The story "Yellow Light" by K. G.

“The socialist culture, won with blood and created by the heroic work of the working people of the Union, is confidently moving along the path of continuous prosperity. The socialist era requires the creation of monumental monuments and works of art that could capture and convey to descendants its greatness and its heroic essence. The creation of these monuments of art will make use of the diverse talents with which the peoples inhabiting the Union are so rich.

Our city - the city of Lenin - is not only the cradle of the revolution and the center of advanced industry, but also the city of famous art masters.

The law of assimilation of cultural heritage by our society has the greatest grounds for its expression in our city. It is enough to remember the names of at least one of the architects - the builders of the city - Bazhenov, Rastrelli, Voronikhin, Zakharov and others, so that the idea becomes clear that it is here, in the city of Lenin, that the young socialist country can learn the laws of craftsmanship from the glorious artists of the past.

Due to the fact that academies are opening in Leningrad, training masters of architecture, sculpture, painting and engraving, masters of artistic stone, wood and metal processing, porcelain and lapidary, the Leningrad Council decided to organize a big national holiday in Leningrad on June 24. The main idea with which this holiday should be celebrated is that a socialist city is not only a place of settlement of people and the center of government institutions, public organizations and factories, but also an independent work of art - a powerful factor in the artistic education of the masses.”

– What is this message about, as I understand it? - said Nikanor Ilyich. - About the nobility of the human soul. I have long noticed that people are different, depending entirely on what they see around them.

“Where is your nobility,” Matryona said from the corner, when the customer had already sent a telegram, he was worried, and your lid was not ready!

- Nothing will be done with him, with the customer. The customer will forgive me everything for this cover. He is a sailor, a diverse person. To be honest, it’s difficult to talk to him. I tell him about ebony, and he tells me about the climate. I tell him about dark varnish, and he tells me about the climate. Tormented me with this climate!

– What about the climate? – Tikhonov asked.

– But the climate is a complicated matter. If he succeeds, we will be the happiest nation in the world. There is a cut of oak in his office; This oak tree is four hundred years old, if not more. Well, of course, oak has annual layers. In our opinion, this is called “tree eye”. Some layers are thicker, others thinner, and some are very thin, no wider than a thread. So he asks: “What do you see in front of you, Nikitin, a wise man, an all-knowing furniture maker?” – “Layers like layers, I say. The oak layer also has a beautiful appearance if it is polished wisely.” And he begins to argue: “It’s not a matter of polishing, but of accurate conclusions. I am, he says, a bit of a meteorologist and a botanist. Every year the layer grows depending on moisture. In rainy summers the layer grows more, in dry summers it grows less, and from this oak you can tell five hundred years ago what the climate was like.” - “Why do you need to know this? - I ask. “Is there even the slightest benefit from this for our brother, man?” “There is,” he says, but it’s a long story. For now I’ll tell you one thing: from these sections and from all sorts of other signs we read a wonderful thing; and this thing is that there were times when our climate was warm and cheerful, like on the island of Ceylon. Magnolia forests grew all around the shores of the Gulf of Finland. We, he says, will try to return this climate. It can be done, he says, and there are no miracles in it.”

“They won’t let you die in peace!” - Matryona muttered. “They don’t have enough geraniums, old fools, give them magnolia!”

– Geranium versus magnolia is rubbish! – Nikanor Ilyich got angry. – Geranium leaves have annoying, woolly leaves. Don't get involved with me, old man!

The old men began to argue. Tikhonov said goodbye and went to his mezzanine. The bay was visible from the windows. The bird moved in the damp branches and called out cautiously, as if calling someone. The clock below hissed for a long time and finally struck two brass strikes.

Tikhonov stood thoughtfully by the window, then carefully went down and went into the palace park.

I didn't want to sleep. It was impossible to read in the diffused glare 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 curled up like invisible furry animals in the corners of the room, make things unpleasantly real, more real than they really were.

A greenish half-light froze in the alleys. Gilded statues glittered. The fountains were silent at night; their rapid rustling could not be 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 on the ground, reflecting off the walls and windows.

The palace shone through the vague darkness of the trees, like a lonely golden leaf glows in early autumn through the thicket of still fresh and dark foliage.

Tikhonov walked along the canal towards the bay. Small fish swam in the canal between stones overgrown with mud.

The bay was clean and calm. Silence lay over him. The sea had not yet woken up. Only the pink glow of the water foreshadowed the approaching sunrise.

The ocean steamer was heading towards Leningrad. The dawn was already burning in its portholes, and light smoke was trailing astern.

The steamer sounded its trumpet, 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 drawn-out cry.

There were boats in the canal. Young sailors slept on them, covered with a tarpaulin. Tikhonov saw their faces, ruddy from sleep, and heard occasional light snoring. The pre-dawn wind blew from the sea and rustled the leaves overhead.

Tikhonov walked ashore. There was no one, 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 black, mangy cat walked carefully along the damp flooring of the pier and shook its paw with 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: a school of long silver fish were moving their tails near the piles.

The woman got up and went to Tikhonov. He looked at her, and the closer she came, the clearer the light steps sounded, as if out of fog, and her embarrassed smile was already visible. The small hat cast a shadow on her forehead, and therefore her eyes seemed very bright. The sea-green silk dress shone and rustled, and Tikhonov thought that the woman must be cold - the pre-dawn wind, no matter how warm it is, always carries with it the smell of snow.

The woman approached. Tikhonov looked at 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 ship to Leningrad soon?

She apparently had difficulty finding words and pronounced them with a strong accent.

- In two hours. You'll get there faster by train.

The woman shook her head negatively.

- Not by train. From the train I cannot look for the way home in Leningrad.

- Why are you here at this time? – asked Tikhonov.

- I missed the last boat. Very stupid. I sat 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 tactless to him.

The woman raised her head. There was something at once French and Northern about the firm oval of her face and small chin.

- Oh no! – she said drawlingly. - I'm Swedish. But I speak French.

Tikhonov looked at her, but thought about himself. He tried to imagine 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 make-up. Tikhonov still had little faith in his talent and loved everything that boys love: fishing, trains, train stations, skiing, ships and travel.

In front of people equal to him in age, he often felt lost, felt tied down, knew that he was not at all like how others imagined him. When he read about himself in newspapers or heard fellow artists talk about his talent, he remained indifferent, as if the conversation was not about him, but about his namesake or double.

He knew that his best painting had not yet been painted, and therefore he was sincerely surprised by the noise that was increasingly rising around his things.

Now he thought about himself because he felt especially strongly that he was a boy. He was confused in front of an unfamiliar woman who was younger than him.

The woman was also embarrassed and, bending over to hide her face, stroked the mangy cat. The cat looked at her questioningly and meowed.

The sun has risen. The gardens began to flare up, throwing off the dawn haze. A living light ran like the wind, slanting across the woman’s face, flashed in her eyes, illuminated her eyelashes and the nervous hand clutching the railing.

The bay was covered with streaks of light and fog. Far away on the water rolled the muffled cry of a steamship approaching from Oranienbaum. The ship was heading to Leningrad.

The thin, lame pier keeper stepped out onto the boardwalk with his fishing rods. He greeted Tikhonov and asked:

– Why are you, Alexey Nikolaevich, going to Leningrad so early?

“No, I’ll see you off,” Tikhonov answered.

The caretaker unfurled his fishing rods, sat down with his legs dangling over the pier, and began to fish. He occasionally glanced at Tikhonov and the unfamiliar woman and said to himself with a sigh:

“The thought of lost youth depressed his decrepit heart.”

He got a bite, cursed and pulled out a small fish.

An empty ship approached. Tikhonov escorted the woman to the gangway. She extended her hand to him and looked absentmindedly into his eyes. “Goodbye,” she said and turned away. “Thank you.”

“Citizens, passengers,” the captain said from the bridge, “it’s time!”

She climbed up the gangplank. The steamer screamed angrily, slowly backed away and turned its nose into the sea. Tall milestones glittered on the water.

Tikhonov saw a stranger on the deck. The wind tightened her dress around her high legs and flapped the stern flag.

Tikhonov went to the shore. Near the caretaker, he looked around. The woman was still standing on the deck.

- What a summer! - said the caretaker. – I have never seen such a summer in the Baltic. Solid sun.

Tikhonov agreed and leisurely walked away from the pier, but when he disappeared behind the trees of the park, he quickly walked towards the station.

The first train to Leningrad left at six o'clock. Tikhonov was waiting for him, worried and foolishly hoping that the train would leave earlier.

In Leningrad, he took a taxi and ordered him to be taken to the Peterhof pier. The city was streaked with morning light and shadows. The watchmen watered the flowers in the parks. Slow rain fell from the canvas sleeves, scattering in the wind. On the bridges the Neva wind beat through the car windows.

A familiar steamer stood at the pier. It was empty. A barefoot sailor was mopping the deck.

- How long ago did you come from Peterhof? – asked Tikhonov.

- About ten minutes.

Tikhonov went out to the embankment. She was just here, maybe a minute ago. He knew this by the shine of the water, by the reflections of the sun running along the granite shores, by the kind eyes of the bootblack, thinking about his brushes, by the light flight of clouds in the sky.

...Shchedrin lived in a new small house built near a water station on Krestovsky Island.

All the rooms in this house were located at different levels. There were two or three steps leading from room to room, and this gave it a special, maritime coziness, especially since the stairs with copper handrails, similar to ladders, rose to the second floor, and the 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 Maritime Academy.

In his office there were many copper instruments and hung maps covered with blue and red pencils. The devices glowed like candles on clear days.

The cleanliness in the house was like a ship's. 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 Mariehamn. At the beginning of June, Maria Jacobsen came from Stockholm to stay for two months. Both Shchedrin and Wiener called her Marie.

The presence of a young, cheerful woman transformed the rooms, which until then had been calm and precise, like astronomical instruments. A light, pleasant mess appeared. Women's gloves lay on sextants, flowers fell on the desk, on manuscripts with calculations, the smell of perfume and fine fabrics permeated everywhere from Marie's room on the second floor, silver chocolate paper lay on the sofa next to a book open in the middle. Marie read voraciously to learn Russian better.

Near 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 also looks like a greenhouse.

Marie was reckless and this worried Shchedrin. She remained the same as in Mariegamna, when she tore the gold badge 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, life devoid of constraining rules and moral teachings, the simplicity of relations between men and women, between workers and scientists, and, finally, because everyone looked at her with a smile. She also smiled in response, although she tried to maintain the stern expression of a beautiful and slightly disappointed woman on her face.

Shchedrin was especially worried about Marie's walks. She's gotten lost twice already. One day a thin pioneer brought her home, called her, handed her over and said seriously to Wiener:

- Please, don’t let her go out alone. I lead her from Smolny itself.

Marie kissed the pioneer, dragged him into the rooms, showed him a model of the “Brave”, instruments, maps, paintings depicting sea storms and calms. The boy was given tea, given sweets, and he left happy and stunned.

The second case was much worse. Marie went to Peterhof, missed the last ship and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof pier.

At two o'clock in the morning Shchedrin began calling all police departments, raised dozens of people to their feet, and then, when Marie was found, he had to apologize and listen to the humorous remarks of the officers on duty.

- Nonsense! – Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was dying to sleep: “In your country, I am not afraid of anything.” I even boldly approached one person on the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.

- About what? – Shchedrin asked.

“About everything,” Marie answered. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me as if he were an old friend.”

- Yes, it must be Ackerman! – Shchedrin exclaimed. - What an old devil! Is he still fishing?

“Yes,” said Marie. - Together with a black cat. Like in a fairy tale.

Marie slept until evening. The windows were open. The wind flipped through a 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 kingdom of blizzards, from the kingdom of ice and snow, how pure and fresh your May flies.”

Marie woke up from a rustling sound in the room. The wind threw 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 lit up outside the windows, trembled and went out in the depths of the rustling gardens.

Marie quickly washed herself, got dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.

“Thunderstorm,” he said to Marie. – You slept for nine hours.

-What are you playing? – Marie asked and sat down in a chair, crossing her legs.

She looked outside the window, where the hot wind was already raging in the gardens and throwing torn leaves onto 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 symphony about climate change.

Marie laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” Shchedrin told her and touched the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return Europe to its Miocene climate. I don’t know if you taught the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you probably know that the Earth has experienced several terrible glaciations.

Marie shivered.

“We don’t need more of them,” she said seriously.

- Of course, it’s not necessary. Icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to explain, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the Miocene climate will return to Europe.

- Warm?

“Very,” 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 completely crazy!

-What does it mean to be stupefied? – asked Marie.

– Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word – go crazy.

- Very good! - said Marie. - But what is needed for this?

- Nonsense! We need a small revolution in Greenland. It is necessary to begin enormous work in Greenland in order to melt the one and a half meter layer of ice on the tops of the plateaus, at least for a short time. This will be enough.

– How did you come to this?

Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.

- Why is this? - he said. – You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.

The rain was noisy outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles burst in the puddles in the garden, and perhaps that is why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.

“Play,” Marie asked. – Every day you tell me fairy tales, like a stupid girl.

“These are not fairy tales,” said Shchedrin and began playing the overture from “Eugene Onegin.” – Pushkin is not a fairy tale either. 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 person for the second time in such a huge city.

The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly as they rolled off the leaves.

Marie quietly stood up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The thunderstorm was moving to the east. In the west there was a dim, rain-washed sunset.

Marie went to the Summer Garden.

She wandered through the damp alleys of the garden, went out onto the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.

A ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly lighter than the night.

The majestic buildings surrounding Marie seemed painted in watercolors. Only the columns and powerful attics, illuminated by diffused light, stood out. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was the 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 the darkness, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, and slight sadness.

Marie walked past the Hermitage. She had already been there and now tried to imagine its night halls, the dull shine of the Neva outside the windows, the hundred-year silence of the paintings.

Marie walked out onto the square near the Winter Palace, stopped and clasped her hands. She did not know whose genius, whose subtle hand created this most beautiful spread of colonnades, buildings, arches, cast-iron gratings in the world, this space filled with the greenish coolness of the night and majestic architectural thought.

Marie was the last river boat to return back. Glass 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.

Beyond 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 beginning,” he told Marie. – The best buildings are illuminated.

– What kind of preparation? – asked Marie.

She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.

“For the holiday,” said the policeman. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I’ve lived here since I was little, and I can’t see enough of it every day. You stand at night on duty and sometimes you don’t know whether you’re dreaming about all this or whether it’s real. You approach the house and look - a lamp with a number is on; Then you’ll calm down: it means you’re not dreaming.

Marie smiled shyly.

“I’m studying at a rowing school,” said the policeman. – I’m going out to sea on an outrigger. If you sail out in the evening, you can’t see the city, it’s in the fog. Some lanterns sparkle on the water. There is no desire to even return to the shore.

-Where are you standing in the city? – asked Marie.

– Apparently, you are not Russian: the conversation you are having is not ours.

- I'm Swedish.

“A-ah-ah...” said the policeman. - So you admire it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.

At the pier near the Krestovka River, Marie got off. The policeman went down with her and escorted her home.

- I'm not afraid, why! – Marie said embarrassedly. – You worked, you were tired.

“Don’t worry,” the policeman assured her. - I'm not going home. I'll go to the water station and 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 politely shook her hand and left. Marie stood in the garden for a while, then laughed. She wondered what her friends in Stockholm would say if she shook hands with a policeman on guard there.

For the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and an architect.

Tikhonov got Peterhof. The holiday in Peterhof was given a maritime character. Crews of warships were supposed to arrive here from Kronstadt, and in the palace it was decided to hold 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 by indifferently. The world turned out to be filled with amazing colors, light, and sounds. He, the artist, had never seen such a variety of colors before. They were everywhere, but most of them 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 in this meeting that defied either description or story. That “something” was love. But Tikhonov had not yet admitted 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 darkness, the silence of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame pier keeper and his words about the extraordinary 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 tousled his hair and called him a “bubble.” He re-read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer told his young contemporary:

“When you write, think about her, even if she doesn’t exist, and about the 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 to them, do you understand?”

Nikanor Ilyich was terribly excited when he learned that Tikhonov was assigned to decorate Peterhof. For several days he worried in vain. There was no one to talk to. Matryona was too slow to talk, and Tikhonov was too busy. Therefore, the old man was happy to the point of 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 started a conversation with her.

“I love holidays,” said Nikanor Ilyich. “I believe that sometimes a person needs a holiday more than their daily bread.”

- Oh, Lord! – Matryona sighed. - No strength! At least calm him down, Katyusha, the damned one.

- Quiet! - Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. – You will wash and clean the house yourself for the holiday. You probably won’t be able to wear your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!

Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich fell ill. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.

“Alyosha...” he said and suddenly began to cry.

Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.

- I have a weakness in my heart. Will I really end up and see nothing? And I, a fool, would like to live and live. Curiosity burns me. I kept trying to come up to you and look at the sketches of what you came up with for the holiday, but I was 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 that Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, call on the customer and tell him that the piano cover was ready and 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 pouring rain, the ground smelled of rain-laden dust.

A blond old man without one arm, Wiener, opened the door for Tikhonov. Tikhonov asked citizen Shchedrin. Wiener led him into a room with wide open windows.

On the wall Tikhonov saw two beautifully crafted portraits. One depicted an officer in a black uniform, the other a young woman with high nervous eyebrows. There was a clearly tangible resemblance to the stranger she met on the pier.

Tikhonov ran his hand over his forehead, as if trying to drive away the obsessive thought, but the woman looked at him with already familiar eyes, and he involuntarily came closer and closer to the portrait and peered at it more and more intently.

Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort to tear himself away from the portrait.

A tall gray-haired sailor stood behind Tikhonov and looked at him carefully.

“I’m coming to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” said Tikhonov. - He is sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano lid was ready. You can come get 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 chair, but changed his mind and sat down in another one - so that he could see the portrait.

The sailor still looked at Tikhonov attentively.

“Thank you,” he said. – What about Nikanor Ilyich?

“Heart,” Tikhonov answered briefly.

-Are you his son?

- No, I am his former student.

– You are obviously an artist?

“I guessed it when I saw you peering at this portrait.”

- Great job! Who is this?

– This is a beautiful woman, the daughter of an old skipper from the Åland Islands.

– Is she Swedish? – Tikhonov quickly asked.

- 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's gone crazy.

“My great-grandfather,” said Tikhonov, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel.” He was screwed. He was a simple soldier.

“Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was this?”

– 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, falling into dust in the puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:

– Are you not from the village of Megry on the Kovzhe 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 with Pavel Bestuzhev.” Both of them were killed on the same day. They were connected by a common destiny. Is your last name Tikhonov?

- Finally! – The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook Tikhonov’s hand. - My name is Shchedrin. I looked for you for a long time, then I abandoned you. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned the 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 clash with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was buried not alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out what these two people were connected with - Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev - but no one could explain this to me. The local residents knew nothing, and I couldn’t rummage through the archives. They wouldn’t have given it to me, and there was no time for that at all then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev’s suicide letter. In it I found a request to report the death of soldier Tikhonov to his relatives, in the village of Megry on the Kovzhe River. During the Civil War, I accidentally ended up in Megry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.

“She asked me about you,” Tikhonov interrupted.

– Is she dead? - asked the sailor.

“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 couldn’t remember him... But still we met! – Shchedrin laughed. - Well, now I won’t let you out. Give me the hat here.

For several days the cold rain poured incessantly. A wet wind rustled in the garden. At four o'clock in the afternoon we were already lighting the kerosene lamps, and it involuntarily seemed that summer was over forever and the earth was moving further and further into the dull fogs, into the uncomfortable darkness and cold.

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

The roads were washed away. The river carried yellowish foam, similar to a shot down squirrel. The last birds hid under the eaves, and for more than a week now no one has visited us: neither grandfather Mitri, nor Vanya Malyavin, nor the forester.

It was best in the evenings. We lit the stoves. The fire was noisy, 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, having put aside the open book, he was thinking about what he had read and listening to the hum of the rain on the plank roof. The lamps burned brightly, and the disabled copper samovar sang and sang his simple song. As soon as he was brought into the room, it immediately became cozy - perhaps because the glass was fogged up and the lonely birch branch that knocked on the window day and night was not visible.

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

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

One night I woke up with a strange feeling.

It seemed to me that I had gone deaf in my sleep. I lay with my eyes closed, listened for a long time and finally realized that I was not deaf, but that there was simply an extraordinary silence outside the walls of the house. This kind of silence is called “dead”. The rain died, the wind died, the noisy, restless garden died. You could only hear the cat snoring in its sleep.

I opened my eyes. White and even light filled the room. I got up and went to the window - everything was snowy and silent behind the glass. In the foggy sky, a lonely 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 light that the arrows showed clearly. They showed two o'clock.

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

Through the window I saw a large gray bird land on a maple branch in the garden. The branch swayed and snow fell from it. The bird slowly rose and flew away, and the snow kept falling like glass rain falling from a Christmas tree. Then everything became quiet again.

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

— The first snow suits the earth very well.

The earth was elegant, looking like a shy bride.

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

Grandfather Mitri came to visit for tea and congratulated him on his first trip.

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

- Where did you get this, Mitri, such words? - Reuben asked.

- Is there anything wrong? - the grandfather grinned. “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 faded. This happened even before Tsar Peter, my dear, when robbers ruined merchants in the local forests.

It was difficult to stay at home on the first winter day. We went to the forest lakes. Grandfather walked us to the edge of the forest. He also wanted to visit the lakes, but “the ache in his bones did not let him go.”

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, going around familiar places. Flocks of bullfinches sat, ruffled, on rowan trees covered with snow.

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

A glass strip of ice has grown along the coast. The ice was so transparent that even close up it was difficult to notice. I saw a flock of rafts 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, darted into the depths, and a white grainy trace of 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 your fingers.

Here and there in the clearings birds flew and squealed pitifully. The sky overhead was very light, white, and towards the horizon it thickened, and its color resembled lead. Slow snow clouds were coming from there.

The forests became increasingly gloomy, quieter, and, finally, thick snow began to fall. It melted in the black water of the lake, tickled my face, and powdered the forest with gray smoke.

Winter began to rule the earth, but we knew that under the loose snow, if you rake it with your hands, you could still find fresh forest flowers, we knew that the fire would always crackle in the stoves, that tits remained with us to winter, and winter seemed the same to us beautiful like summer.

PART THREE

In the Botanical Garden on Aptekarsky Island, a small photographic camera was pointed at a bare branch of an apple tree. It was March, and buds were barely visible on the branch.

Every three hours the device clicked and took a photo. So he clicked all March, April and May, until the branch blossomed.

Alexey Tikhonov often visited the Botanical Garden. In tree trunks, in the patterns of leaves, in branches that grew in disarray, he found a variety of shapes and colors that helped him work on his paintings.

He became friends, as with a person, with a small black device hidden in the foliage. The device lived the same life as the plants. He spent days and nights with them, when it was so quiet in the greenhouses that one could hear the rustling of the earth sucking up the drops falling from the leaves. When the device was removed, Tikhonov felt regret, as if a small animal who lived in the grass and did no harm to anyone had been taken away from the greenhouse.

Employees of the Botanical Garden showed Tikhonov the film taken by the device. In five minutes they passed it through the projection lamp. Tikhonov looked at the small white screen and saw how the bud grew before his eyes, swelled, became covered with sticky juice, burst, and from it, stretching as if after sleep, straightening crumpled petals, a white flower blossomed and suddenly trembled all over from the sunlight falling on it.

When Tikhonov thought about the long years that had passed over his country and over his own life, he remembered this seemingly suddenly, but in fact slowly blooming flower.

Tikhonov knew that the years passed with a natural, long-calculated slowness, that the country was changing every month, and with every month new thoughts, desires and goals entered the consciousness, defining the face of another person.

But at the same time, the feeling of passing years was as if it was still the same morning and noon was still far away. Time seemed united, not fragmented into boring periods of years. The monolithic and majestic year of the revolution lasted.

Meanwhile, early gray hair was already showing through Tikhonov’s temples, and the decrepit Nikanor Ilyich’s hands were shaking.

He increasingly looked away from work and sat motionless, complaining about his heart.

He didn't want to quit his job.

It’s already time to die,” he said, “but you see, I’m working.” I resist. Why? It’s very simple: I believe that I must thank the new life with my work, and leave instructive and rich gifts for the young.

And he, the old man, left these gifts. They were in the fineness of wood finishing, in things that were not inferior to the work of the best furniture makers of the nineteenth century.

“I’m self-taught,” he said. - I wish I could get my hands on good samples - and that would be a victory. And everything has been given to you, young people, and the people will demand more from you than from us.

The famous writer has died. Tikhonov’s teacher, an artist with angry eyes, also died. Tikhonov’s mother, Nastasya, also died.

He went to Megry when he received a letter from her asking him to “come and bury the old woman.”

Nastasya lay in the hut, transparent and silent, smiling, and her teeth shone as in her youth. While she was still alive, she told Tikhonov that almost twenty years ago some naval officer came to Megry, asked about Semyon’s grandfather, who had been flogged to death, and promised to visit Alyosha in Peterhof.

Did you have it? - she asked anxiously. - Say: was it?

No, mother, I wasn’t.

How so? - Nastasya asked in bewilderment. - So tall, okay. I remembered everything about him for so many years, I kept grieving. Was he really killed at the front?

She began to cry.

Tikhonov’s sister Katya, a tall, dark girl, also came from Cherepovets to the funeral. She worked as a teacher, but wanted to change her profession and become a sports instructor. She won prizes in rowing competitions. Her love for water and boats was jealous and frantic.

Tikhonov took her with him to Leningrad, and a month later she was already working at a water station on Krestovsky Island.

Tikhonov still lived there, in Peterhof, in Nikitin’s house. Leningrad shone with the cleanliness of new houses. The marble and mirror glass reflected the majestic city, which had shed its former gloominess, but Tikhonov fell in love with the old people, did not want to offend them and continued to live in their mezzanine.

Wherever he was - in Sevastopol or Baku, in Vladivostok or on the Volga - he always knew that he would return to this house, littered with canvases, stretchers, pieces of valuable wood, smelling of paints, alcohol varnish and geraniums - Matryona divorced her with the constant perseverance.

The wooden platforms of the Baltic station were darkened with dew. It was a white night. Electric trains to Peterhof ran without lights. The carriages rattled softly at the junctions, afraid to disturb the silence of the holiday villages, to disturb the calm that had long stood over the seaside.

Tikhonov hurried to Peterhof. The newspapers published a message about a great arts festival in Leningrad, scheduled for June 24. Tikhonov wanted to please old Nikitin with this message.

Sitting at the window of the carriage, Tikhonov tried for the tenth time to read this message in the newspaper, but the light was very weak. It was only possible to read what was printed in large font. Tikhonov put down the newspaper and looked out the window. There stretched a vague and high night. A single star had overcome the darkness and was slowly glowing above the tall thickets of the gardens.

“It must be Jupiter,” thought Tikhonov. He imagined a night over the Gulf of Finland, when in the darkness only three lights are visible: the white light of the lighthouse in Kronstadt, the ashen fire of Jupiter and the quiet golden shine on the dome of St. Isaac's Cathedral, illuminated by dawn. The dawn was burning right there, beyond the edge of the earth. Morning was nearby, and residents of the upper floors of Leningrad houses saw it all night from their windows.

Old Nikitin did not sleep. He called out to Tikhonov from the open window. The old man was working: polishing the lid of an old piano.

Did you bring the newspaper, Alyosha? - asked Nikitin. - They say that our holiday has already been published there.

Tikhonov especially loved the old man because the old man considered everything related to architecture, sculpture and decoration of buildings to be his personal business. The great architect Zakharov, the builder of the Admiralty, or the sculptor Andreev were as familiar and understandable people to him as his familiar bronzesmiths and carpenters.

The old man was united with these people by knowledge of the matter, a faithful eye, and a love of material - be it thin-layer wood, grated paint or a piece of good ringing bronze.

“This must be the continuity of culture,” Tikhonov decided, “in this thousand-year-old community of craftsmen, no matter who they are - mechanics, carpenters, architects or poets.”

Nikanor Ilyich asked Tikhonov to read the message about the holiday. Tikhonov read it aloud, sitting on the windowsill, and the simple words of the message seemed to him created to be carved in stone:

“The socialist culture, won with blood and created by the heroic work of the working people of the Union, confidently follows the path of continuous prosperity. The socialist era requires the creation of monumental monuments and works of art that could capture and convey to descendants its greatness and its heroic essence. The creation of these monuments of art will give use to the diverse talents with which the peoples inhabiting the Union are so rich.

Our city - the city of Lenin - is not only the cradle of the revolution and the center of advanced industry, but also the city of famous art masters.

What is this message about, as I understand it? - said Nikanor Ilyich. - About the nobility of the human soul. I have long noticed that people are different, depending entirely on what they see around them.

“Where is your nobility,” Matryona said from the corner, “when the customer has already sent a telegram, he’s worried, but your lid is not ready!”

Nothing will be done with him, with the customer. The customer will forgive me everything for this cover. He is a sailor, a diverse person. To be honest, it’s difficult to talk to him. I tell him about ebony, and he tells me about the climate. I tell him about dark varnish, and he tells me about the climate. Tormented me with this climate!

What about the climate? - asked Tikhonov.

But the climate issue is complicated. If he succeeds, we will be the happiest nation in the world. There is a cut of oak in his office; This oak tree is four hundred years old, if not more. Well, of course, oak has annual layers. In our opinion, this is called “tree eye”. Some layers are thicker, others thinner, and some are very thin, no wider than a thread. So he asks: “What do you see in front of you, Nikitin, a wise man, an all-knowing furniture maker?” - “Layers are like layers, I say. The oak layer also has a beautiful appearance if it is polished wisely.” And he begins to argue: “It’s not a matter of polishing, but of accurate conclusions. I, he says, are a bit of a meteorologist and a botanist. Every year the layer grows depending on the moisture. In rainy summers, the layer grows more, in dry summers - less, and for this An oak tree can tell you five hundred years ago what the climate was like." “Why do you need to know this?” I ask. “Is there even the slightest benefit from this for our brother, man?” - “There is,” he says, but it’s a long story. For now I’ll tell you one thing: we read from these sections and from all sorts of other signs a wonderful thing; and this thing is that there were times when our climate was warm and cheerful, like in on the island of Ceylon. Forests of magnolias grew all around the shores of the Gulf of Finland. We will try to return this climate, he says, and there are no miracles in this.”

They won't let you die in peace! - Matryona muttered. - They don’t have enough geraniums, old fools, give them magnolia!

Geranium versus magnolia - rubbish! - Nikanor Ilyich got angry. - Geranium leaves have annoying, woolly leaves. Don't get involved with me, old man!

Tikhonov stood thoughtfully by the window, then carefully went down and went into the palace park.

The stone stairs near the palace were illuminated by the dawn; A yellowish light fell on the ground, reflecting off the walls and windows.

The palace shone through the vague darkness of the trees, like a lonely golden leaf glows in early autumn through the thicket of still fresh and dark foliage.

Tikhonov walked along the canal towards the bay. Small fish swam in the canal between stones overgrown with mud.

The bay was clean and calm. Silence lay over him. The sea had not yet woken up. Only the pink glow of the water foreshadowed the approaching sunrise.

The ocean steamer was heading towards Leningrad. The dawn was already burning in its portholes, and light smoke was trailing astern.

Tikhonov walked ashore. There was no one, 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 black, mangy cat walked carefully along the damp flooring of the pier and shook its paw with 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 school of long silver fish were moving their tails.

The woman approached. Tikhonov looked at 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 ship to Leningrad soon?

She apparently had difficulty finding words and pronounced them with a strong accent.

In two hours. You'll get there faster by train.

The woman shook her head negatively.

No by train. From the train I cannot look for the way home in Leningrad.

Why are you here at this time? - asked Tikhonov.

I missed the last boat. Very stupid. I sat 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 tactless to him.

The woman raised her head. In the firm oval of her face and small chin there was at the same time something French and Northern.

Oh no! - she said drawlingly. - I'm Swedish. But I speak French.

Tikhonov looked at her, but thought about himself. He tried to imagine himself from the outside.

He knew that his best painting had not yet been painted, and therefore he was sincerely surprised by the noise that was increasingly rising around his things.

Now he thought about himself because he felt especially strongly that he was a boy. He was confused in front of an unfamiliar woman who was younger than him.

The woman was also embarrassed and, bending over to hide her face, stroked the mangy cat. The cat looked at her questioningly and meowed.

The bay was covered with streaks of light and fog. Far away on the water rolled the muffled cry of a steamship approaching from Oranienbaum. The ship was heading to Leningrad.

The thin, lame pier keeper stepped out onto the boardwalk with his fishing rods. He greeted Tikhonov and asked:

Why are you, Alexey Nikolaevich, going to Leningrad so early?

No, I’ll see you off,” Tikhonov answered.

“The thought of lost youth depressed his decrepit heart.”

He got a bite, cursed and pulled out a small fish.

An empty ship approached. Tikhonov escorted the woman to the gangway. She extended her hand to him and looked absentmindedly into his eyes.

“Goodbye,” she said and turned away. “Thank you.”

Citizens, passengers,” the captain said from the bridge, “it’s time!”

She climbed up the gangplank. The steamer screamed angrily, slowly backed away and turned its nose into the sea. Tall milestones glittered on the water.

Tikhonov saw a stranger on the deck. The wind tightened her dress around her high legs and flapped the stern flag.

Tikhonov went to the shore. Near the caretaker, he looked around. The woman was still standing on the deck.

What a summer! - said the caretaker. - I have never seen such a summer in the Baltic. Solid sun.

Tikhonov agreed and leisurely walked away from the pier, but when he disappeared behind the trees of the park, he quickly walked towards the station.

The first train to Leningrad left at six o'clock. Tikhonov was waiting for him, worried and foolishly hoping that the train would leave earlier.

A familiar steamer stood at the pier. It was empty. A barefoot sailor was mopping the deck.

How long ago did you come from Peterhof? - asked Tikhonov.

Ten minutes.

Shchedrin lived in a new small house built near a water station on Krestovsky Island.

Shchedrin turned very gray, and when he wrote, he put on glasses. He taught meteorology and astronomy at the Maritime Academy.

In his office there were many copper instruments and hung maps covered with blue and red pencils. The devices glowed like candles on clear days.

The cleanliness in the house was like a ship's. 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 Mariehamn. At the beginning of June, Maria Jacobsen came from Stockholm to stay for two months. Both Shchedrin and Wiener called her Marie.

Marie was reckless and this worried Shchedrin. She remained the same as in Mariegamna, when she tore the gold badge from his sleeve.

Shchedrin was especially worried about Marie's walks. She's gotten lost twice already. One day a thin pioneer brought her home, called her, handed her over and said seriously to Wiener:

Please don't let her go out alone. I lead her from Smolny itself.

Marie kissed the pioneer, dragged him into the rooms, showed him a model of the "Brave", tools, maps, paintings depicting sea storms and calms. The boy was given tea, given sweets, and he left happy and stunned.

The second case was much worse. Marie went to Peterhof, missed the last ship and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof pier.

Nonsense! - Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was dying to sleep. “In your country, I am not afraid of anything.” I even boldly approached one person on the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.

About what? - Shchedrin asked.

“About everything,” Marie answered. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me like an old friend.”

It must be Ackerman! - Shchedrin exclaimed. - What an old devil! Is he still fishing?

Yes, said Marie. - Together with a black cat. Like in a fairy tale.

Marie woke up from a rustling sound in the room. The wind threw 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 lit up outside the windows, trembled and went out in the depths of the rustling gardens.

Marie quickly washed herself, got dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.

Thunderstorm,” he told Marie. - You slept for nine hours.

What are you playing? - Marie asked and sat down in a chair, crossing her legs.

Tchaikovsky. If I were a composer, I would write a symphony about climate change.

Marie laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” Shchedrin told her and touched the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return Europe to its Miocene climate*. I don’t know if you taught the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you probably know that the Earth has experienced several terrible glaciations.

Marie shivered.

“We don’t need more of them,” she said seriously.

Of course not. Icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to explain, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the Miocene climate will return to Europe.

* Miocene climate - a warm, almost tropical climate that existed in Europe during the Miocene - a distant geological era.

“Very,” 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 completely crazy!

What does it mean to be stupefied? - asked Marie.

Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word - go crazy.

Very good! - said Marie. - But what is needed for this?

Nonsense! We need a small revolution in Greenland. It is necessary to begin enormous work in Greenland in order to melt the one and a half meter layer of ice on the tops of the plateaus, at least for a short time. This will be enough.

How did you get to this point?

Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.

Why is this? - he said. - You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.

The rain was noisy outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles burst in the puddles in the garden, and perhaps that is why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.

Play,” Marie asked. - Every day you tell me fairy tales, like a stupid girl.

“These are not fairy tales,” Shchedrin said and began playing the overture from “Eugene Onegin.” - Pushkin is not a fairy tale either. It's all real.

The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly as they rolled off the leaves.

Marie quietly stood up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The thunderstorm was moving to the east. In the west there was a dim, rain-washed sunset.

Marie went to the Summer Garden.

She wandered through the damp alleys of the garden, went out onto the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.

A ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly lighter than the night.

The majestic buildings surrounding Marie seemed painted in watercolors. Only the columns and powerful attics, illuminated by diffused light, stood out. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was the reflection of the night in the canals, or a thin strip of dawn still smoldering in the west, or the lanterns, mixing their brilliance with the darkness, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, and slight sadness.

Marie walked past the Hermitage. She had already been there and now tried to imagine its night halls, the dull shine of the Neva outside the windows, the hundred-year silence of the paintings.

Beyond 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 begin,” he told Marie. - Light up the best buildings.

What preparation? - asked Marie.

She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.

For the holiday,” said the policeman. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I’ve lived here since I was little, and I can’t see enough of it every day. You stand at night on duty and sometimes you don’t know whether you’re dreaming about all this or whether it’s real. Come up to the house and look - the lamp with the number is on; Then you’ll calm down: it means you’re not dreaming.

Marie smiled shyly.

“I study at a rowing school,” said the policeman. - I’m going out to sea on an outrigger. If you sail out in the evening, you can’t see the city, it’s in the fog. Some lanterns sparkle on the water. There is no desire to even return to the shore.

* Outrigger is a special type of light racing boat.

Where are you located in the city? - asked Marie.

Apparently you are not Russian: the conversation you are having is not ours.

I'm Swedish.

Ah-ah... - said the policeman. - So you admire it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.

At the pier near the Krestovka River, Marie got off. The policeman went down with her and escorted her home.

I'm not afraid, why! - Marie said embarrassedly. - You worked, you were tired.

For the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and an architect.

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 in this meeting that defied either description or story. That "something" was love. But Tikhonov had not yet admitted 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 darkness, the silence of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame pier keeper and his words about the extraordinary 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 tousled his hair and called him a “bubble”. He re-read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer told his young contemporary:

“When you write, think about her, even if she doesn’t exist, and about the excellent people to whom you - also an excellent person - sincerely and simply and very sincerely tell about what only you know, what she needs to know too and to all of them, do you understand?"

From Tikhonov she went down to the old people, and Nikanor Ilyich immediately started a conversation with her.

“I love holidays,” said Nikanor Ilyich. “I believe that sometimes a person needs a holiday more than their daily bread.”

Oh, Lord! - Matryona sighed. - No strength! At least calm him down, Katyusha, damn him.

Quiet! - Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. - You will wash and clean the house yourself for the holiday. You probably won’t be able to wear your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!

Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich fell ill. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.

Alyosha... - he said and suddenly began to cry.

Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.

I have a weakness in my heart. Will I really end up and see nothing? And I, a fool, would like to live and live. Curiosity burns me. I kept trying to come up to you and look at the sketches of what you came up with for the holiday, but I was 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.

When saying goodbye, he asked that Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, stop by the customer and tell him that the piano cover was ready and 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 pouring rain, the ground smelled of rain-laden dust.

A blond old man without one arm opened the door for Tikhonov - Wiener. Tikhonov asked citizen Shchedrin. Wiener led him into a room with wide open windows.

Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort to tear himself away from the portrait.

A tall gray-haired sailor stood behind Tikhonov and looked at him carefully.

“I come to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” said Tikhonov. - He's sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano lid was ready. You can come get her.

“Sit down,” said the sailor and showed Tikhonov to a chair.

The sailor still looked at Tikhonov attentively.

Thank you,” he said. - What about Nikanor Ilyich?

“Heart,” Tikhonov answered briefly.

Are you his son?

No, I'm his former student.

You are obviously an artist?

I guessed it when I saw you peering at this portrait.

Great job! Who is this?

This 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's gone crazy.

“My great-grandfather,” said Tikhonov, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel.” He was screwed. He was a simple soldier.

Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was this?”

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, falling into dust in the puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:

Are you not from the village of Megry on the Kovzhe River?

Yes,” Tikhonov said in surprise. - How do you know this?

The sailor did not answer.

Finally! - The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook Tikhonov’s hand. - My name is Shchedrin. I looked for you for a long time, then I abandoned you. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned the 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 clash with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was buried not alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out what these two people were connected with - Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev - but no one could explain this to me. The local residents knew nothing, and I couldn’t rummage through the archives. They wouldn’t have given it to me, and there was no time for that at all then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev’s suicide letter. In it I found a request to report the death of soldier Tikhonov to his relatives, in the village of Megry on the Kovzhe River. During the Civil War, I accidentally ended up in Megry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.

“She asked me about you,” Tikhonov interrupted.

Is she dead? - asked the sailor.

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 couldn’t remember him... But still we met! - Shchedrin laughed. - Well, now I won’t let you out. Give me the hat here.

He took Tikhonov’s hat and brought him a bottle of wine, cookies and cigarettes.

Let’s have a drink on this occasion,” he said. - Good weak wine. It is especially pleasant to drink in such gray weather.

Tikhonov drank and felt slightly dizzy. All the events of the last days seemed incredible to him, and the meeting with Shchedrin further strengthened this feeling.

“Lately,” he told Shchedrin, “I found myself in a streak of extraordinary meetings.

So much the better. Drink. My relative, a girl, the great-granddaughter of Anna Jacobsen, recently arrived from the Åland Islands. Her name is Marie. She told me in more detail about the fate of your great-grandfather. This girl's adoptive father, 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 spotted by Spitz-Rutens because, together with Pavel Bestuzhev, he helped the Decembrist escape... Let's drink to our grandfathers!

The wine seemed to Tikhonov like autumn leaves dissolved in cold water.

Tikhonov did not listen well to Shchedrin.

"It's her!" - he said to himself, and his heart beat painfully.

He wanted to hear women's footsteps in the rooms, but nothing came except the knocking of the wall clock and distant car horns.

“Where is she? We must wait for her to end this terrible ignorance. Maybe it’s something completely different? Maybe a fair-haired girl with glasses and a loud voice will enter the room? I’m a fool,” thought Tikhonov. “I’m long overdue.” It's time to leave."

Tikhonov was ready to get up and say goodbye to Shchedrin, but he was stopped by the thought of the portrait. The resemblance was too striking. He looked at the portrait again and saw the same nervous, flying eyebrows and a small sad fold in the corner of the mouth.

What's wrong with you? - Shchedrin asked, noticing Tikhonov’s absent-mindedness. -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 stood up. Shchedrin made him promise that he would come to Krestovsky Island on his first free evening, promised to visit the sick Nikor Ilyich, and they parted.

Tikhonov walked through the garden, and while he walked this short distance, hundreds of thoughts flashed through his head.

Tikhonov for the first time felt a connection with the past, with the village where for hundreds of years his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been picking cold clay, where as a child his mother sprinkled his cuts with ash from the stove, where people died from hernias, from childbirth, from starvation typhus. All this was long dead. If they remembered him at all, it was with reluctance.

But now the past speaks a different language. In him, in Alyosha Tikhonov, 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-out soldier’s overcoat, appeared in Tikhonov’s mind.

The rain has passed. The clouds slowly fell to the south and revealed a deserted sky in the west.

At the gate, Tikhonov collided with a woman. He stepped aside and raised his head. It was she, the Peterhof stranger.

She held onto the iron bars and looked at Tikhonov. Tikhonov took off his hat.

“It’s so good,” he said, “that I 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 from the bars on her glove. She leaned against the fence and quickly said:

Yes, yes... Speak.

What? - asked Tikhonov. - 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 by the hand above the wrist and, like a boy, led him along. They walked down the street in silence. 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.

Marie tilted her head as if agreeing with him. They went out to the river boat pier.

“Let’s go to the city,” said Marie. - You will show me your favorite places. This city is made for wandering around all night long.

Marie had a slight headache. She often put her palm 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.

They walked around the city until late at night. He was especially beautiful that evening. It appeared before them with powerful colonnades of buildings, humpbacked arches of deserted bridges, bronze monuments and bushes of hundred-year-old linden trees.

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 about the realized dreams of the famous architects who created this brilliant city in the northern swamps and forests. It was a city of great memories and an equally great future.

They walked along the embankments of the Neva. The boys fished from the granite parapets. Near the shore, near some garden, there stood an old warship moored with steel cables. Linden branches hung over its deck and guns, covered with tarpaulin.

This is “Aurora,” said Tikhonov. - You know?

“I know,” Marie answered.

They passed through the square where the bronze horseman rode north, and returned to the Moika.

On the Moika, among the piles, tall buildings and green granite banks, there was a summer night silence. They leaned on the railing and looked at the water. A blue star trembled inside it.

“Marie,” said Tikhonov, “look around: Pushkin died in this house.”

Marie turned around. She looked at the windows, at the ledge of the house that almost hung above the water, at the stone pedestals worn out by centuries, at the dandelions that sprouted among the slabs along the sides of the narrow sidewalk.

Was he brought here when he was wounded? - she asked.

Yes. They carried him through this door.

Maybe his blood was dripping here,” Marie said and looked at Tikhonov with a guilty smile.

These were the years, said Tikhonov, when Pavel Bestuzhev and my great-grandfather were killed, and Anna died of grief. Pushkin himself said it best about this time.

How? - asked Marie. - 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 - sad and pleasant.” Is it really good?

Marie did not allow Tikhonov to accompany her. They parted at the Summer Garden. Marie extended both hands to Tikhonov, abruptly snatched 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 celebration.

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 were treated to an unprecedented sight. The palace was burning with a crystal fire. Waterfalls flowed among marble and bronze.

Young Red Navy men and old commanders climbed the stairs to the palace.

Glass cups full of pure fire burned on the sides. Fountains flowed, lost in the darkness of the overhanging trees. Here, in the park, you could clearly feel the heaviness and smell of leaves, the air of an unprecedented summer.

The palace windows were wide open.

On the balconies, in the blue and white halls, stood sailors, reflected in the mirrors. The mirrors repeated their laughter, smiles, tanned faces.

Frightened birds rushed through this shine, went blind, hit the jets of fountains and, in the splashes and noise of their wings, flew away into the night, towards the bay. The familiar sky, forgotten by people for that evening, was reflected in the water there.

But soon the bay began to speak. Invisible forts thundered, throwing out flashes of fire: Kronstadt saluted with one hundred and one shots in honor of the great city.

Over the roar of the cannonade, one could not hear the chatter of the planes, scattering across all points of the horizon and leaving light roads behind them.

Then it was as if the starry sky began to fall to the ground: the planes dropped hundreds of fireballs. Air currents swung them over the ground and confused them. They either carried the balls to the bay with wide strokes - and the whole bay was ablaze, it seemed, to the very bottom with their reflections - or they condensed them into clouds of light that shone over the shocked shores.

Leningrad sparkled over the Neva like a precious stone. Never before had the nobility of his prospects been so palpable.

Marie, Shchedrin and Wiener arrived in Peterhof very early.

On the terrace of the palace, Nikanor Ilyich stopped Shchedrin. Matryona, in a black silk dress, frightened and flushed, led him by the arm; the old man was blind from the lights and moved with difficulty.

The people have won great beauty for themselves, Alexander Petrovich,” the old man said to Shchedrin and secretly wiped away a tear that had come. - Great beauty!

Shchedrin remembered the winter night when he and the sailors walked across the ice from Kronstadt to Peterhof and warmed up in the guardhouse of the 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 sparkled, 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 to the palace.

On the way, they were met by Ackerman, shaven and lean, in full naval uniform. His eyes laughed slyly. He greeted everyone and said to Shchedrin:

Sasha, I remember you once laughed at fairy tales. Are you ashamed, tell me?

Shut up, fool! - said Shchedrin. - You didn’t believe that you would live to see good times.

Knocking with his crutch, said Ackerman, he walked among the shouts of popular rejoicing.

They entered the palace. The sailors parted. A restrained hum passed through their ranks. Marie carefully led the decrepit worker. Matryona walked behind, and behind her were Shchedrin, Wiener and Ackerman.

The whisper passed and died down, 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 of the stairs. He saw Marie, and it seemed to him that he would not be able to withstand 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 rang and the candles lit for the holiday trembled subtly.

Marie stopped with Tikhonov near the window. Shchedrin walked forward and turned to the sailors. His gray head was white on the dark canvas of the picture hanging behind him. The painting depicted an ancient naval battle. An orchestra was playing in the back of the hall.

Shchedrin raised his hand. The orchestra fell silent. Two generations of sailors held their breath.

Friends! - said Shchedrin. - Old and young sailors! Is it necessary to talk about what everyone carries in their hearts - talk about pride in their era, in their homeland! We are called upon to protect the country that creates happiness for working humanity. We fought for her. We have won in the past and will always win. Each of us will give all our blood, all our strength, all our courage so that our country and its culture can work peacefully 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 people's happiness in distant times, separated from us by tens and hundreds of years.

Instead of a celebratory speech, let me 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 deaths of the soldier Semyon Tikhonov, Pavel Bestuzhev and Anna Jacobsen.

Sometimes he would fall silent and run his hand through his hair, trying not to show 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 tilted and the more often drops of wax fell onto the parquet floor.

“I know,” Shchedrin read, “and you should know it with me, that times of great reckoning will come. Our torment and death,” Shchedrin read, and a light hum went through the ranks of the sailors, as if they were repeating his words in a low voice of this letter, like the words of an oath, our torment and death will strike our hearts with languid force. Neglect of the happiness of the people will be considered the most vile crime.

Marie shuddered. The hall sighed loudly, all the sailors stood up.

“... will be crushed in the dust,” Shchedrin continued, raising his voice, “and the happiness of man will become the highest task of the people’s tribunes, leaders and commanders. I think about these times and envy the beautiful women and brave men whose love will blossom under the sky of a cheerful and free country..."

The sailors listened while standing.

Marie, with eyes full of tears, looked out the window.

There was silence in the hall.

“Friends,” said Shchedrin, “just a few more words.” The descendant of the 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 fell silent. Then Ackerman stood up in the back of the hall and shouted:

And the grandson of the rescued Decembrist is you!

The hall shook with a storm of cheers.

Wide flames flashed in the windows. The sailors looked around. Hundreds of streams of light rose to the sky above Leningrad.

But Shchedrin did not look at the lights of Leningrad. He looked at Marie, because there is no greater beauty in the world than the face of a young woman, loving and happy.

The second case was much worse. Marie went to Peterhof, missed the last ship and spent the whole night in one light dress on the Peterhof pier.
At two o'clock in the morning Shchedrin began calling all police departments, raised dozens of people to their feet, and then, when Marie was found, he had to apologize and listen to the humorous remarks of the officers on duty.
- Nonsense! – Marie said over morning tea. Her eyes shone, despite the fact that she was dying to sleep: “In your country, I am not afraid of anything.” I even boldly approached one person on the pier at night, and we talked for a long time.
- About what? – Shchedrin asked.
“About everything,” Marie answered. “And then a lame man came to fish and bowed to me as if he were an old friend.”
- Yes, it must be Ackerman! – Shchedrin exclaimed. - What an old devil! Is he still fishing?
“Yes,” said Marie. - Together with a black cat. Like in a fairy tale.
Marie slept until evening. The windows were open. The wind flipped through a 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 kingdom of blizzards, from the kingdom of ice and snow, how pure and fresh your May flies.”
Marie woke up from a rustling sound in the room. The wind threw 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 lit up outside the windows, trembled and went out in the depths of the rustling gardens.
Marie quickly washed herself, got dressed and ran downstairs. Shchedrin was sitting at the piano.
“Thunderstorm,” he said to Marie. – You slept for nine hours.
-What are you playing? – Marie asked and sat down in a chair, crossing her legs.
She looked outside the window, where the hot wind was already raging in the gardens and throwing torn leaves onto 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 symphony about climate change.
Marie laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” Shchedrin told her and touched the strings. - It's all very simple. We can return Europe to its Miocene climate. I don’t know if you taught the history of the Earth in Stockholm. But you probably know that the Earth has experienced several terrible glaciations.
Marie shivered.
“We don’t need more of them,” she said seriously.
- Of course, it’s not necessary. Icing comes from Greenland. This is a very long story to explain, but I will only say that we can destroy the Greenland ice. When we destroy them, the Miocene climate will return to Europe.
- Warm?
“Very,” 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 completely crazy!
-What does it mean to be stupefied? – asked Marie.
– Write poetry, fall in love with girls, in a word – go crazy.
- Very good! - said Marie. - But what is needed for this?
- Nonsense! We need a small revolution in Greenland. It is necessary to begin enormous work in Greenland in order to melt the one and a half meter layer of ice on the tops of the plateaus, at least for a short time. This will be enough.
– How did you come to this?
Shchedrin pointed to the books lying on the table, to the maps, to the instruments.
- Why is this? - he said. – You know that our scientists spent the winter at the North Pole. Their observations helped me a lot.
The rain was noisy outside the windows, and the rooms became dark. Air bubbles burst in the puddles in the garden, and perhaps that is why small waves of ozone came from the puddles.
“Play,” Marie asked. – Every day you tell me fairy tales, like a stupid girl.
“These are not fairy tales,” said Shchedrin and began playing the overture from “Eugene Onegin.” – Pushkin is not a fairy tale either. 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 person for the second time in such a huge city.
The downpour passed, and the drops rustled loudly as they rolled off the leaves.
Marie quietly stood up, put on a light raincoat and went out. The thunderstorm was moving to the east. In the west there was a dim, rain-washed sunset.
Marie went to the Summer Garden.
She wandered through the damp alleys of the garden, went out onto the Swan Canal and looked at the Mikhailovsky Castle for a long time.
A ghostly night froze over the city. The footsteps of passers-by sounded in silence. The white lanterns in the squares were only slightly lighter than the night.
The majestic buildings surrounding Marie seemed painted in watercolors. Only the columns and powerful attics, illuminated by diffused light, stood out. It was impossible to guess where it came from. Whether it was the 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 the darkness, caused this strange illumination - but this light gave rise to concentration, meditation, and slight sadness.
Marie walked past the Hermitage. She had already been there and now tried to imagine its night halls, the dull shine of the Neva outside the windows, the hundred-year silence of the paintings.
Marie walked out onto the square near the Winter Palace, stopped and clasped her hands. She did not know whose genius, whose subtle hand created this most beautiful spread of colonnades, buildings, arches, cast-iron gratings in the world, this space filled with the greenish coolness of the night and majestic architectural thought.
Marie was the last river boat to return back. Glass 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.
Beyond 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 beginning,” he told Marie. – The best buildings are illuminated.
– What kind of preparation? – asked Marie.
She was cold. She turned pale from the river dampness.
“For the holiday,” said the policeman. - In honor of our city. There is no more beautiful city in the world than our Leningrad. I’ve lived here since I was little, and I can’t see enough of it every day. You stand at night on duty and sometimes you don’t know whether you’re dreaming about all this or whether it’s real. You approach the house and look - a lamp with a number is on; Then you’ll calm down: it means you’re not dreaming.
Marie smiled shyly.
“I’m studying at a rowing school,” said the policeman. – I’m going out to sea on an outrigger. If you sail out in the evening, you can’t see the city, it’s in the fog. Some lanterns sparkle on the water. There is no desire to even return to the shore.
-Where are you standing in the city? – asked Marie.
– Apparently, you are not Russian: the conversation you are having is not ours.
- I'm Swedish.
“A-ah-ah...” said the policeman. - So you admire it too. I am standing at the Winter Canal, in the place where Lisa drowned herself.
At the pier near the Krestovka River, Marie got off. The policeman went down with her and escorted her home.
- I'm not afraid, why! – Marie said embarrassedly. – You worked, you were tired.
“Don’t worry,” the policeman assured her. - I'm not going home. I'll go to the water station and 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 politely shook her hand and left. Marie stood in the garden for a while, then laughed. She wondered what her friends in Stockholm would say if she shook hands with a policeman on guard there.
For the holiday, the city was divided into districts. In each district, the decoration of buildings and streets was entrusted to an artist and an architect.
Tikhonov got Peterhof. The holiday in Peterhof was given a maritime character. Crews of warships were supposed to arrive here from Kronstadt, and in the palace it was decided to hold 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 by indifferently. The world turned out to be filled with amazing colors, light, and sounds. He, the artist, had never seen such a variety of colors before. They were everywhere, but most of them 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 in this meeting that defied either description or story. That “something” was love. But Tikhonov had not yet admitted 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 darkness, the silence of the water, the steps of a woman, the lame pier keeper and his words about the extraordinary 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 tousled his hair and called him a “bubble.” He re-read all his books and articles. In one of the articles, the writer told his young contemporary:

She was. And Tikhonov thought about her, thought that she would pass here, see all the beauty of the land adorned by him, and feel, just like him, the breath of a free and cheerful country, where she had come as a guest.
Nikanor Ilyich was terribly excited when he learned that Tikhonov was assigned to decorate Peterhof. For several days he worried in vain. There was no one to talk to. Matryona was too slow to talk, and Tikhonov was too busy. Therefore, the old man was happy to the point of 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 started a conversation with her.
“I love holidays,” said Nikanor Ilyich. “I believe that sometimes a person needs a holiday more than their daily bread.”
- Oh, Lord! – Matryona sighed. - No strength! At least calm him down, Katyusha, the damned one.
- Quiet! - Nikanor Ilyich said menacingly and coughed. – You will wash and clean the house yourself for the holiday. You probably won’t be able to wear your old cast-offs. Why is this, I ask? Answer!
Katyusha somehow reconciled the old people and left. And in the evening Nikanor Ilyich fell ill. He complained of pain in his heart and called Tikhonov to him.
“Alyosha...” he said and suddenly began to cry.
Matryona was also blowing her nose in her corner.
- I have a weakness in my heart. Will I really end up and see nothing? And I, a fool, would like to live and live. Curiosity burns me. I kept trying to come up to you and look at the sketches of what you came up with for the holiday, but I was 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 that Tikhonov, when he was in Leningrad, call on the customer and tell him that the piano cover was ready and 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 pouring rain, the ground smelled of rain-laden dust.
A blond old man without one arm, Wiener, opened the door for Tikhonov. Tikhonov asked citizen Shchedrin. Wiener led him into a room with wide open windows.
On the wall Tikhonov saw two beautifully crafted portraits. One depicted an officer in a black uniform, the other a young woman with high nervous eyebrows. There was a clearly tangible resemblance to the stranger she met on the pier.
Tikhonov ran his hand over his forehead, as if trying to drive away the obsessive thought, but the woman looked at him with already familiar eyes, and he involuntarily came closer and closer to the portrait and peered at it more and more intently.
Someone entered, but Tikhonov did not turn around immediately: he needed to make an effort to tear himself away from the portrait.
A tall gray-haired sailor stood behind Tikhonov and looked at him carefully.
“I’m coming to you from Nikanor Ilyich,” said Tikhonov. - He is sick. He asked me to tell you that the piano lid was ready. You can come get 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 chair, but changed his mind and sat down in another one - so that he could see the portrait.
The sailor still looked at Tikhonov attentively.
“Thank you,” he said. – What about Nikanor Ilyich?
“Heart,” Tikhonov answered briefly.
-Are you his son?
- No, I am his former student.
– You are obviously an artist?
- Yes.
“I guessed it when I saw you peering at this portrait.”
- Great job! Who is this?
– This is a beautiful woman, the daughter of an old skipper from the Åland Islands.
– Is she Swedish? – Tikhonov quickly asked.
- 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's gone crazy.
“My great-grandfather,” said Tikhonov, “was also killed in Finland, but not in a duel.” He was screwed. He was a simple soldier.
“Excuse me,” said the sailor, “when was this?”
– 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, falling into dust in the puddles on the paths, then turned around and asked:
– Are you not from the village of Megry on the Kovzhe 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 with Pavel Bestuzhev.” Both of them were killed on the same day. They were connected by a common destiny. Is your last name Tikhonov?
- Yes.
- Finally! – The sailor smiled broadly and firmly, with both hands, shook Tikhonov’s hand. - My name is Shchedrin. I looked for you for a long time, then I abandoned you. During the war I served in the Åland Islands. There I learned the 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 clash with the regiment commander. I was at his grave and was surprised that he was buried not alone, but together with the soldier Tikhonov. I tried to find out what these two people were connected with - Tikhonov and Pavel Bestuzhev - but no one could explain this to me. The local residents knew nothing, and I couldn’t rummage through the archives. They wouldn’t have given it to me, and there was no time for that at all then: the revolution had begun. I came across Bestuzhev’s suicide letter. In it I found a request to report the death of soldier Tikhonov to his relatives, in the village of Megry on the Kovzhe River. During the Civil War, I accidentally ended up in Megry, found the descendants of the soldier Tikhonov and saw your mother.
“She asked me about you,” Tikhonov interrupted.
– Is she dead? - asked the sailor.
- 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 couldn’t remember him... But still we met! – Shchedrin laughed. - Well, now I won’t let you out. Give me the hat here.
He took Tikhonov’s hat and brought him a bottle of wine, cookies and cigarettes.
“Let’s have a drink for the occasion,” he said. - Good weak wine. It is especially pleasant to drink in such gray weather.
Tikhonov drank and felt slightly dizzy. All the events of the last days seemed incredible to him, and the meeting with Shchedrin further strengthened this feeling.
“Recently,” he told Shchedrin, “I have been in a period of extraordinary meetings.”
- So much the better. Drink. My relative, a girl, the great-granddaughter of Anna Jacobsen, recently arrived from the Åland Islands. Her name is Marie. She told me in more detail about the fate of your great-grandfather. This girl’s adoptive father, a decrepit eccentric doctor, started writing the history of the Åland Islands. He rummaged through all the archives and found indications that the soldier Tikhonov was spotted by the Spitzrutens because, together with Pavel Bestuzhev, he helped the Decembrist escape... Let's drink to our grandfathers!
The wine seemed to Tikhonov like autumn leaves dissolved in cold water.
Tikhonov did not listen well to Shchedrin.
"It's her!" - he said to himself, and his heart beat painfully.
He wanted to hear women's footsteps in the rooms, but nothing came except the knocking of the wall clock and distant car horns.
“Where is she? We must wait for her to end this terrible ignorance. Maybe it's something completely different? Maybe a fair-haired girl with glasses and a loud voice will enter the room? “I’m a fool,” thought Tikhonov. “It’s high time for me to leave.” It's time. We need to get up."
Tikhonov was ready to get up and say goodbye to Shchedrin, but he was stopped by the thought of the portrait. The resemblance was too striking. He looked at the portrait again and saw the same nervous, flying eyebrows and a small sad fold in the corner of the mouth.
- What's wrong with you? – Shchedrin asked, noticing Tikhonov’s absent-mindedness. -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 stood up. Shchedrin made him promise that he would come to Krestovsky Island on his first free evening, promised to visit the sick Nikor Ilyich, and they parted.
Tikhonov walked through the garden, and while he walked this short distance, hundreds of thoughts flashed through his head.
Tikhonov for the first time felt a connection with the past, with the village where for hundreds of years his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had been picking cold clay, where as a child his mother sprinkled his cuts with ash from the stove, where people died from hernias, from childbirth, from starvation typhus. All this was long dead. If they remembered him at all, it was with reluctance.
But now the past speaks a different language. In him, in Alyosha Tikhonov, 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-out soldier’s overcoat, appeared in Tikhonov’s mind.
The rain has passed. The clouds slowly fell to the south and revealed a deserted sky in the west.
At the gate, Tikhonov collided with a woman. He stepped aside and raised his head. It was she, the Peterhof stranger.
She held onto the iron bars and looked at Tikhonov. Tikhonov took off his hat.
“It’s so good,” he said, “that I 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 from the bars on her glove. She leaned against the fence and quickly said:
- 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 by the hand above the wrist and, like a boy, led him along. They walked down the street in silence. The desert sky lay beneath their feet, reflected in puddles of rainwater.
“I was sure that I would meet you again,” said Tikhonov. – It was impossible not to meet.
Marie tilted her head as if agreeing with him. They went out to the river boat pier.
“Let’s go to the city,” said Marie. – You will show me your favorite places. This city is made for wandering around all night long.
Marie had a slight headache. She often put her palm 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.
They walked around the city until late at night. He was especially beautiful that evening. It appeared before them with powerful colonnades of buildings, humpbacked arches of deserted bridges, bronze monuments and bushes of hundred-year-old linden trees.
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 about the realized dreams of the famous architects who created this brilliant city in the northern swamps and forests. It was a city of great memories and an equally great future.
They walked along the embankments of the Neva. The boys fished from the granite parapets. Near the shore, near some garden, there stood an old warship moored with steel cables. Linden branches hung over its deck and guns, covered with tarpaulin.
“This is Aurora,” said Tikhonov. - You know?
“I know,” Marie answered.
They passed through the square where the bronze horseman rode north, and returned to the Moika.
On the Moika, among the piles, tall buildings and green granite banks, there was a summer night silence. They leaned on the railing and looked at the water. A blue star trembled inside it.
“Marie,” said Tikhonov, “look around: Pushkin died in this house.”
Marie turned around. She looked at the windows, at the ledge of the house that almost hung above the water, at the stone pedestals worn out by centuries, at the dandelions that sprouted among the slabs along the sides of the narrow sidewalk.
– Was he brought here when he was wounded? – she asked.
- Yes. They carried him through this door.
“Maybe his blood was dripping here,” Marie said and looked at Tikhonov with a guilty smile.
“These were the years,” said Tikhonov, “when Pavel Bestuzhev and my great-grandfather were killed, and Anna died of grief.” Pushkin himself said it best about this time.
- How? – asked Marie. -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 - sad and pleasant.” Is it really good?
Marie did not allow Tikhonov to accompany her. They parted at the Summer Garden. Marie extended both hands to Tikhonov, abruptly snatched 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 celebration.
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 were treated to an unprecedented sight. The palace was burning with a crystal fire. Waterfalls flowed among marble and bronze.
Young Red Navy men and old commanders climbed the stairs to the palace.
Glass cups full of pure fire burned on the sides. Fountains flowed, lost in the darkness of the overhanging trees. Here, in the park, you could clearly feel the heaviness and smell of leaves, the air of an unprecedented summer.
The palace windows were wide open.
On the balconies, in the blue and white halls, stood sailors, reflected in the mirrors. The mirrors repeated their laughter, smiles, tanned faces.
Frightened birds rushed through this shine, went blind, hit the jets of fountains and, in the splashes and noise of their wings, flew away into the night, towards the bay. The familiar sky, forgotten by people for that evening, was reflected in the water there.
But soon the bay began to speak. Invisible forts thundered, throwing out flashes of fire: Kronstadt saluted with one hundred and one shots in honor of the great city.
Over the roar of the cannonade, one could not hear the chatter of the planes, scattering across all points of the horizon and leaving light roads behind them.
Then it was as if the starry sky began to fall to the ground: the planes dropped hundreds of fireballs. Air currents swung them over the ground and confused them. They either carried the balls to the bay with wide strokes - and the whole bay seemed to glow to the very bottom with their reflections - or they condensed them into clouds of light that shone over the shocked shores.
Leningrad sparkled over the Neva like a precious stone. Never before had the nobility of his prospects been so palpable.
Marie, Shchedrin and Wiener arrived in Peterhof very early.
On the terrace of the palace, Nikanor Ilyich stopped Shchedrin. Matryona, in a black silk dress, frightened and flushed, led him by the arm; the old man was blind from the lights and moved with difficulty.
“The people have won great beauty for themselves, Alexander Petrovich,” the old man said to Shchedrin and secretly wiped away a tear that had come. - Great beauty!
Shchedrin remembered the winter night when he and the sailors walked across the ice from Kronstadt to Peterhof and warmed up in the guardhouse of the Red Guard.
“Nikanor Ilyich,” he asked, “so it was you who guarded the palace in 1918?”
- I, darling, I. And my share is in all this perfection.
Marie's eyes sparkled, 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 to the palace.
On the way, they were met by Ackerman, shaven and lean, in full naval uniform. His eyes laughed slyly. He greeted everyone and said to Shchedrin:
– Sasha, I remember you once laughed at fairy tales. Are you ashamed, tell me?
- Shut up, fool! - said Shchedrin. – You didn’t believe that you would live to see good times.
“Knocking with his crutch,” said Ackerman, “he walked among the shouts of popular rejoicing.
They entered the palace. The sailors parted. A restrained hum passed through their ranks. Marie carefully led the decrepit worker. Matryona walked behind, and behind her were Shchedrin, Wiener and Ackerman.
The whisper passed and died down, 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 of the stairs. He saw Marie, and it seemed to him that he would not be able to withstand 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 rang and the candles lit for the holiday trembled subtly.
Marie stopped with Tikhonov near the window. Shchedrin walked forward and turned to the sailors. His gray head was white on the dark canvas of the picture hanging behind him. The painting depicted an ancient naval battle. An orchestra was playing in the back of the hall.
Shchedrin raised his hand. The orchestra fell silent. Two generations of sailors held their breath.
- Friends! - said Shchedrin. - Old and young sailors! Is it necessary to talk about what everyone carries in their hearts - talk about pride in their era, in their homeland! We are called upon to protect the country that creates happiness for working humanity. We fought for her. We have won in the past and will always win. Each of us will give all our blood, all our strength, all our courage so that our country and its culture can work peacefully 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 people's happiness in distant times, separated from us by tens and hundreds of years.
Instead of a celebratory speech, let me 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 deaths of the soldier Semyon Tikhonov, Pavel Bestuzhev and Anna Jacobsen.
Sometimes he would fall silent and run his hand through his hair, trying not to show 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 tilted and the more often drops of wax fell onto the parquet floor.
“I know,” Shchedrin read, “and you should know it with me, that times of great reckoning will come. “Our torment and death,” Shchedrin read, and a light hum went through the ranks of the sailors, as if they were repeating after him in a low voice the words of this letter, like the words of an oath, “our torment and death will strike their hearts with painful force. Disregard for the happiness of the people will be considered the most heinous crime. Everything low will be crushed into dust...” Marie shuddered. The hall sighed loudly, all the sailors stood up.
“... will be crushed in the dust,” Shchedrin continued, raising his voice, “and the happiness of man will become the highest task of the people’s tribunes, leaders and generals. I think about these times and envy the 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 in volume and rose to a menacing cry, “and I scream in my soul: “Don’t forget us, lucky ones!” Marie, with eyes full of tears, looked out the window.
There was silence in the hall.
“Friends,” said Shchedrin, “just a few more words.” The descendant of the 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 fell silent. Then Ackerman stood up in the back of the hall and shouted:
– And the grandson of the rescued Decembrist is you!
The hall shook with a storm of cheers.
Wide flames flashed in the windows. The sailors looked around. 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.

Images of dynamic elements and weather phenomena are organically integrated into the discourse of K. G. Paustovsky, interacting with other landscape images.

All metaphors used by K. G. Paustovsky to describe a dynamic element correspond to one of two types of discourse:

Element of water;

Element of air (wind).

The most frequent are images of the water element, and the author constructs the following metaphorical models.

1) Water as a light source, shiny surface:

“The water swayed in buckets, reflected the sun, shone down on the beads...” (“Glass Beads”);

“Streams muttered under the roots, small lakes glowed at the bottom of the ravine” (“Mikhailovsky Groves”);

“The ice had recently passed, and the river sparkled with yellow water” (“The Asleep Boy”).

Metaphors of the perceptual semantic sphere actively participate in the depiction of the surrounding natural world.

Perceptual metaphors used when depicting water by K. G. Paustovsky:

a) visual: yellow water, shiny water;

b) auditory: the streams muttered, the Caspian Sea hummed, the Neva rumbled, the bay began to speak, the Neva rumbled, the water grumbled, the springs muttered, the fountains sang.

The young freedom-loving artist, who was burdened by the regime of Nicholas Russia, was glad about the raging Neva and the flood. The Neva reflects the riot of feelings in Kiprensky’s soul; it inspires him to paint the painting “Flood,” which later became widely famous. The Neva reflected feelings of rebellion and disobedience to the tsarist regime:

“The Neva swelled before our eyes and shimmered over the granite”;

“The Neva flowed like a mass of iron water and rumbled menacingly near the bridge abutments.”

The image of the Neva develops in the story “Taras Shevchenko”. The river also reflects the rebellious spirit of the serf poet exiled by the king to Mangyshlak. The Neva lives, breathes, rumbles - as discontent “rumbles” in the soul of a freedom-loving poet, cut off from his native Ukraine:

“One night the Neva sighed menacingly and slammed, and ice began to move down the river.”

The image of the elements in “The Northern Tale” is also interesting. As the plot develops and the dynamics of the narrative develop, changes occur on the Neva. At the beginning of the work we see the Neva in a calm state:

"The Neva carried lights in deep water."

When Anna and a team of sailors rescue the Decembrist, the elements wake up and begin to rage:

“The gray waves took off and disappeared into the darkness”;

“The first wave threw the boat away from the shore and hid it in the darkness.”

The metaphor of animation in the structure of discourse allows us to convey the “anger” of the element, its strength, power over the human world. The dynamics of recent events in the lives of Anna and Bestuzhev were also reflected in the disturbance of the water element (waves took off, waves beat, scattered). Despair permeates the heroine, and the violence of the water intensifies it, heightens the tension of the situation.

The metaphors used to describe ice and icicles are intended to show changes in the state of water, its transformation into a solid substance and its acquisition of properties corresponding to this state. Water may ring, crack, burst from frost, or shine when it is frozen:

“The ice on the Neva turned black and cracked” (“Taras Shevchenko”);

“Occasionally the ice in the bay burst from frost” (“Northern Tale”);

“The icicles sparkled and rang. Prickly ice roses bloomed on the portholes” (“Northern Tale”).

As we see, metaphors are formed mainly on the basis of predicate (verbal) vocabulary. The metaphors “the ice turned black and cracked”, “the ice burst” reflect natural processes, their irreversibility, and regularity.

The element of air is mentioned in many of Paustovsky’s works. The most frequently used metaphors are “air flowed”, “air penetrated”, “air burst”, reflecting the movement of the air element, the movement of air masses. These metaphors are formed on the basis of verbs.

The abundance of metaphors in descriptive fragments of the natural elements of water and air is caused by the author’s task of representing the dynamics of these natural objects.

The most striking metaphor of movement is in the description of the wind, and here the meaning of movement is directed towards an object and acquires a semantic connotation of influence (the object of influence is explicated by the accusative case form of the noun in the structure of the predicate):

“The wind blew from the steppes and spun dry nut leaves through the puddles” (“Lost Day”);

“The wind was noisy, shaking bare trees on the street outside the window” (“Fugitive Encounters”);

“The wind flapped the black overcoats” (“Orest Kiprensky”).

Sound metaphors are often used to depict the wind: the wind “roars”, “buzzes”, “whistles”. These auditory signs convey a shade of mystery, enigma, and mystical elements. The reader feels tension and excitement. In “The Northern Tale”, the wind appears, in our opinion, as one of the heroes, increasing the despair and tension of the characters:

“The wind blew across Anna’s dress and froze her face”;

“Only the wind hummed tightly in the sails, and one could hear the invisible surf splashing against the shores”;

“When Anna and Bestuzhev came down from the porch, the south wind was humming over Marienhamn, growing fiercer and louder with every minute.”

The description of the wind in the story “Telegram” also emphasizes the tension, the experiences experienced by the heroine Katerina Petrovna and her daughter Nastya. They were never able to meet before Katerina Petrovna’s death. Life has separated them, and only the wind, as a witness to misfortune, “buzzes,” “knocks down leaves,” “howls”:

“Only the wind whistled outside the windows in the bare branches, knocking down the last leaves.”

In many works by K. G. Paustovsky, the wind is the master who influences the lives and destinies of people, enhances their experiences, sharpens their feelings:

“The west wind was in charge” (“Meshcherskaya side”);

“The dawn was lost in the impenetrable voids of the night, where an inhospitable wind ruled” (“Isaac Levitan”);

“And hot winds walked across those plains” (“Road Book”).

In these examples, the structure of the metaphor is determined by verbs that, in their primary lexical meaning, correlate with human activity.

Let's consider ways to metaphorically represent other weather phenomena.

The author draws the image of a thunderstorm very expressively, trying to convey to the reader the strength and dynamics that he sees in this phenomenon. The discourse also has a touch of animation, with the thunderstorm being depicted from one of two angles:

From a dynamic perspective:

“The thunderstorm dragged roaring smoke over the ground and rejoiced, overwhelming the fields with streams of gray water” (“River Floods”);

“The thunderstorm carried over us to the south, to the Caucasus, fragments of the sky torn to shreds” (ibid.);

From a static perspective:

“The thunderstorm stood still and did not want to leave” (“Mshary”).

The dynamic perspective of the image of a thunderstorm is often built into the structure of discourse as an expanded metaphor, a chain of metaphorical images.

“The cloud shook with a running fire, and even thunder grumbled somewhere beyond the very edge of the earth” (“Road Book”);

“...The first thunder muttered across the river” (“Old Apple Tree”);

“Almost every day the sky was covered with thunderstorms, thunder roared...” (“Isaac Levitan”).

As we can see, a typical way of incorporating the image of thunder into the structure of discourse is an auditory metaphor - a verb with the meaning of sound.

Another way of introducing this image into landscape discourse is a metaphor of impact on an object, its transformation, and sometimes destruction (metaphorical model: “actional transitive verb + noun in the accusative case”):

“Thunder shook the earth” (“Homeland of Talents”);

“Thunder split the sky overhead” (“River Floods”).

The discourse depicting lightning takes on a dynamic character:

“Lightning struck the mshars next to us...” (“Mshars”);

“...Lightning, overtaking each other, began to strike the blackened water” (“River Floods”).

The most frequent discourses when depicting lightning seem to be those containing the metaphor of fire (light):

“Lightning did not strike the ground in zigzags, but blazed with a blurry pink light” (“Counter Fire”);

“Thieving lightning scorched the eyes” (“Old Apple Tree”);

“Lightning lit up outside the windows, trembled and went out in the depths of the rustling gardens” (“Northern Tale”) - in this example we can distinguish a metaphorical series, including the verbs “light up” and “go out” that are antonymous in meaning.

A very beautiful, attractive and at the same time slightly terrifying phenomenon is shown by K. G. Paustovsky in his works.

“It rained all day…” (“Breeze”);

“The rain has passed” (“Northern Tale”).

But the most interesting are the figurative metaphors:

“Then suddenly the rain began to fall and began to fall from the sky in quick, small drops” (“Fireweed”).

We find figurative metaphors in the landscape discourses of K. G. Paustovsky and in the depiction of fog. It is animated by the author, moves, interacts with other weather phenomena:

“The fog moved. It was carried in pieces over the river” (“Rosehip”);

“The fog covered the city up to its neck” (“Basket with fir cones”);

“The fog rustles in the garden” (“My House”).

The most typical metaphors are animating metaphors and perceptual metaphors.

In the structure of the discourse we find an associative connection between fog and the image of water:

“The fog was thickening, flowing down from the yellowing willows in large drops” (“Old Man in a Worn Overcoat”);

“The fogs soaked through the yellow leaves, and under the weight of cold and now unnecessary moisture, the leaves tore off the branches and fell into the grass and onto the granite pavements” (“Northern Tale”).

Since the artistic picture of the world is a single whole, images of weather phenomena do not exist in isolation from each other, they are organically intertwined.

In depicting the image of snow, two types of metaphors are also productive: a perceptual metaphor and an animation metaphor, compare:

“The snow shone dimly through the windows” (“Snow”) - a verbal metaphor with the meaning of visual perception is formed on the basis of the verb “shine”, which includes in its syntactic structure a characteristic characteristic expressed by the adverb “dimly”.

“The falling snow stopped and hung in the air to listen to the ringing that flowed in streams from the house” (“Basket with fir cones”) - the snow becomes animated, two homogeneous predicates and an infinitive in the subordinate part are strung together in a metaphorical chain.

So, in depicting images of elements and weather phenomena, verbal metaphors play a large role, among which metaphors of animation and perceptual metaphors predominate. A successful selection of single metaphors and metaphorical chains conveys to the reader a sense of the dynamics, strength, and unbridled nature of nature. The natural beauty of these phenomena is enhanced by metaphorical epithets. In each phenomenon described, the author strives to find only its inherent characteristics.