factory gates. Smoke rises from factory chimneys. A man in sandals arrived at the Seaside Station just as the milkmaids were coming out. (I. Ilf, E. Petrov.)

But as soon as the emperor entered the reserved grove of Apollo Daphnia, a fragrant freshness seized him. Here, under the impenetrable vaults of gigantic laurels that had been growing for many centuries, eternal twilight reigned.

The emperor was surprised by the desert: no pilgrims, no sacrifices, no incense - no preparations for the holiday. He thought that the people were near the temple, and went on.

The cicada began to chirp in the grass, but immediately fell silent. Only in a narrow strip of sunshine did the midday insects buzz weakly and sleepily.

The emperor sometimes went out onto wider avenues, between two velvety titanic walls of centuries-old cypresses, throwing black as coal, almost night shadow. A sweet and ominous aroma emanated from them.

There were whole meadows of wild-growing daffodils, daisies, lilies. The beam of the midday sun hardly penetrated the laurel and cypress thickets, became pale, almost lunar, mournful and tender, as if penetrating through black fabric or the smoke of a funeral torch.

Finally, he saw a boy of about ten walking along a path densely overgrown with hyacinths. It was a weak child: black eyes stood out strangely with a deep radiance on the pale face of an ancient, purely Hellenic beauty. (According to D. Merezhkovsky.)

Ivan Ivanovich completely lost heart. His enthusiastic state after his arrival was replaced by silent melancholy and apathy.

He felt some kind of fright before the unknown to him, it turns out, life. It seemed to him now that life is some kind of mortal struggle for the right to exist on earth. And then, in mortal anguish, feeling that it was simply about prolonging his life, he invented and sought out his abilities, his knowledge and ways to use them. And, sorting through everything that he knows, he came to the sad conclusion that he knew nothing. He knows Spanish, he can play the harp, he knows a little about electricity and knows how, for example, to make an electric bell, but all this is here, in this city.

kind, it seemed unnecessary and for the townspeople somewhat ridiculous and amusing. They did not laugh in his face, but he saw smiles of regret and sly, mocking glances on their faces, and then he cringed, went away, trying not to meet people for a longer time.

As usual, he still went out every day and carefully in search of work. Slowly and trying to walk as slowly as possible, he, without any trepidation, as before, almost mechanically, expressed his requests. He was offered to come in a month, sometimes simply and briefly refused.

Sometimes, driven to dull despair, Ivan Ivanovich heartily reproached people, demanding immediate work and immediate assistance, exposing his merits to the state ...

For days on end he now dragged about the city, and in the evening, half-starved, with a grimace on his face, he wandered aimlessly from street to street, from house to house, trying to delay, to put off his coming home. (M. Zoshchenko.)

The dawn is blazing in the sky and in the water. Tomorrow will be a windy day. River bushes are black and green. In a distant dark village, all the windows are lit with the festive red light of sunset: it is as if a wedding is being celebrated there. Somewhere in the meadows or in the swamps, the frogs are ringing in an even, trembling chorus. The air is still slightly transparent.

On the port side, a girl is sitting on a white bench. Gushchin had not noticed her before, and his attention is alert. She wears a black smooth dress with wide sleeves, and a black scarf is tied like a nun. By nature, Gushchin is almost indifferent to women, but in dealing with them he is cowardly and unresourceful. However, he pulls himself up and passes back and forth several times past the girl, his hands in his trouser pockets, his shoulders raised, swaying slightly on each leg and gracefully bowing his head first to one side, then to the other.

Finally, he sits down beside him, placing his legs over his legs and his right hand on the curved back of the bench. For a while he drums his fingers and silently whistles some non-existent false tune. Then he quacks, removes his pince-nez, which is interfering with him, and turns to the girl. She has a simple, most Russian, white and now rosy face from the dawn, in which there is some kind of timid, like a hare charm. She is slightly snub-nosed, her lips are plump, pink, weak-willed, and on her upper lip there is a naive milky baby fluff.

Gushchin gathers courage and asks in a special, polite, Petrograd tone: - Excuse me, please. Do you know what the next marina will be? (A. I. Kuprin.)

This redoubt consisted of a mound, on which ditches were dug on three sides. In a place dug in by ditches stood ten firing cannons, protruding through the openings of the ramparts.

Cannons stood in line with the mound on both sides, also firing incessantly. A little behind the cannons were infantry troops. Entering this mound, Pierre never thought that this place dug in with small ditches, on which several cannons stood and fired, was the most important place in the battle.

Pierre, on the contrary, it seemed that this place (precisely because he was on it) was one of the most insignificant places of the battle.

Going out to the mound, Pierre sat down at the end of the ditch surrounding the battery, and with an unconsciously joyful smile looked at what was happening around him. Occasionally, Pierre would get up with the same smile and, trying not to interfere with the soldiers loading and rolling the guns, who constantly ran past him with bags and charges, walked around the battery. The cannons from this battery continuously fired one after another, deafening with their sounds and covering the whole neighborhood with gunpowder smoke.

In contrast to the eerie feeling between the infantry soldiers of the cover, here, on the battery, where a small number of people engaged in business were limited, separated from others by a ditch, here one felt the same and common to all, as if family animation.

The appearance of the non-military figure of Pierre in a white hat first struck these people unpleasantly. The soldiers, passing by him, looked with surprise and even fear at his figure. Senior artillery officer, tall, with long legs, a pockmarked man, as if in order to look at the action of the last weapon, went up to Pierre and looked at him curiously.

A young, round-faced officer, still a perfect child, obviously just released from the corps, disposing of the two guns entrusted to him very diligently, turned sternly to Pierre. (L. N. Tolstoy.)

Our work in Novorossiysk was easy. There is a grain elevator on the mountain, twelve stories high, and from the topmost floor, along an inclined chute, almost a mile long, heavy, full-weight grain pours in an uninterrupted golden stream, pours into our hold directly and fills the entire ship, forcing gradually sink into the water. We only had to level its heavy piles with shovels, and we buried ourselves in grain up to our knees and sneezed from the dust.

Finally, when the barque took on as much cargo as it could hold, and even, it seems, a little more, because it settled into the water below the waterline, we set off. In truth, a five-masted sailing ship is a majestic sight when all its sails are convex and strained. And you, standing on the yardarm, proudly realize that old specialists admire you from other ships. (A. I. Kuprin.)

At that moment the boat moored, and the whole company went ashore.

In the meantime, the coachman, the footman, and the maid brought baskets from the carriage and prepared dinner on the grass under the old linden trees. Everyone sat down around the spread tablecloth and began to eat pate and other dishes. Everyone had an excellent appetite, and Anna Vasilievna kept regaling and persuading her guests to eat more, assuring them that it was very healthy in the air; she addressed such speeches to Uvar Ivanovich himself. "Be calm," he mumbled to her with his mouth full. “The Lord gave such a glorious day!” she kept repeating. It was impossible to recognize her: she seemed to be twenty years younger. Bersenev noticed this to her. “Yes, yes,” she said, “I was in my time at least somewhere: they wouldn’t have thrown me out of a dozen.” Shubin joined Zoya and regaled her incessantly; he also assured her that he wanted to lay his head on her knees: she did not want to allow him "such a great liberty." Elena seemed the most serious of all, but she had a wonderful calmness in her heart, which she had not experienced for a long time.

The hours flew by; evening was drawing near. Anna Vasilievna suddenly became alarmed. She began to fuss, and everyone fussed, got up and went in the direction of the castle, where the carriages were. Passing by the ponds, everyone stopped to admire Tsaritsyn for the last time. Everywhere the bright evening colors were burning; the sky reddened, the leaves shone iridescently, indignant at the rising breeze; Distant waters flowed like melted gold; sharply separated from the dark green of the trees were reddish turrets and pavilions scattered here and there in the garden. "Farewell, Tsaritsyno, we will not forget today's trip!" - said Anna Vasilievna ... (According to I. S. Turgenev.)

The old violinist-musician loved to play at the foot of the monument to Pushkin. This monument stood in Moscow, at the beginning of Tverskoy Boulevard, poems are written on it, and marble steps rise to it from all four sides. Climbing up these steps to the pedestal itself, the old musician turned his face to the boulevard, to the distant Nikitsky Gate, and touched the strings on the violin with his bow. Children, passers-by, newspaper readers from the local kiosk immediately gathered at the monument - and they all fell silent in anticipation of music, because music consoles people, it promises them happiness and a glorious life. The musician put the case from his violin on the ground against the monument, it was closed, and there was a piece of black bread and an apple in it, so that you could eat whenever you wanted.

The old man usually went out to play in the evening. It was more useful for his music to make the world quieter and darker. The old man was bored by the thought that he did not bring people any good, and therefore voluntarily went to play on the boulevard. There, the sounds of his violin were heard in the air, in the dusk, and at least occasionally they reached the depths of the human heart, touching him with a gentle and courageous force, captivating him to live a higher, beautiful life. Some music listeners took out money to give to the old man, but did not know where to put it; the violin case was closed, and the musician himself was high at the foot of the monument, almost next to Pushkin.

He went home late, sometimes already at midnight, when the people became rare and only some random lonely person listened to his music. (According to A. Platonov.)

Inspiration is a strict working state of a person. Spiritual uplift is not expressed in a theatrical pose and elation. As well as the notorious "torments of creativity."

Tchaikovsky argued that inspiration is a state when a person works with all his strength, like an ox, and does not at all coquettishly wave his hand.

Each person, at least several times in his life, has experienced a state of inspiration - spiritual uplift, freshness, a vivid perception of reality, the fullness of thought and consciousness of his creative power.

Yes, inspiration is a strict working state, but it has its own poetic coloring, its own, I would say, poetic subtext.

Inspiration enters us like a radiant summer morning that has just thrown off the mists of a quiet night, spattered with dew, with thickets of wet foliage. It gently breathes its healing coolness into our faces.

Inspiration is like first love, when the heart beats loudly in anticipation of amazing meetings, unimaginably beautiful eyes, smiles and omissions.

Then:tash inner world tuned finely and truly, like a kind of magical instrument, and responds to everything, even the most hidden, most inconspicuous sounds of life. (According to K. Paustovsky.)

The Persians never showed up again. Wanting to exhaust the Roman army before a decisive attack, they set fire to rich fields with yellowing ripe barley and wheat, all the granaries and haylofts in the villages.

Soldiers walked through the dead desert, smoking from a recent fire. Hunger has begun.

To increase the disaster, the Persians destroyed the canal dams and flooded the scorched fields. They were helped by streams and streams that overflowed their banks due to a brief but strong summer snowmelt on the mountain peaks of Armenia.

The water dried up quickly under the hot June sun. On the ground, which had not caught a cold from the fire, there were puddles with warm and sticky black mud. In the evenings, suffocating vapors separated from the wet coal, the sweet smell of rotten burning, which soaked everything: the air, water, even the dress and food of the soldiers. Clouds of insects rose from the smoldering swamps - mosquitoes, poisonous hornets, gadflies and flies. They hovered over the pack animals, clinging to the dusty, sweaty skins of the legionnaires. Day and night there was a sleepy buzzing. The horses were furious, the bulls escaped from under the yoke and overturned the wagons. After a difficult transition, the soldiers could not rest: there was no salvation from insects even in tents; they penetrated through the cracks; I had to wrap myself in a stuffy blanket with my head in order to fall asleep. From the bite of tiny transparent flies of a dirty yellow color, tumors were made, blisters that first itched, then hurt and, finally, turned into terrible ulcers.

The sun hasn't come out in recent days. The sky was covered with an even veil of sultry clouds, but for the eyes their motionless light was even more tormenting than the sun; the sky seemed low, dense, suffocating, like an overhanging ceiling in a hot bath.

So they walked, emaciated, weak, with a sluggish step, bowing their heads, between the sky, mercilessly low, white as lime, and the charred black earth. (D. Merezhkovsky.)

Doomed by fate to constant idleness, I did absolutely nothing. For whole hours I looked out of my windows at the sky, at the birds, at the alleys, read everything that was brought to me from the post office, and slept. Sometimes I left home and wandered somewhere until late in the evening.

One day, returning home, I accidentally wandered into some unfamiliar estate. The sun was already hiding, and evening shadows were stretched on the flowering rye. Two rows of old, closely planted, very tall firs stood like two solid walls, forming a gloomy beautiful alley. I easily climbed over the fence and walked along this alley, sliding along the spruce needles, which here covered the ground by an inch. It was quiet, dark, and only high on the peaks a bright golden light trembled here and there and shimmered like a rainbow in the webs of a spider. There was a strong, stuffy smell of pine needles. Then I turned down a long linden alley. And here the same desolation and old age; last year's goodness rustled sadly underfoot, and in the twilight shadows hid between the trees. To the right, in an old orchard, an oriole sang reluctantly, in a weak voice, which must also be an old woman. But now the lindens are over; I passed a white house with a terrace and a mezzanine, and suddenly a view unfolded in front of me of the manor’s courtyard and the wide pond with a bath, with a crowd of green willows, with a village on the other side, with a high narrow bell tower, on which a cross burned, reflecting in the setting sun. For a moment, I felt the charm of something familiar, very familiar, as if I had already seen this same panorama once in my childhood. (According to A.P. Chekhov.)

In May 1929, sitting on a bench in the Summer Garden and basking in the spring sun, Michel imperceptibly and unexpectedly, with some kind of even fear and haste, began to think about his past life: about Pskov, about his wife Simochka and about those past days which seemed to him now surprising and even fabulous.

He began to think about it for the first time in years. And, thinking about it, he felt that old nervous chill and excitement, which had long since left him and which happened when he composed poetry or thought about lofty subjects.

And that life, which had once seemed to him humiliating for his dignity, now shone with some kind of extraordinary purity.

The life he had left seemed to him now best life throughout its existence. Furthermore - past life seemed to him now some kind of unique fairy tale.

Terribly excited, Michel began to rush about the garden, waving his arms and running along the paths.

And suddenly a clear and understandable thought made him tremble all over.

Yes, right now, today, he will go to Pskov, there he will meet his ex-wife, his loving Simochka, with her lovely freckles. He will meet his wife and spend the rest of his life with her in complete harmony, love and tender friendship. How strange that he hadn't thought of that before. There, in Pskov, there was a man who loved him, who would simply be glad that he had returned.

And thinking about this, he suddenly burst into tears from all kinds of feelings and delight that seized him. (According to M. Zoshchenko.)

Tikhonov stood in thought at the window, then carefully descended and went to the palace park.

I didn't want to sleep. It was impossible to read in the scattered brilliance of the white night, just as it was impossible to turn on the light. The electric fire seemed noisy. It seemed to stop the slow flow of the night, destroy the secrets that curled up like invisible furry animals in the corners of the room, make things more uncomfortably real than they really were.

A greenish half-light froze in the alleys. Gilded statues gleamed. The fountains were silent at night, their quick rustle was not heard. Only individual drops of water fell, and their splashing carried very far.

The stone stairs near the palace were illuminated by the dawn: a yellowish light fell to the ground, reflected from the walls and windows. The palace shone through the vague darkness of the trees, like a single golden leaf glowing in early autumn through the thick of still fresh and dark foliage. (According to K. Paustovsky.)

There had been a drought for two weeks; a thin mist spread like milk in the air and veiled the distant forests; he smelled of burning. Many darkish clouds with indistinctly outlined edges spread across the pale blue sky; a rather strong wind rushed in a dry continuous stream, not dispersing the heat. Leaning his head against the pillow and crossing his arms, Lavretsky gazed at the paddocks of the fields passing like a fan, at the slowly flickering willows, at the stupid crows and rooks, gazing with dull suspicion sideways at the passing carriage, at the long demarcations overgrown with Chernobyl, wormwood and mountain ash; he looked, and this fresh, steppe, fat wilderness and wilderness, this greenery, these long hills, ravines with squat oak bushes, gray villages, thin birches - all this Russian picture, which he had not seen for a long time, evoked sweet and in at the same time, almost mournful feelings pressed on his chest with some pleasant pressure.

His thoughts wandered slowly; their outlines were just as indistinct and vague, like the outlines of those high, also as if wandering, clouds. He remembered his childhood, his mother... His head slid to one side, he opened his eyes. The same fields, the same steppe species; the worn horseshoes of the horseshoes alternately sparkle through the wavy dust; the driver's shirt, yellow, with red gussets, puffs up from the wind.

The tarantass was pushed: Lavretsky straightened up and opened his eyes wide. In front of him, on a hillock, stretched a small village, a little to the right one could see a decrepit master's house with closed shutters and a crooked porch; across the wide courtyard, from the very gates, nettles grew, green and dense, like hemp; right there stood an oak, still strong barn. (According to I. S. Turgenev.)

Who hasn't cursed the stationmasters, who hasn't scolded them? Who, in a moment of anger, did not demand from them a fatal book in order to write in it their useless complaint of oppression, rudeness and malfunction? Who does not revere them as monsters of the human race, equal to the deceased clerks, or at least Murom robbers? Let us, however, be fair, let us try to enter into their position and, perhaps, we will begin to judge them much more condescendingly. What is a station attendant?

Peace of day or night. All the annoyance accumulated during a boring ride, the traveler takes out on the caretaker. The weather is unbearable, the road is bad, the driver is stubborn, the horses are not driven - and the caretaker is to blame. Entering his poor dwelling, the passer-by looks at him as if he were an enemy; well, if he manages to get rid of the uninvited guest soon; but if there are no horses? .. God! what curses, what threats will fall on his head! In rain and sleet he is forced to run around the yards; in a storm, in the Epiphany frost, he goes into the canopy, so that only for a moment can he rest from the screams and pushes of the irritated guest. Let us delve into all this carefully, and instead of indignation, our heart will be filled with sincere compassion. A few more words: for twenty years in a row I traveled all over Russia; almost all postal routes are known to me; several generations of coachmen are familiar to me; I don’t know a rare superintendent by sight, I’ve never dealt with a rare one ... And I will only say that the estate of stationmasters is presented to the general opinion in the most false form. (According to A. S. Pushkin.)

In the spring of 1898, I read in the Moscow newspaper Kurier the story Bergamot and Garaska - an Easter story of the usual type, directed to the heart of the festive reader, he once again reminded that a person is available - sometimes, with some special conditions, - a feeling of generosity and that sometimes enemies become friends, although not for long, say - for a day.

Since the time of Gogol's The Overcoat, Russian writers have probably written several hundred or even thousands of such deliberately touching stories; around the magnificent flowers of genuine Russian literature, they are dandelions, which supposedly should decorate the beggarly life of a sick and hard Russian soul.

But this story gave me a strong whiff of talent, which somehow reminded me of Pomyalovsky, and besides, in the tone of the story, one could feel the clever little smile of distrust of the fact hidden by the author, this smile easily reconciled with the inevitable sentimentalism of "Easter" and "Christmas" literature.

I wrote a letter to the author about the story and received a funny answer from L. Andreev: in original handwriting, in semi-printed letters, he wrote funny, funny words, and among them a simple but skeptical aphorism stood out especially emphasized: "It is as pleasant to be full to be generous as to drink coffee after dinner."

This was the beginning of my correspondence acquaintance with Leonid Nikolaevich Andreev. During the summer I read a few more short stories by him and James Lynch's feuilletons, observing how quickly and boldly the peculiar talent of the new writer was developing. (M. Gorky.)

And the years went on and on; quickly and inaudibly, like snowy waters, Elena's youth flowed, in external inactivity, in internal struggle and anxiety. She had no friends: of all the girls who visited the Stakhovs' house, she did not get along with a single one. Parental power never weighed on Elena, but from the age of sixteen

she became almost completely independent. Her soul flared up and went out alone, she fought like a bird in a cage, but there was no cage: no one constrained her, no one held her back, but she was torn and languished. She sometimes did not understand herself, even was afraid of herself. Everything that surrounded her seemed to her either meaningless or incomprehensible. “How to live without love? And there is no one to love!” she thought, and she became frightened from these thoughts, from these sensations. At the age of eighteen she nearly died of a malignant fever; shaken to the ground, her whole body, naturally healthy and strong, could not cope for a long time: the last traces of the disease finally disappeared, but Elena Nikolaevna's father still talked about her nerves, not without anger. Sometimes it occurred to her that she wanted something that no one wanted, that no one thought about in all of Russia. Then she calmed down, even laughed at herself, carelessly spent day after day, but suddenly something strong, nameless, with which she did not know how to cope, boiled in her, and begged to break out. The storm passed, tired, not soaring wings descended; but these impulses did not cost her in vain. No matter how hard she tried not to betray what was going on in her, the anguish of her agitated soul was reflected in her very outward calmness, and her relatives often had the right to shrug their shoulders, be surprised and not understand her "oddities". (I. S. Turgenev.)

I woke up on a gray morning. The room was filled with a steady yellow light, as if from a kerosene lamp. The light came from below, from the window, and illuminated the log ceiling most brightly.

Strange light - dim and motionless - was unlike the sun. It was shining autumn leaves. During the windy and long night, the garden shed dry leaves, they lay in noisy piles on the ground and spread a dull glow. From this radiance, the faces of people seemed tanned, and the pages of the books on the table seemed to be covered with a layer of wax.

This is how autumn began. For me, it came right away this morning. Until then, I hardly noticed it: there was still no smell of rotten leaves in the garden, the water in the lakes did not turn green, and the burning hoarfrost did not yet lie in the morning on the plank roof.

Autumn has come suddenly. This is how a feeling of happiness comes from the most inconspicuous things - from a distant steamboat whistle on the Oka River or from a random smile.

Autumn came by surprise and took possession of the earth - gardens and rivers, forests and air, fields and birds. Everything immediately became autumnal.

Tits were bustling about in the garden. Their scream was like breaking glass. They hung upside down on the branches and peered through the window from under the maple leaves.

Every morning in the garden, as on an island, migratory birds gathered. Whistling, screeching and croaking, there was a commotion in the branches. Only during the day it was quiet in the garden: restless birds flew south.

The leaf fall has begun. Leaves fell day and night. They then flew obliquely in the wind, then lay down vertically in the damp grass. The forests were drizzling with a rain of falling leaves. This rain has been going on for weeks. Only towards the end of September the copses were exposed, and through the thicket of trees the blue distance of the compressed fields became visible.

At the same time, old Prokhor, a fisherman and basket maker (in Solotch almost all old people become basket makers with age), told me a tale about autumn. Until then, I had never heard this tale - Prokhor must have invented it himself.

You look around, - Prokhor told me, picking his bast shoes with an awl, - you look closely, dear person, than every bird or, say, some other living creature breathes. Look, explain. And they will say: I studied in vain. For example, a leaf flies off in the fall, and people are unaware that a person in this case is the main defendant. Man, let's say, invented gunpowder. Enemy tear it apart with that gunpowder! I myself also dabbled in gunpowder. In ancient times, the village blacksmiths forged the first gun, stuffed it with gunpowder, and that gun hit the fool. The fool was walking through the forest and saw how the orioles were flying under the sky, yellow cheerful birds were flying and whistling, inviting guests. The fool hit them with both trunks - and the golden fluff flew to the ground, fell on the forests, and the forests withered, withered and fell down overnight. And other leaves, where the bird's blood got, turned red and also crumbled. I suppose I saw in the forest - there is a yellow leaf and there is a red leaf. Until that time, all birds wintered with us. Even the crane did not go anywhere. And the forests both summer and winter stood in leaves, flowers and mushrooms. And there was snow. There was no winter, I say. Did not have! Why the hell did she surrender to us, winter, pray tell?! What is her interest? The fool killed the first bird - and the earth became sad. Since that time, leaf fall, and wet autumn, and leafy winds, and winters began. And the bird was frightened, flies away from us, offended by a person. So, dear, it turns out that we have harmed ourselves, and we need not to spoil anything, but to take good care of it.

What to save?

Well, let's say a different bird. Or a forest. Or water, so that there is transparency in it. Take care of everything, brother, otherwise you will be thrown by the earth and you will be thrown to death.

I studied autumn stubbornly and for a long time. In order to see for real, you need to convince yourself that you are seeing this for the first time in your life. It was the same with autumn. I assured myself that this autumn is the first and last in my life. This helped me to peer into it more closely and see much that I had not seen before, when the autumns passed, leaving no trace, except for the memory of slush and wet Moscow roofs.

I learned that autumn mixed all the pure colors that exist on earth, and applied them, like on a canvas, to the distant expanses of earth and sky.

I saw foliage, not only gold and purple, but also scarlet, purple, brown, black, gray and almost white. The colors seemed especially soft because of the autumn haze that hung motionless in the air. And when it rained, the softness of the colors gave way to brilliance. The sky, covered with clouds, still gave enough light so that the wet forests could ignite in the distance like crimson fires. In the pine thickets, the birch trees were shivering from the cold, showered with gold leaf. The echo from the blows of an ax, the distant hooting of women and the wind from the wings of a flying bird shook off this foliage. Around the trunks lay wide circles of fallen leaves. The trees were beginning to turn yellow below: I saw aspens, red below and still green at the top.

One autumn day I was boating on the Prorva. It was noon. The low sun hung in the south. Its oblique light fell on the dark water and reflected from it. Stripes of sunlight from the waves raised by the oars ran measuredly along the banks, rising from the water and fading in the tops of the trees. Bands of light penetrated the thicket of grasses and bushes, and for an instant the banks flared up with hundreds of colors, as if a sunbeam struck in placers of multi-colored ore. The light revealed either black shiny grass stalks with orange dried berries, then the fiery caps of fly agarics, as if spattered with chalk, then ingots of caked oak leaves and the red backs of ladybugs.

Often in autumn I would watch the falling leaves closely to catch that imperceptible split second when the leaf separates from the branch and begins to fall to the ground. But I didn't succeed for a long time. I have read in old books about the sound of falling leaves, but I have never heard that sound. If the leaves rustled, it was only on the ground, under the feet of a person. The rustle of leaves in the air seemed to me as unbelievable as stories about hearing the grass grow in spring.

I was, of course, wrong. Time was needed so that the ear, dulled by the rattle of the city streets, could rest and catch the very clear and precise sounds of the autumn earth.

Late one evening I went out into the garden, to the well. I put a dim kerosene lantern on the log house " bat and got some water. Leaves were floating in the bucket. They were everywhere. There was nowhere to get rid of them. Black bread from the bakery was brought with wet leaves stuck to it. The wind threw handfuls of leaves on the table, on the bed, on the floor, on the books, otherwise it was difficult for the paths of the garden to walk: one had to walk on the leaves as if in deep snow. We found leaves in the pockets of our raincoats, in caps, in our hair - everywhere. We slept on them and soaked in their scent.

There are autumn nights, deafened and mute, when calmness hangs over the black wooded edge, and only the watchman's beater comes from the village outskirts.

It was just such a night. The lantern illuminated the well, the old maple under the fence, and the wind-torn nasturtium bush in the yellowed flower bed.

I looked at the maple tree and saw how a red leaf carefully and slowly separated from the branch, shuddered, stopped for a moment in the air and began to fall obliquely at my feet, slightly rustling and swaying. For the first time I heard the rustle of a falling leaf, a faint sound like a child's whisper.

Night stood over the hushed earth. The outpouring of starlight was bright, almost unbearable. The autumn constellations shone in the bucket of water and in the small window of the hut with the same intensity as in the sky.

The constellations of Perseus and Orion passed their slow path above the earth, trembled in the water of the lakes, dimmed in the thickets where wolves dozed, and were reflected on the scales of fish sleeping on the shallows in Staritsa and Prorva.

By dawn, the green Sirius was lit up. His low fire was always tangled in the willow foliage. Jupiter was setting in the meadows over black haystacks and damp roads, and Saturn was rising from the other side of the sky, from the forests, forgotten and abandoned by man in autumn.

The starry night passed over the earth, dropping cold sparks of meteors, in the rustle of reeds, in the tart smell of autumn water.

At the end of autumn I met Prokhor on Prorva. Gray-haired and shaggy, covered with fish scales, he sat under willow bushes and fished for perches.

In Prokhor's eyes he was a hundred years old, no less. He smiled with his toothless mouth, pulled a fat crazy perch out of his purse and patted his fat side - he boasted of his prey.

Until evening we fished together, munching on stale bread and talking in an undertone about the recent forest fire.

It started near the village of Lopukhi, in a clearing where the mowers had forgotten the fire. Blew dry. The fire quickly drove north. He was moving at twenty kilometers an hour. It hummed like hundreds of aircraft strafing over the ground.

In the smoke-filled sky, the sun hung like a crimson spider on a dense gray web. Garr ate at his eyes. A slow rain of ash fell. It covered the river water with a gray coating. Sometimes birch leaves, turned into ashes, flew from the sky. They crumbled to dust at the slightest touch.

At night, a gloomy glow swirled in the east, cows mooed drearily around the yards, horses neighed, and white signal rockets flashed on the horizon - these were the Red Army units that extinguished the fire, warning each other of the approaching fire.

We returned from Prorva in the evening. The sun was setting behind the Eye. Between us and the sun lay a dull silver streak. This sun was reflected in the thick autumn cobwebs that covered the meadows.

During the day, the web flew through the air, tangled in the uncut grass, stuck with yarn on the oars, on the faces, on the rods, on the horns of the cows. It stretched from one bank of the Prorva to the other and slowly braided the river with light and sticky nets. In the mornings, dew settled on the cobwebs. Covered with cobwebs and dew, willows stood under the sun like fabulous trees transplanted to our lands from distant lands.

On each web sat a small spider. He wove a web while the wind carried him above the ground. He flew tens of kilometers on the web. It was a migration of spiders, much like the autumn migration of birds. But still no one knows why spiders fly every autumn, covering the ground with their finest yarn.

At home, I washed the cobwebs from my face and lit the stove. The smell of birch smoke mingled with the smell of juniper. An old cricket sang, and mice crawled under the floor. They dragged rich stocks into their holes - forgotten crackers and cinders, sugar and petrified pieces of cheese.

In the middle of the night I woke up. The second roosters crowed, the fixed stars burned in their usual places, and the wind rustled cautiously over the garden, patiently waiting for the dawn.

The second case was much worse. Marie left for Peterhof, missed the last steamer, and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof wharf.
At two o'clock in the morning Shchedrin began calling all the police departments, roused dozens of people to their feet, and then, when Marie was found, he had to apologize and listen to the playful remarks of those on duty.
- Nonsense! Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was deadly sleepy - In your country, I'm not afraid of anything. I even boldly approached one person at the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.
- About what? Shchedrin asked.
“Everything,” Marie replied. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me like an old acquaintance.
- Yes, it must be Ackerman! exclaimed Shchedrin. - That's the old devil! Is he still fishing?
“Yes,” Marie said. - Along with a black cat. It's like a fairytale.
Marie slept until evening. The windows were open. The wind leafed through the book, forgotten on the window. He turned the pages back and forth, looking for his favorite lines, finally found them and fell silent: “From the realm of blizzards, from the realm of ice and snow, how pure and fresh your May flies.”
Marie was awakened by a rustle in the room. The wind tossed torn envelopes off the table. It was gloomy. Far away on the seashore, iron thunder rumbled and rolled into the abyss.
Marie jumped up. Lightning flared up outside the windows, trembled and died out in the depths of the noisy gardens.
Marie quickly washed, dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.
“Thunderstorm,” he said to Marie. - You slept nine hours.
- What are you playing? Marie asked and sat down in a chair, her legs crossed.
She looked out the window, where a hot wind was already raging in the gardens and throwing plucked leaves on the windowsills. One sheet fell on the piano. There was no lid on the piano, and the sheet got tangled in the steel strings. Shchedrin carefully took out the sheet and said:
- Tchaikovsky. If I were a composer, I would write a climate symphony.
Mari laughed.
"Don't laugh," Shchedrin told her and plucked the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return the Miocene climate to Europe. I don't know if you studied the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you must know that the Earth has experienced several terrible icings.
Marie cringed.
"We don't need any more," she said seriously.
“Of course not. The icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to make everything clear, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the climate of the Miocene will return to Europe.
- Warm?
“Very much,” Shchedrin replied. - The Gulf of Finland will smoke like fresh milk. Two crops will be harvested here. Magnolia forests will bloom on the Åland Islands. Can you imagine: white nights in magnolia forests! This can make you really crazy!
- What does it mean to be stupid? Marie asked.
- Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word - go crazy.
- Very good! Marie said. - But what is needed for this?
- Rubbish! We need a little revolution in Greenland. Enormous work must be begun in Greenland in order to melt at least a a short time a layer of ice one and a half meters on the tops of the plateaus. It would be enough.
– How did you get to this point?
Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.
- What is this for? - he said. – You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.
The downpour roared outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles were bursting in the puddles in the garden, and maybe that's why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.
“Play,” said Marie. “Every day you tell me fairy tales like a stupid girl.
“These are not fairy tales,” said Shchedrin, and played the overture from Eugene Onegin. – Pushkin is also not a fairy tale. It's all real.
Marie sighed and thought. The morning meeting now seemed distant, like childhood. Was she? Who is this man - thin, with gray temples and a young face? Why didn't she ask him who he was? It is difficult to meet a second person in such a huge city.
The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly, rolling down from the leaves.
Marie quietly got up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The storm moved to the east. To the west, a rain-washed sunset burned.
Marie went to the Summer Garden.
She wandered along the damp alleys of the garden, went out to the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.
The ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in the silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly brighter than the night.
The majestic buildings that surrounded Marie seemed to be painted in watercolor. Only columns and powerful attics stood out, illuminated by diffused light. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was a reflection of the night in the canals, or a thin strip of dawn was still smoldering in the west, or the lanterns, mixing their brilliance with dusk, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, slight sadness.
Marie walked past the Hermitage. She was already in it and now she tried to imagine its night halls, the dim glow of the Neva outside the windows, the centuries-old silence of the pictures.
Marie went out into the square near the Winter Palace, stopped and clasped her hands. She did not know whose genius, whose delicate hand had created this world's most beautiful turn of colonnades, buildings, arches, cast-iron gratings, this expanse filled with greenish night coolness and majestic architectural thought.
Marie returned back by the last river boat. Glassy and empty, he carried her, swaying along the black Neva past Peter and Paul Fortress, past ravelins and crownworks, past piles, bridges and parks. The policeman was dozing in the corner of the cabin.
Behind the Freedom Bridge, a wide beam of a searchlight rose into the sky, smoking and dimming. It descended and illuminated a white stone building on the shore, simple and majestic.
The policeman opened his eyes.
“Preparations are starting,” he told Marie. - They illuminate the best buildings.
- What kind of preparation? Marie asked.
She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.
“To the holiday,” the policeman said. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I've lived here since I was a kid, and I can't see enough of it every day. You stand at the post at night and sometimes you don’t know whether you are dreaming all this, or in reality. You will approach the house, you will look - the lantern with number burns; then you will calm down: it means that you are not dreaming.
Marie smiled shyly.
“I study at the rowing school,” the policeman said. - I'm going to sea in an outrigger. When you swim out in the evening, you can't see the city, it's in the fog. Some lanterns shine on the water. It's hard to even go back to shore.
- Where are you in the city? Marie asked.
- You, you see, are not Russian: your conversation is not ours.
- I'm Swedish.
“Ahhh…” said the policeman. “So you love it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.
At the pier near the river Krestovka Marie got off. The policeman went with her and escorted her home.
- I'm not afraid why! Marie was embarrassed. - You worked, you were tired.
“Don’t worry,” the policeman assured her. - I'm not going home. I'll go to the water station, I'll spend the night there. I still have to train for the holiday in the morning. There will be races. From here - straight to Sestroretsk. For endurance.
At the gate of her house, Marie said goodbye to the policeman. He shook her hand politely and left. Marie stood a little in the garden, then laughed. She wondered what her friends in Stockholm would say if she offered her hand to a police officer there.
By the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and architect.
Tikhonov got Peterhof. The holiday in Peterhof was given a maritime character. Teams of warships were supposed to arrive here from Kronstadt, and in the palace it was decided to arrange a ball for old and young sailors - a meeting of two generations.
After the incident on the pier, Tikhonov discovered new properties in himself. He began to notice things that he had previously passed indifferently. The world turned out to be filled with amazing colors, light, sounds. He, the artist, had never seen such a variety of colors before. They were everywhere, but most of all they overflowed into sea ​​water.
The world has become significant in everything. Tikhonov felt life in all its diversity of manifestations, as something unified, powerful, created for happiness.
This full feeling he owed his life to his time. This feeling only intensified under the influence of a meeting at dawn with a young woman.
There was something about this meeting that defies description and story. That "something" was love. But Tikhonov did not yet admit this to himself. In his mind, everything merged into one sparkling circle: the distant whistle of an ocean steamer, the golden shimmer of the city in the morning mist, the stillness of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame caretaker of the pier and his words about the unusual Baltic summer.
In this state, Tikhonov began to work on decorating Peterhof. While working, he thought about his time, about the country and about her, a stranger.
He remembered the words of the famous writer, the one who once ruffled his hair and called him a "bubble". He read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer said to his young contemporary:

“When you write, think about her, even if she wasn’t there, and about excellent people to whom you, also an excellent person, sincerely and simply and very sincerely tell about what only you know, what she and everyone needs to know. them, do you understand?

She was. And Tikhonov thought about her, thought that she would pass here, see all the charm of the land adorned by him, and feel, like him, the breath of a free and cheerful country, where she came as a guest.
Nikanor Ilyich was terribly excited when he learned that Tikhonov had been assigned to decorate Peterhof. For several days he worried for nothing. There was no one to talk to. Matryona was hard to talk, and Tikhonov was too busy. Therefore, the old man was delighted to tears when Katya arrived in Peterhof. She came to her brother to talk about how to decorate her boats and yachts for the holiday.
From Tikhonov she went down to the old people, and Nikanor Ilyich immediately struck up a conversation with her.
"I love holidays," said Nikanor Ilyich. - A holiday, I believe, sometimes a person needs more than daily bread.
- Oh, my God! Matrena sighed. - No strength! At least take him away, Katyusha, the cursed one.
- Quiet! Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. - You yourself will wash and clean the house for the holiday. I suppose you can’t put on your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!
Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich took to his bed. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.
“Alyosha…” he said, and suddenly burst into tears.
Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.
“I have a weakness of the heart. Am I going to look around and see nothing? And I would, a fool, live and live. Curiosity is burning me. I tried to go up to you, look at the sketches - what did you come up with for the holiday - but I'm afraid to interfere.
Tikhonov brought sketches to the old man. Nikanor Ilyich looked at them for a long time, then patted Tikhonov on the shoulder.
“I love perfection in you, Alyosha,” he said. - You are real. My word is final.
Saying goodbye, he asked Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, to call on the customer and convey that the piano cover was ready and it could be picked up.
Only on the second day did Tikhonov find, at the address given by Nikanor Ilyich, a small house in a garden on Krestovsky Island. It was raining, the ground smelled of rain-beaten dust.
Tikhonov was opened by a blond old man without one arm - Wiener. Tikhonov asked Citizen Shchedrin. Wiener led him into the room wide open open windows.
On the wall Tikhonov saw two portraits of excellent work. One showed an officer in a black uniform, the other a young woman with nervous eyebrows flying high. There was a clearly tangible resemblance to the stranger met on the pier.
Tikhonov ran his hand over his forehead, as if trying to drive away an obsessive thought, but the woman looked at him with already familiar eyes, and he involuntarily came closer and closer to the portrait and peered into it more and more intently.
Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort on himself to tear himself away from the portrait.
Behind Tikhonov stood a tall, gray-haired sailor, looking at him attentively.
“I come to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” Tikhonov said. - He is sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano cover is ready. You can come for her.
“Sit down,” said the sailor, and showed Tikhonov to a chair.
If Tikhonov had sat in it, he would have found himself with his back to the portrait. Tikhonov stepped towards the armchair, but changed his mind and sat down in another one so that he could see the portrait.
The sailor was still looking attentively at Tikhonov.
“Thank you,” he said. - And what about Nikanor Ilyich?
“Heart,” Tikhonov answered curtly.
Are you his son?
No, I'm his former student.
Are you obviously an artist?
- Yes.
“I guessed when I saw you peering into this portrait.
- Great job! Who is this?
- This a beautiful woman, the daughter of an old skipper from the Åland Islands.
- Is she Swedish? Tikhonov asked quickly.
- Yes. Her name was Anna Jacobsen. Her life was connected with very tragic circumstances. This is the wife of officer Pavel Bestuzhev, who was killed in a duel on Aland at the beginning of the last century. She went crazy.
“My great-grandfather,” Tikhonov said, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel. He got busted. He was a simple soldier.
“Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was that?”
- I think that also at the beginning of the last century.
The sailor got up and went to the window. He looked at the rain that was pouring dust into puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:
- You are not from the village of Meghry on the Kovzha River?
“Yes,” Tikhonov said in surprise. – How do you know this?
The sailor did not answer.
“Your great-grandfather,” he said, “is buried in the same grave as Pavel Bestuzhev. Both of them were killed on the same day. They were tied common destiny. Is your surname Tikhonov?
- Yes.
- Finally! - The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook hands with Tikhonov. My name is Shchedrin. I was looking for you for a long time, then I left. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned detailed history death of Pavel Bestuzhev. He was a freethinker. He saved a Decembrist from execution and was killed in a duel due to a collision with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was not buried alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out how these two people, Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev, were connected, but no one could explain this to me. The locals did not know anything, but I could not rummage through the archives. They would not have given me, and it was not at all up to it then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev's dying letter. In it, I found a request to inform his relatives about the death of soldier Tikhonov, in the village of Megry on the Kovzha River. During civil war I accidentally ended up in Meghry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.
“She asked me about you,” Tikhonov interrupted.
- She died? the sailor asked.
- Yes.
“I found your mother, but she didn’t really know anything about this story. She gave me your address and asked me to find you, but the address disappeared in the battle with the Kolchak flotilla near Yelabuga. My memory is bad, I could not remember him in any way ... But still we met! Shchedrin laughed. “Well, I won’t let you out now. Let's have a hat.
He took away Tikhonov's hat, brought a bottle of wine, biscuits and cigarettes.
"Let's have a drink for the occasion," he said. “Good weak wine. It is especially pleasant to drink it in such gray weather.
Tikhonov drank and felt slightly dizzy. All the events of the past few days seemed incredible to him, and the meeting with Shchedrin further strengthened this feeling.
- IN Lately, - he said to Shchedrin, - I fell into a period of unusual meetings.
- All the better. Drink. Recently, my relative, a girl, great-granddaughter of Anna Jacobsen, arrived from the Aland Islands. Her name is Marie. She told me in more detail about the fate of your great-grandfather. The adoptive father of this girl - a decrepit eccentric doctor - started writing the history of the Aland Islands. He rummaged through all the archives and found indications that the soldier Tikhonov was notched with gauntlets because, together with Pavel Bestuzhev, he helped the Decembrist escape ... Let's drink to our grandfathers!
Wine seemed to Tikhonov dissolved in cold water autumn leaves.
Tikhonov did not listen well to Shchedrin.
"That's her!" he said to himself, and his heart was beating painfully.
He wanted to hear women's footsteps in the rooms, but nothing could be heard except the sound of the wall clock and the distant horns of cars.
“Where is she? We must wait for her to end this terrible ignorance. Maybe it's completely different? Maybe a blond-haired girl with glasses and a loud voice will enter the room? I'm a fool, thought Tikhonov. - It's time for me to leave. It's time. You have to get up."
Tikhonov was about to get up and say goodbye to Shchedrin, but the thought of the portrait stopped him. The resemblance was too striking. He glanced at the portrait again and saw the same nervous, rising eyebrows and a small sad fold at the corner of his mouth.
- What's wrong with you? Shchedrin asked, noticing Tikhonov's distraction. - You look tired.
- I work a lot. I was assigned to decorate Peterhof. It is very difficult and even scary. How to decorate Rastrelli!
It was impossible to stay longer. Tikhonov got up. Shchedrin took his word from him that he would come to Krestovsky Island on the very first free evening, promised to visit the sick Nikolai Ilyich, and they parted.
Tikhonov walked through the garden, and as he walked this short distance, hundreds of thoughts flashed through his mind.
Tikhonov for the first time felt a connection with the past, with the village, where for hundreds of years his father, grandfather, great-grandfather picked cold clay, where in childhood his mother sprinkled his cuts with ashes from the stove, where they died from hernias, from childbirth, from starvation typhus. All this was long dead. If they remembered him, then with reluctance.
But now the past speaks in a different language. In him, in Alyosha Tikhonov, there was the blood of these people and the blood of his great-grandfather - a Nikolaev soldier who was killed for courage, for rebellion, for helping the Decembrists.
The idea that he should be a worthy descendant of an unwise peasant, drilled in the barracks, dressed in a worn soldier's overcoat, appeared in Tikhonov's mind.
The rain is over. Clouds slowly rolled in to the south and opened a desert sky in the west.
At the gate Tikhonov ran into a woman. He stepped aside and raised his head. It was she, the Peterhof stranger.
She held on to the iron bars and looked at Tikhonov. Tikhonov took off his hat.
“It's good,” he said, “that I've met you again! The city is so big, and you must not be the only Swede in Leningrad.
Marie was silent. Her hand slowly unclenched, leaving a gray stain on the glove from the bars. She leaned against the fence and said quickly:
- Yes, yes ... Speak.
- What? Tikhonov asked. – What can I say now? You probably already know everything yourself.
“If I knew…” Marie said and smiled. - Let's go.
She firmly took Tikhonov's hand above the wrist and, like a boy, led him along. They walked silently down the street. The desert sky lay beneath their feet, reflected in puddles of rainwater.
“I was sure that I would meet you again,” Tikhonov said. - It was impossible not to meet.
Mari tilted her head, as if agreeing with him. They went out to the pier of the river boats.
"Let's go to town," said Marie. You will show me your favorite places. This city was created in order to wander through it all night long.
Marie had a slight headache. She often put her hand to her eyes and smiled painfully.
On the boat, Tikhonov told Marie about everything he had learned from Shchedrin: about Anna Jacobsen, about Pavel Bestuzhev, and about his great-grandfather.
“So Anna bequeathed you to me,” Marie said thoughtfully.
Until late at night they walked around the city. He was especially beautiful that evening. It appeared in front of them with powerful colonnades of buildings, humpbacked arches of deserted bridges, bronze monuments and bushes of hundred-year-old lindens.
The Neva carried lights in deep water. The needle of the Admiralty shone over the river, sung by poets.
They stopped near the cast-iron gratings, looked through them at the twilight of the gardens, and Tikhonov spoke of dreams come true. famous architects who created this brilliant city in the northern swamps and forests. It was a city of great memories and no less great future.
They walked along the embankments of the Neva. The boys fished from the granite parapets. An old warship was moored by steel cables near a garden near the shore. Branches of lindens drooped over its deck and guns covered with tarpaulins.
“This is the Aurora,” Tikhonov said. - You know?
“I know,” Marie replied.
They passed through the square, where Bronze Horseman galloped north, and returned to the Moika.
On the Moika, among piles, tall buildings and green granite banks, there was a summer night silence. They leaned against the railing and looked at the water. A blue star trembled in it.
“Marie,” Tikhonov said, “look around: Pushkin died in this house.
Marie turned around. She looked at the windows, at the ledge of the house, which almost hung above the water, at the stone pedestals, worn down by centuries, at the dandelions that had sprouted among the flagstones along the sides of the narrow sidewalk.
Was he brought here when he was wounded? she asked.
- Yes. They brought him through this door.
“Maybe his blood was dripping here,” Marie said and looked at Tikhonov with a guilty smile.
“These were the years,” Tikhonov said, “when Pavel Bestuzhev and my great-grandfather were killed, and Anna died of grief. Pushkin himself spoke best of this time.
- How? Marie asked. - What did he say?
- Simple words: "And the gloomy year, in which so many brave, kind and beautiful victims fell, will hardly leave a memory of itself in some simple shepherd's song - dull and pleasant." Really, okay?
Marie did not allow Tikhonov to see her off. They parted at the Summer Garden. Marie held out both hands to Tikhonov, abruptly tore them away and quickly ran down the stone stairs to the pier.
... Thirty searchlights rose into the sky above Peterhof and confused their rays with the stars. Thus began the night party.
The destroyers, carrying chains of lights on their sides and masts, rushed, smashed the water of the bay into foam and, turning sharply, stopped near the Peterhof pier.
From the decks of the destroyers, the sailors saw an unprecedented spectacle. The palace was aflame with a crystal fire. Waterfalls flowed among marble and bronze.
Young sailors and old commanders climbed the stairs to the palace.
Glass cups, full of pure fire, burned on the sides. Fountains beat, lost in the darkness of overhanging trees. Here, in the park, one could clearly feel the heaviness and smell of foliage, the air of an unprecedented summer.
The windows of the palace were wide open.
On balconies, in blue and white halls, sailors stood, reflected in mirrors. Mirrors echoed their laughter, smiles, tanned faces.
Frightened birds rushed through this brilliance, went blind, hit the jets of fountains and flew away into the night, to the bay, in splashes and the noise of wings. There, the usual sky was reflected in the water, forgotten for this evening by people.
But soon the bay also spoke. Invisible forts thundered, throwing out flashes of fire: Kronstadt saluted with a hundred and one shots in honor of the great city.
Behind the roar of the cannonade, the voice of the planes was not heard, flying over all the points of the horizon and leaving light roads behind them.
Then, as if the starry sky began to fall to the ground: the planes dropped hundreds of fireballs. Air currents shook them above the ground and mixed them up. They either carried the balls to the bay with wide strokes - and the whole bay seemed to be ablaze, it seemed, to the very bottom with their reflections - then they condensed them into clouds of light shining over the shocked shores.
Leningrad sparkled over the Neva gem. Never before had the nobility of his prospects been so palpable.
Marie, Shchedrin and Viner arrived at Peterhof very early.
Nikanor Ilyich stopped Shchedrin on the terrace of Shchedrin's palace. Matryona, in a black silk dress, frightened and flushed, was led by the arm by the old man, blind from the lights and moving with difficulty.
“The people won great beauty for themselves, Alexander Petrovich,” the old man said to Shchedrin and furtively wiped away a tear. - Big beauty!
Shchedrin recalled the winter night when he and his sailors walked across the ice from Kronstadt to Peterhof and warmed themselves in the lodge of a Red Guard.
“Nikanor Ilyich,” he asked, “so it was you who guarded the palace in 1918?”
- Me, honey, me. And my share is in all this perfection.
Marie's eyes shone, but her face was stern and pale. Nikanor Ilyich looked at her. Marie smiled questioningly.
She took the old man by the arm and led him into the palace.
On the way they were met by Ackerman, shaven and lean, in full dress uniform. His eyes slyly laughed. He greeted everyone and said to Shchedrin:
- Sasha, I remember you once laughed at fairy tales. Are you ashamed, tell me?
- Shut up, fool! Shchedrin said. “It was you who did not believe that you would live to see good times.
“Tapping with a crutch,” said Ackerman, “he passed among the cliques of popular jubilation.
They entered the palace. The sailors parted. A restrained rumble passed through their ranks. Marie carefully led the decrepit worker. Behind was Matryona, followed by Shchedrin, Viner and Ackerman.
The whisper passed and subsided, then passed again: behind the excited young woman, the sailors saw the legendary captain Alexander Shchedrin, famous for his victories over the White flotilla, the creator of the famous theory about the return of the Miocene climate to Europe.
Tikhonov was waiting on the landing. He saw Marie, and it seemed to him that he could not endure the minutes of her approach. He thought that no art in the world could convey the beauty of a young woman, loving and happy.
The sailors gathered in a large gilded hall. The chandeliers chimed, and the candles lit for the feast trembled subtly.
Marie stopped with Tikhonov near the window. Shchedrin stepped forward and turned to the sailors. His gray head was white against the dark canvas of the painting that hung behind him. The picture depicted an old naval battle. An orchestra was playing at the back of the hall.
Shchedrin raised his hand. The orchestra is silent. Two generations of sailors held their breath.
- Friends! Shchedrin said. – Old and young sailors! Is it necessary to talk about what everyone wears in their hearts - to talk about pride in their era, their homeland! We are called upon to protect the country that creates happiness for working people. We fought for her. We have won in the past and we will always win. Each of us will give all our blood, strength, all courage so that our country and its culture can work in peace and prosper.
We weren't the only ones who created it. We, the generation of winners, cannot be ungrateful. We will always cherish in our hearts the memory of workers and peasants, poets and writers, scientists and artists, philosophers, soldiers and sailors who died for the happiness of the people in distant times, separated from us by tens and hundreds of years.
Let me instead of a celebratory speech tell you a simple story that happened more than a hundred years ago ...
The sailors stirred and fell silent. Shchedrin briefly told the story of the death of a soldier Semyon Tikhonov, Pavel Bestuzhev and Anna Jacobsen.
Sometimes he fell silent and ran his hand through his hair, trying not to betray his excitement.
– Pavel Bestuzhev left a letter before his death. I will read a few lines from it.
Shchedrin took out the letter. The light from the chandeliers was weak and difficult to read. The young sailor took a candelabra from the fireplace, stood next to Shchedrin, and the further Shchedrin read, the more noticeably the candelabra leaned and the more drops of wax fell on the parquet.
“I know,” Shchedrin read, “and you must know it with me, that times of great reckoning will come. Our torment and death,” Shchedrin read, and a slight rumble went through the ranks of the sailors, as if they were repeating the words of this letter after him in an undertone, like the words of an oath, “our torment and death will strike the hearts with languishing force. Disregard for the happiness of the people will be considered the most vile crime. Everything low will be crushed in the dust…” Mari shuddered. Hall sighed loudly, all the sailors stood up.
- “... will be crushed in the dust,” Shchedrin continued raising his voice, “and the happiness of a person will become the highest task of the people's tribunes, leaders and generals. I think about these times and envy beautiful women and brave men, whose love will bloom under the sky of a cheerful and free country ... ”The sailors listened while standing.
“I envy them,” Shchedrin’s voice grew and rose to a formidable cry, “and I cry in my soul:“ Don’t forget us, lucky ones! ” Marie looked out the window with her eyes full of tears.
The hall was silent.
“Friends,” said Shchedrin, “just a few more words. A descendant of a soldier, Semyon Tikhonov, is one of our best artists. We owe the splendor of this holiday to him. The great-granddaughter of Anna Jacobsen, who died of grief, is among us. She came to our country. She found a new home and happiness here. I can't talk about him.
Shchedrin was silent. Then Ackerman stood up in the back of the hall and shouted:
- And the grandson of the saved Decembrist is you!
The hall shook with a storm of cheers.
A wide flame flashed in the windows. The sailors looked back. Hundreds of streams of light rose to the sky above Leningrad.
But Shchedrin did not look at the lights of Leningrad. He looked at Marie, because there is no greater beauty in the world than the face of a young woman, loving and happy.

- They won't let you die in peace! murmured Matrena. “They don’t have enough geraniums, old fools, give them magnolia!”
“Geranium vs. Magnolia – rubbish!” Nikanor Ilyich got angry. - The geranium has an annoying, woolly leaf. Don't mess with me, old lady!
The old people argued. Tikhonov said goodbye and went to his mezzanine. The bay was visible from the windows. The bird stirred in the damp branches and called cautiously, as if calling someone. The clock below hissed for a long time and finally struck two brass strikes.
Tikhonov stood in thought at the window, then carefully descended and went to the palace park.
I didn't want to sleep. It was impossible to read in the scattered brilliance of the white night, just as it was impossible to turn on the light. The electric fire seemed noisy. It seemed to stop the slow flow of the night, to destroy secrets that curled up like invisible furry animals in the corners of the room, to make things uncomfortably real, more real than they really were.
A greenish half-light froze in the alleys. Gilded statues gleamed. The fountains were silent at night, their quick rustle was not heard. Only individual drops of water fell, and their splashing carried very far.
The stone stairs near the palace were illuminated by the dawn; yellowish light fell on the ground, reflecting off the walls and windows.
The palace shone through the vague darkness of the trees, like a single golden leaf glowing in early autumn through the thick of still fresh and dark foliage.
Tikhonov went along the canal to the bay. Small fish swam in the canal between the stones overgrown with mud.
The bay was clean and calm. Silence lay over him. The sea has not yet woken up. Only the pink reflection of the water foreshadowed the approaching sunrise.
The ocean steamer was heading towards Leningrad. The dawn was already burning in its portholes, and a light smoke trailed behind the stern.
The steamer trumpeted, welcoming the great northern city, the end of the difficult sea ​​route. Far away, in Leningrad, where the spire of the Admiralty was already glowing with pale gold, another ship answered him with a long cry.
There were boats in the canal. Young sailors were sleeping on them, covered with a tarpaulin. Tikhonov saw their faces ruddy from sleep, occasionally heard light snoring. The pre-dawn wind blew in from the sea and stirred the leaves overhead.
Tikhonov went ashore. There was no one there, only a woman was sitting on a wooden bench at the very end of the pier.
"What is she doing here at this hour?" thought Tikhonov. A shabby black cat walked cautiously along the damp decking of the pier, shaking its paw in disgust after each step.
Tikhonov stopped at the railing and looked into the water. The cat also looked in, and his eyes immediately turned black: near the piles, a flock of long silver fish moved their tails.
The woman got up and went to Tikhonov. He looked at her, and the closer she came, the more clearly, as if from a mist, the light steps sounded, and her embarrassed smile was already visible. The small hat cast a shadow over her forehead, and therefore her eyes seemed very shining. The sea-green silk dress gleamed and rustled, and Tikhonov thought that the woman must be cold - the predawn wind, no matter how warm, always carries with it the smell of snow.
The woman approached. Tikhonov looked into her face and guessed that she was a foreigner.
“Tell me…” the woman said slowly, and a slight wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. - Tell me, will there be a steamer to Leningrad soon?
She seemed to have difficulty choosing her words and pronouncing them with a strong accent.
- In two hours. You'll get there faster by train.
The woman shook her head negatively.
- No train. From the train, I can't find my way home in Leningrad.
Why are you here at this time? Tikhonov asked.
- I missed the last boat. Very stupid. I've been sitting here all night. Just me and this scary cat. She pointed to the black cat and laughed.
- Are you French? Tikhonov asked and blushed: the question seemed to him tactless.
The woman raised her head. There was something both French and Nordic about the hard oval of her face and small chin.
- Oh no! she said at length. - I'm Swedish. But I speak French.
Tikhonov looked at her, but thought of himself. He tried to present himself from the outside.
Despite his age, he felt like a boy and suffered in the company of adults. His peers were already venerable people both in appearance and in their mental disposition. Tikhonov, on the other hand, still had little faith in his talent and loved everything that boys love: fishing, trains, stations, skiing, steamboats and traveling.
In front of people equal to his age, he often got lost, felt bound, knew that he was not at all like that, that is how others imagine him. When he read about himself in the newspapers or heard fellow artists talking about his talent, he remained indifferent, as if it was not about him, but about his namesake or double.
He knew that still best picture not yet written, and therefore he was sincerely surprised at the noise that was increasingly rising around his things.
Now he thought about himself because he felt like a boy with special force. He was at a loss in front of an unfamiliar woman who was younger than him.
The woman was also embarrassed and, bending down to hide her face, stroked the shabby cat. The cat looked at her questioningly and meowed.
The sun has risen. The gardens began to glow, throwing off the dawn haze. A living light ran like wind across the woman's face, flashed in her eyes, illuminated her eyelashes and the nervous hand that clutched the railing.
The bay was covered with streaks of light and mist. Far across the water rolled the muffled cry of a steamer approaching from Oranienbaum. The steamer went to Leningrad.
A thin, lame marina keeper stepped out onto the boardwalk with his fishing rods. He greeted Tikhonov and asked:
- Why are you, Alexei Nikolaevich, going to Leningrad so early?
“No, I see you off,” Tikhonov replied.
The caretaker unrolled his fishing rods, sat down, dangling his legs from the pier, and began to fish. He occasionally glanced at Tikhonov and the unknown woman, and said to himself with a sigh:
"The thought of lost youth oppressed his decrepit heart."
He pecked, swore and pulled out a small fish.
An empty boat has arrived. Tikhonov escorted the woman to the gangway. She held out her hand to him and looked absently into his eyes. “Goodbye,” she said, and turned away. “Thank you.”
“Citizens passengers,” the captain said from the bridge, “it’s time!”
She went up the gangplank. The steamer yelled angrily, slowly backed away and turned her head into the sea. High milestones glittered on the water.
Tikhonov saw a stranger on deck. The wind blew the dress around her high legs and flapped the stern flag.
Tikhonov went to the shore. Near the caretaker, he looked back. The woman was still standing on the deck.
- What a summer! the caretaker said. – I have never seen such a summer in the Baltic. Solid sun.
Tikhonov agreed, slowly walked away from the pier, but when he disappeared behind the trees of the park, he quickly went to the station.
The first train to Leningrad left at six o'clock. Tikhonov was waiting for him, agitated and foolishly hoping that the train would leave earlier.
In Leningrad, he took a taxi and ordered to take himself to the Peterhof pier. The city was full of streaks of morning light and shadows. Watchmen watered the flowers in the squares. Slow rain fell from the canvas sleeves, scattering in the wind. On the bridges, the Neva wind beat through the windows of the car.
At the pier was a familiar steamer. It was empty. A barefoot sailor was washing the deck with a mop.
- Have you come from Peterhof for a long time? Tikhonov asked.
- Ten minutes.
Tikhonov went to the embankment. She was just here, maybe a minute ago. He knew it from the gleam of the water, from the sunlight that ran along the granite shores, from the kind eyes of the shoe-black who thought about his brushes, from the light flight of the clouds in the sky.
... Shchedrin lived in a new small house built near the water station on Krestovsky Island.
All the rooms in this house were located on different levels. Two or three steps led from room to room, and this gave it a special, maritime cosiness, especially since stairs with copper handrails resembling ladders rose to the second floor, and round windows in the corridor resembled portholes.
Shchedrin turned very gray, and when he wrote, he put on glasses. He taught meteorology and astronomy at the Naval Academy.
In his office there were many copper appliances and maps scribbled with blue and red pencils hung. Appliances warmed up clear days like candles.
The cleanliness in the house was ship-like. Wiener cleaned the rooms. In the battle near Yelabuga, he lost his arm and since then he could no longer drive his favorite cars.
Shchedrin corresponded with the Jacobsens and the doctor in Mariegamn. At the beginning of June, Maria Jacobsen came from Stockholm to stay for two months. Both Shchedrin and Viner called her Marie.
The presence of a cheerful young woman transformed the rooms, which until then had been calm and precise, like astronomical instruments. There was a slight, pleasant mess. Women's gloves lay on sextants, flowers fell off desk, on the manuscript with calculations, the smell of perfume and fine fabrics penetrated everywhere from Marie's room on the second floor, silver paper from chocolate lay on the sofa next to the book opened in the middle. Marie read voraciously in order to better learn Russian.
Next to the portraits of Anna Jacobsen, Pavel Bestuzhev, and Shchedrin's mother, Marie always placed bouquets of leaves, linden branches, and heliotrope flowers on the table. Previously, the house looked like a ship, now it has become more like a greenhouse.
Marie was reckless and disturbed Shchedrin by this. She remained the same as in Mariegamn when she ripped the gold stripe from his sleeve.
She rejoiced at freedom, was delighted that she could walk around the city alone, rejoiced at everything she saw in Leningrad: palaces and theaters, a life devoid of restrictive rules and moralizing, the simplicity of relations between men and women, between workers and scientists, and, finally, the fact that everywhere they looked at her with a smile. She smiled back, too, though she tried to keep the stern expression of a beautiful and slightly disappointed woman on her face.
Shchedrin was especially disturbed by Marie's walks. She got lost twice already. Once a thin pioneer brought her home, called her, handed her over from hand to hand and said to Wiener seriously:
Please don't let her go out alone. I lead it from the Smolny itself.
Marie kissed the pioneer, dragged him into the rooms, showed him the model of the "Brave", tools, maps, paintings depicting sea storms and calms. They gave the boy tea, gave him sweets, and he left happy and stunned.
The second case was much worse. Marie left for Peterhof, missed the last steamer, and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof wharf.
At two o'clock in the morning Shchedrin began calling all the police departments, roused dozens of people to their feet, and then, when Marie was found, he had to apologize and listen to the playful remarks of those on duty.
- Nonsense! Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was deadly sleepy - In your country, I'm not afraid of anything. I even boldly approached one person at the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.
- About what? Shchedrin asked.
“Everything,” Marie replied. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me like an old acquaintance.
- Yes, it must be Ackerman! exclaimed Shchedrin. - That's the old devil! Is he still fishing?
“Yes,” Marie said. - Along with a black cat. It's like a fairytale.
Marie slept until evening. The windows were open. The wind leafed through the book, forgotten on the window. He turned the pages back and forth, looking for his favorite lines, finally found them and fell silent: “From the realm of blizzards, from the realm of ice and snow, how pure and fresh your May flies.”
Marie was awakened by a rustle in the room. The wind tossed torn envelopes off the table. It was gloomy. Far away on the seashore, iron thunder rumbled and rolled into the abyss.
Marie jumped up. Lightning flared up outside the windows, trembled and died out in the depths of the noisy gardens.
Marie quickly washed, dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.
“Thunderstorm,” he said to Marie. - You slept nine hours.
- What are you playing? Marie asked and sat down in a chair, her legs crossed.
She looked out the window, where a hot wind was already raging in the gardens and throwing plucked leaves on the windowsills. One sheet fell on the piano. There was no lid on the piano, and the sheet got tangled in the steel strings. Shchedrin carefully took out the sheet and said:
- Tchaikovsky. If I were a composer, I would write a climate symphony.
Mari laughed.
"Don't laugh," Shchedrin told her and plucked the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return the Miocene climate to Europe. I don't know if you studied the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you must know that the Earth has experienced several terrible icings.
Marie cringed.
"We don't need any more," she said seriously.
“Of course not. The icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to make everything clear, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the climate of the Miocene will return to Europe.
- Warm?
“Very much,” Shchedrin replied. - The Gulf of Finland will smoke like fresh milk. Two crops will be harvested here. Magnolia forests will bloom on the Åland Islands. Can you imagine: white nights in magnolia forests! This can make you really crazy!
- What does it mean to be stupid? Marie asked.
- Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word - go crazy.
- Very good! Marie said. - But what is needed for this?
- Rubbish! We need a little revolution in Greenland. Enormous work must be begun in Greenland in order to melt, if only for a short time, a layer of ice one and a half meters high on the tops of the plateaus. It would be enough.
– How did you get to this point?
Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.
- What is this for? - he said. – You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.
The downpour roared outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles were bursting in the puddles in the garden, and maybe that's why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.
“Play,” said Marie. “Every day you tell me fairy tales like a stupid girl.
“These are not fairy tales,” said Shchedrin, and played the overture from Eugene Onegin. – Pushkin is also not a fairy tale. It's all real.
Marie sighed and thought. The morning meeting now seemed distant, like childhood. Was she? Who is this man - thin, with gray temples and a young face? Why didn't she ask him who he was? It is difficult to meet a second person in such a huge city.
The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly, rolling down from the leaves.
Marie quietly got up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The storm moved to the east. To the west, a rain-washed sunset burned.
Marie went to the Summer Garden.
She wandered along the damp alleys of the garden, went out to the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.
The ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in the silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly brighter than the night.
The majestic buildings that surrounded Marie seemed to be painted in watercolor. Only columns and powerful attics stood out, illuminated by diffused light. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was a reflection of the night in the canals, or a thin strip of dawn was still smoldering in the west, or the lanterns, mixing their brilliance with dusk, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, slight sadness.
Marie walked past the Hermitage. She was already in it and now she tried to imagine its night halls, the dim glow of the Neva outside the windows, the centuries-old silence of the pictures.
Marie went out into the square near the Winter Palace, stopped and clasped her hands. She did not know whose genius, whose delicate hand had created this world's most beautiful turn of colonnades, buildings, arches, cast-iron gratings, this expanse filled with greenish night coolness and majestic architectural thought.
Marie returned back by the last river boat. Glassy and empty, he carried her, swaying along the black Neva, past the Peter and Paul Fortress, past ravelins and crownworks, past piles, bridges and parks. The policeman was dozing in the corner of the cabin.
Behind the Freedom Bridge, a wide beam of a searchlight rose into the sky, smoking and dimming. It descended and illuminated a white stone building on the shore, simple and majestic.
The policeman opened his eyes.
“Preparations are starting,” he told Marie. - They illuminate the best buildings.
- What kind of preparation? Marie asked.
She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.
“To the holiday,” the policeman said. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I've lived here since I was a kid, and I can't see enough of it every day. You stand at the post at night and sometimes you don’t know whether you are dreaming all this, or in reality. You will approach the house, you will look - the lantern with number burns; then you will calm down: it means that you are not dreaming.
Marie smiled shyly.
“I study at the rowing school,” the policeman said. - I'm going to sea in an outrigger. When you swim out in the evening, you can't see the city, it's in the fog. Some lanterns shine on the water. It's hard to even go back to shore.
- Where are you in the city? Marie asked.
- You, you see, are not Russian: your conversation is not ours.
- I'm Swedish.
“Ahhh…” said the policeman. “So you love it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.
At the pier near the river Krestovka Marie got off. The policeman went with her and escorted her home.
- I'm not afraid why! Marie was embarrassed. - You worked, you were tired.
“Don’t worry,” the policeman assured her. - I'm not going home. I'll go to the water station, I'll spend the night there. I still have to train for the holiday in the morning. There will be races. From here - straight to Sestroretsk. For endurance.
At the gate of her house, Marie said goodbye to the policeman. He shook her hand politely and left. Marie stood a little in the garden, then laughed. She wondered what her friends in Stockholm would say if she offered her hand to a police officer there.
By the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and architect.
Tikhonov got Peterhof. The holiday in Peterhof was given a maritime character. Teams of warships were supposed to arrive here from Kronstadt, and in the palace it was decided to arrange a ball for old and young sailors - a meeting of two generations.
After the incident on the pier, Tikhonov discovered new properties in himself. He began to notice things that he had previously passed indifferently. The world turned out to be filled with amazing colors, light, sounds. He, the artist, had never seen such a variety of colors before. They were everywhere, but most of all they shimmered in the sea water.
The world has become significant in everything. Tikhonov felt life in all its diversity of manifestations, as something unified, powerful, created for happiness.
He owed this full sense of life to his time. This feeling only intensified under the influence of a meeting at dawn with a young woman.
There was something about this meeting that defies description and story. That "something" was love. But Tikhonov did not yet admit this to himself. In his mind, everything merged into one sparkling circle: the distant whistle of an ocean steamer, the golden shimmer of the city in the morning mist, the stillness of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame caretaker of the pier and his words about the unusual Baltic summer.
In this state, Tikhonov began to work on decorating Peterhof. While working, he thought about his time, about the country and about her, a stranger.
He remembered the words of the famous writer, the one who once ruffled his hair and called him a "bubble". He read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer said to his young contemporary:

“When you write, think about her, even if she wasn’t there, and about excellent people to whom you, also an excellent person, sincerely and simply and very sincerely tell about what only you know, what she and everyone needs to know. them, do you understand?

She was. And Tikhonov thought about her, thought that she would pass here, see all the charm of the land adorned by him, and feel, like him, the breath of a free and cheerful country, where she came as a guest.
Nikanor Ilyich was terribly excited when he learned that Tikhonov had been assigned to decorate Peterhof. For several days he worried for nothing. There was no one to talk to. Matryona was hard to talk, and Tikhonov was too busy. Therefore, the old man was delighted to tears when Katya arrived in Peterhof. She came to her brother to talk about how to decorate her boats and yachts for the holiday.
From Tikhonov she went down to the old people, and Nikanor Ilyich immediately struck up a conversation with her.
"I love holidays," said Nikanor Ilyich. - A holiday, I believe, sometimes a person needs more than daily bread.
- Oh, my God! Matrena sighed. - No strength! At least take him away, Katyusha, the cursed one.
- Quiet! Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. - You yourself will wash and clean the house for the holiday. I suppose you can’t put on your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!
Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich took to his bed. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.
“Alyosha…” he said, and suddenly burst into tears.
Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.
“I have a weakness of the heart. Am I going to look around and see nothing? And I would, a fool, live and live. Curiosity is burning me. I tried to go up to you, look at the sketches - what did you come up with for the holiday - but I'm afraid to interfere.
Tikhonov brought sketches to the old man. Nikanor Ilyich looked at them for a long time, then patted Tikhonov on the shoulder.
“I love perfection in you, Alyosha,” he said. - You are real. My word is final.
Saying goodbye, he asked Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, to call on the customer and convey that the piano cover was ready and it could be picked up.

Only on the second day did Tikhonov find, at the address given by Nikanor Ilyich, a small house in a garden on Krestovsky Island. It was raining, the ground smelled of rain-beaten dust.
Tikhonov was opened by a blond old man without one arm - Wiener. Tikhonov asked Citizen Shchedrin. Viner led him into a room with the windows wide open.
On the wall Tikhonov saw two portraits of excellent work. One showed an officer in a black uniform, the other a young woman with nervous eyebrows flying high. There was a clearly tangible resemblance to the stranger met on the pier.
Tikhonov ran his hand over his forehead, as if trying to drive away an obsessive thought, but the woman looked at him with already familiar eyes, and he involuntarily came closer and closer to the portrait and peered into it more and more intently.
Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort on himself to tear himself away from the portrait.
Behind Tikhonov stood a tall, gray-haired sailor, looking at him attentively.
“I come to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” Tikhonov said. - He is sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano cover is ready. You can come for her.
“Sit down,” said the sailor, and showed Tikhonov to a chair.
If Tikhonov had sat in it, he would have found himself with his back to the portrait. Tikhonov stepped towards the armchair, but changed his mind and sat down in another one so that he could see the portrait.
The sailor was still looking attentively at Tikhonov.
“Thank you,” he said. - And what about Nikanor Ilyich?
“Heart,” Tikhonov answered curtly.
Are you his son?
No, I'm his former student.
Are you obviously an artist?
- Yes.
“I guessed when I saw you peering into this portrait.
- Great job! Who is this?
“She is a beautiful woman, the daughter of an old skipper from the Åland Islands.
- Is she Swedish? Tikhonov asked quickly.
- Yes. Her name was Anna Jacobsen. Her life was connected with very tragic circumstances. This is the wife of officer Pavel Bestuzhev, who was killed in a duel on Aland at the beginning of the last century. She went crazy.
“My great-grandfather,” Tikhonov said, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel. He got busted. He was a simple soldier.
“Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was that?”
- I think that also at the beginning of the last century.
The sailor got up and went to the window. He looked at the rain that was pouring dust into puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:
- You are not from the village of Meghry on the Kovzha River?
“Yes,” Tikhonov said in surprise. – How do you know this?
The sailor did not answer.
“Your great-grandfather,” he said, “is buried in the same grave as Pavel Bestuzhev. Both of them were killed on the same day. They shared a common destiny. Is your surname Tikhonov?
- Yes.
- Finally! - The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook hands with Tikhonov. My name is Shchedrin. I was looking for you for a long time, then I left. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned a detailed story of the death of Pavel Bestuzhev. He was a freethinker. He saved a Decembrist from execution and was killed in a duel due to a collision with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was not buried alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out how these two people, Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev, were connected, but no one could explain this to me. The locals did not know anything, but I could not rummage through the archives. They would not have given me, and it was not at all up to it then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev's dying letter. In it, I found a request to inform his relatives about the death of soldier Tikhonov, in the village of Megry on the Kovzha River. During the Civil War, I accidentally ended up in Meghry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.