Alexander Grin
SCARLET SAILS
A miraculous tale
A u t h o r
presents and dedicates it to Nina Nickolayevna Grin
Petersburg, November 23, 1922
I
THE PREDICTION
Longren, a sailor from the Orion, a strong three hundred-ton brig, on which he had been serving for ten years and to which he was attached more than a son to his own mother, had to leave the service at last.
It happened this way. On one of his rare home-comings he did not see, as he used to do yet from a distance, his wife Mary standing on the threshold of the house, throwing up her arms and then running up to him, until she was out of breath. Instead of her there was an anxious woman, their neighbour, standing beside the cot, a new thing in the little Longren’s house.
“I have been nursing her for three months, old man,” she said. “Look at your daughter.”
Growing numb Longren bent forward and saw an eight-month-old creature gazing at his long beard with concentration. Then he sat down, dropped his eyes and began to twirl his moustache. The moustache was wet as if from rain.
“When did Mary die?” he asked.
The woman told a sad story, interrupting herself every now and then to coo to the baby and to assure him that Mary was in paradise. As soon as Longren learnt the details, paradise seemed to be not much more illuminated than a woodshed to him. And he thought, that the light of an ordinary lamp, were they all three together then, would be an irreplaceable delight for the woman who had gone to the unknown land.
About three months ago the household of the young mother was quite in a deplorable state. A good half of the money left by Longren had been spent for the cure after her difficult birth and for the care of the new-born baby. Finally the loss of a not great but vital sum forced Mary to ask Menners to lend her some money. Menners kept a tavern and a shop and was considered a well-to-do man.
Mary went to see him at six o’clock in the evening. At about seven the woman, who was telling the story, met her on the way to Liss. Tear-stained and upset Mary said, that she was going to town to pawn the wedding-ring. She added, that Menners had agreed to lend her money but demanded love for that. Mary had left empty-handed.
“We’ve got not a bit of food in the house,” she told the neighbour. “I shall go to town, so my girlie and I will get by somehow till my husband returns.”
The evening was cold and windy. In vain did the neighbour try to persuade the young woman not to walk to Liss by night.
“You’ll be sopping wet, Mary. It’s drizzling and it looks as if the wind is going to bring heavy shower.”
It was good three hours of fast walk from the seaside village to the town and back, but Mary refused to follow the woman’s advice.
“It’s enough of being a burden to all of you,” she said. “There’s hardly a family left from whom I haven’t borrowed bread, tea or flour as it is. I’ll pawn the ringlet and that’s that.”
She walked to town, came back and the next day took to her bed in fever and delirium. The bad weather and the evening drizzle had struck her down with double pneumonia. So the town doctor, called by the kind-hearted neighbour, said. A week later there was only a blank space left on Longren’s double bed. And so the neighbour moved to his house to nurse and feed the baby girl. It was not too much trouble for a lonely widow like her. Anyway, she added, she would be bored without such a silly little thing.
Longren went to town, got his discharge, said farewell to his shipmates and began to bring up little Asoule. The widow had stayed at the sailor’s place, being like a mother to the little orphan, until the girl learnt to walk steadily. But as soon as Asoule stopped falling down every time when she raised her little foot across the threshold, Longren announced decidedly, that from then onwards he would do everything for the girl himself. Having thanked the widow for her active sympathy, he settled down to the lonely life of a widower concentrating all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories upon the little one.
Ten years of his wandering life had left very little money in his hands. He began to work. Soon his toys appeared in the town shops. They were skilfully made little models of boats, cutters, one-decked and two-decked sailers, cruisers and steamers. In a word it was all that he knew perfectly well. That kind of work replaced for him, partly at least, the roaring life of a seaport and the picturesque labour of navigation. In that way Longren earned enough to live within the limits of moderate expenses. Being uncommunicative by nature, he became even more reserved and unsociable after his wife’s death. On high days and holidays he could be seen in the tavern. He never took a seat, but drank his glass of vodka hurriedly at the bar and went away, shortly dropping right and left “yes”, “no”, “hello”, “bye” and “so-so” in reply to all accosts and nods of the neighbours. He did not stand guests and showed them out carefully not by force, but with such hints and invented circumstances, that nothing else was left for the visitor, but to make up an excuse, that did not let him stay longer.
As for him he did not visit anybody either. So a cold estrangement fell upon him and his fellow-villagers. And were Longren’s work – toys – more dependent of the village life, he would have to experience the consequences of such relations more perceptibly. He bought up all goods and food in town (Menners could not boast of even a box of matches bought by Longren in his shop). He also did all the housework and studied patiently the difficult art of raising a little girl, so unusual for a man.
Asoule was already five years old. Her father began to smile more and more softly, when he looked at her nervous, gentle face, while sitting on his lap she was working at the mystery of his buttonned waistcoat, or singing sailor songs, those wild howling verses, in an amusing way. Reproduced in a childish voice and not always with “r”-sound, those songs made an impression of a dancing bear with a blue ribbon round its neck. At that very time one incident took place and its shadow, which cast on the father, spread to the daughter too.
It was early spring, as severe as winter, but in a different way. For about three weeks the cutting offshore north wind pressed itself to the cold earth.
The fishing boats pulled out to the shore formed a long row of dark keels, which resembled spines of enormous fish, on the white sand. Nobody had the courage to go out fishing in the weather like that. On the only street of the hamlet one could hardly see a single person out of doors. The cold whirlwind, rushing from the coastal hills to the empty horizon, turned “the open air” into a severe torment. All the chimneys of Kaperna smoked from morning till night and the wind blew about the scraps of smoke down the steep roofs.
But those days of the north wind enticed Longren from his warm little house more often than the sun did, when in fine weather it covered the sea and Kaperna with its veils of aerial gold. Longren used to go out on a little jetty planked over the long rows of piles. There, at the very end of that wooden pier, he would smoke his pipe for a long time while the wind was blowing about the smoke. He watched the bottom of the sea, exposed by the shore, steam with grey foam hardly keeping up with the rollers. Their thundering run towards the black stormy horizon filled the space with herds of fantastic long-maned creatures rushing in an unbridled fierce despair to some remote consolation. The moans and groans, the howling cannonade of huge flights of water and the rushes of wind, lashing the vicinity, which seemed to be visible because of the might of its straight run, – all that had a deadening and deafening effect on Longren’s exhausted soul. Reducing the grief to a vague sadness it was equivalent to the effect of a sound sleep.
On one of that sort of days Hin, a twelve-year son of Menners, noticed his father’s boat knocking and breaking its sides against the piles under the planked jetty. He went to tell his father about that. The storm had begun not long before. Menners had forgotten to take the boat out onto the beach. He made for the waterside at once, where he saw Longren standing back to him and smoking at the end of the pier. On the shore there was nobody else except for the two of them. Menners walked along till the middle of the jetty, came down to the water, which was lapping furiously, and untied the sheet. Standing in the boat he began to make his way to the shore by catching at the piles. He had not taken oars, and the very moment he lost his balance and missed the next pile a strong blow of wind tossed the head of the boat from the jetty towards the open sea. Then, even if he streched out full length, Menners could not reach the nearest pile. The wind and the waves rocked the boat and carried it out into the disastrous wide open space. Having realized the situation Menners was about to jump into the water to swim towards the shore. But his decision was too late, as the boat was already spinning not far from the end of the pier, where the considerable depth of the water and the fury of the rollers promised a certain death. There were no more than ten sazhens* of saving space between Longren and Menners, who was being carried away into the stormy distance. Within easy reach of Longren’s hand there was a rolled rope with a weight at one of its ends. In heavy weather the rope used to be thrown from the jetty as a mooring line.
“Longren!” cried out Menners frightened to death. “Why are you standing as if rooted to the ground? See, I am being taken away! Throw me the mooring line!”
Longren kept his silence, looking coolly at Menners, who was dashing around the boat. Only his pipe began to smoke more heavily. He paused a little and took it out of his mouth to see better what was going on.
“Longren!” Menners was calling. “You hear me, don’t you? I am perishing! Save me!”
But Longren did not say a word to him. He seemed not to hear the howl of despair. He did not even shift from one foot to the other until the boat had been carried away so far that the screams of Menners hardly reached him. Menners sobbed in horror, entreated the sailor to run to fishermen and call for help, promised money, threatened and spouted curses. But Longren only came closer to the very edge of the pier not to lose sight of the boat, rushing about and jumping on the waves, right away.
“Longren!” he heard the muffled scream, as if listening indoors to someone shouting on the roof. “Save me!”
Then Longren took a deep breath, so that not a word might get lost in the wind, and shouted: “She begged you just as you are begging now! Think about that while you are still alive, Menners, and don’t ever forget!”
Then the screams stopped and Longren went home. Asoule woke up and saw her father sitting deep in thought before the fading oil lamp. When he heard the little girl calling him, he came up to her, kissed her warmly and tucked up the blanket which had been all on one side.
“Sleep, sweetheart,” he said. “Morning is a long way off.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve made a black toy, Asoule. Go back to sleep!”
The next day all the inhabitants of Kaperna could talk about was lost Menners. On the sixth day he was brought home, dying and spiteful. The story he told spread quickly all over the neighbouring hamlets. Menners had been carried along till night. He was hurt badly bumping against the sides and the bottom of the boat, while it struggled violently through the fierce waves, which tirelessly threatened to throw the panic-stricken shopkeeper out into the sea. The steamship Lucretia on its way to Kasset picked him up. Bad cold and the shock of horror finished the days of Menners. He lasted a little less than forty-eight hours, calling down on Longren all possible disasters that could ever take place on the earth or in imagination. Menners’ story of the sailor watching him perishing and not giving a helping hand, staggered the inhabitants of Kaperna. Heavy breathing and moaning of the dying man made it even more expressive. To say nothing of the fact, that only few of them were able to keep in mind even a more painful insult, than the one Longren had taken, and to mourn as deeply as he mourned over Mary for the rest of his life, – they considered Longren’s silence the most disgusting, incomprehensible and staggering thing. Keeping silence till his last words sent after Menners, Longren had been standing still. He had been standing motionless, strict and quiet like a judge, displaying his profound contempt to Menners. There had been something more than hatred in his silence and everybody felt it. If he had been shouting, expressing his exultation at the sight of Menners’ despair with getures, or fussy malicious joy, or something of that kind, the fishermen would have understood him. But he had acted differently, not as they used to act. He had acted imposingly and incomprehensibly, thus thinking of himself more highly than of the others. In a word he had done something that could not be forgiven. Nobody nodded to him, or shook hands with him, or cast a glance of recognition and greeting in his direction any more. He was put aside from the village affairs quite forever. Local boys, when they caught sight of him, would call after him: “Longren drowned Menners!” He ignored that. Just as he seemed not to even notice, that in the tavern or on the shore, among the boats, the fishermen fell silent in his presence and stepped aside from him as if he was plague-srticken. The Menners incident completed the estrangement that had already existed before. Having become total it caused a strong mutual hatred and its shadow cast on Asoule too.
The little girl grew up without playmates. Two or three tens of the children of her age, who were as imitative as all children in the world, struck little Asoule out of the sphere of their protection and interest once and for all. They lived in Kaperna, which was saturated with gross domestic principles based on an unshakeable authority of mother and father, like a sponge saturated with water. To be sure, it happened gradually. As a result of the adults’ reprimands and peremptory shouts it assumed a character of a strict prohibition. And then, being intensified with gossip and false rumours, it grew into a fear of the sailor’s house in the children’s minds.
Besides, Longren’s secluded way of life loosed a hysterical tongue of gossip. It was rumoured that the sailor had murdered someone somewhere, and that was why he was not accepted for the marine service any more. And he was dismal and unsociable, they said, because “he was racked with pangs of a criminal conscience”. The local children turned Asoule out if she approached them when they were playing. They threw dirt at her and teased her by saying that her father ate human flesh and made false money. One by one, her naive attempts to make friends ended in bitter tears, bruises, scratches and other demonstrations of the public opinion. At last she ceased to take offence, but sometimes still asked her father: “Tell me, why don’t they like us?”
“Eh, Asoule,” Longren used to say, “are they really able to like anybody? One should be able to love, and that’s just what they can’t do.”
“And what is it – to be able?”
“That’s it!” – He would take the little girl in his arms and warmly kiss her sad eyes screwed in tender pleasure.
Asoule’s favourite amusement would come about in the evenings or on holidays. Then, having put his tins of paste, his tools and his unfinished work aside, her father took off his apron and sat down to take a short rest with a pipe between his teeth. She would get on his lap and, fidgetting in the careful circle of her father’s arm, touch the different parts of the toys, asking him questions about their purpose. That was how a peculiar fantastic lecture about life and people began. It was a lecture in which the principal part was assigned to wonderful, striking and extraordinary events. It resulted from Longren’s former way of life, the way he treated chances and fortune in general. Telling the names of ropes, sails and articles of marine utility to the girl, Longren would get inspired by his own story little by little. He would pass on from the explanations to the different episodes, where a windlass, or a steering wheel, or a mast, or a certain kind of a boat, etc. played its fateful part. From those particular illustrations he would pass on to the broad pictures of sea wanderings, interspersing superstitions with reality and reality with images of his own fantasy. There came a tiger cat, the herald of a shipwreck; a flying fish that could talk (to disobey its orders meant to loose the course); the Flying Dutchman and its violent crew; omens, ghosts, mermaids and pirates – in a word, all the cock-and-bull stories that helped a seaman to while away his spare time in calm or in his favourite tavern. Longren would also tell of shipwrecked survivors, of people who had become wild and forgotten how to speak, of mysterious hidden treasures, of rebellions of convicts and many other things. The little girl listened to all that more attentively than people might have first listened to Columbus when he told them of a new continent. “Come on, go on telling,” Asoule would beg, when Longren became lost in thought and fell silent, and fall asleep on his breast with her head full of wonderful dreams.
The appearance of a salesman of the town toyshop, where Longren’s work was bought willingly, also served as a big and always material pleasure for her. In order to gain her father’s favour and to get a reduction of some extra money, the salesman used to bring a couple of apples, a sweet pasty or a handful of nuts for the little girl. As a rule Longren asked the real price because of his dislike for bargaining while the shopman tried to reduce it.
“Well, really!” Longren would say, “I’ve spent the whole week making this boat.” – The boat was of five vershoks**. – “Look, what a strength, what a draught, what a durability, eh? This boat will carry fifteen people rain or shine, wet or fine.”
It all ended, when at the sight of the little girl busying herself quietly and murmuring over her apple Longren lost his determination and intention of arguing. He took off the price while the salesman stuffed his basket with magnificent, strongly constructed toys and went away laughing in his sleeve.
Longren did all the housework himself: he chopped wood, fetched water, stoked the stove, cooked, washed and ironed linen. Besides all that he managed to earn his living. When Asoule was eight years of age, her father taught her to read and to write. From time to time he began to take her to town with him and then even to sent her alone, if there was a need to borrow some money in the shop or to bring the new goods. It happened not often, though Liss lay only four versts*** from Kaperna. But the road towards it went through the forest, and there were many things, that might frighten a child in a forest, besides a physical danger. Though the latter was certainly hard to be come across so close to the town, it would still be advisable to have it in mind. So Longren let her go to town only in the mornings, when the weather was fine and the thicket, that grew all along the road, was filled with a sunlight shower, flowers and peace, so that phantoms of imagination could not threaten impressive Asoule.
Once, about half-way to town, the little girl sat down by the road for a while to eat a piece of pie put into her basket for lunch. Having a bite, she was looking through the toys. Two or three of them were found to be new to her: Longren had made them the night before. One of those novelties was a miniature racing yacht. That white little ship wore scarlet sails made of scraps of silk which Longren usually used to glue over the walls of steamship cabins in the toys of a rich buyer. In that case, having made the yacht, he seemed to have found no suitable material for the sails and had used what he had – rags of the scarlet silk. Asoule was delighted. The flaming, lively colour burnt so brightly in her hands as though she held fire. The road there was crossed by a brook with a foot-bridge made of poles across it. The brook stretched to the forest in both directions. “If I put it in the water to sail a little,” Asoule turned over in her mind, “it won’t let water through, will it? I can wipe it dry then.” Having got into the forest beyond the bridge with the stream of the brook, the little girl put the ship that fascinated her so much, carefully into the water close to the bank. The scarlet reflection of the sails flashed at once in the transparent water. The light piercing through the cloth covered the white stones of the brook bed with its trembling rose-coloured radiation.
“Where have you come from, captain?” Asoule asked an imaginary person with an air of importance, and then said answering to herself: “I’ve come... I’ve come... I’ve come from China. – And what have you brought? – What I’ve brought I won’t tell you. – So that’s the way you are talking! Well, then I’ll put you back in the basket.”
The captain was already about to answer humbly that he had been joking and that he was ready to show an elephant, but suddenly the gentle wave ran off from the bank and turned the head of the yacht towards the middle of the brook. And like a real one it pushed off from the bank at full speed and went smoothly downstream. The scale of visible things changed in a moment for the little girl. The brook seemed to be a vast river while the yacht seemed to be a big distant ship. Startled and completely nonplussed, she reached her arms towards it, nearly falling into the water. “The captain got frightened,” she thought and ran after the toy that was floating away, in hope that somewhere it would be cast up on the bank. Hurrying with her basket, which was not heavy but hindered her a lot, Asoule kept on saying: “Oh, goodness! That’s a bad luck!..” She tried to keep in sight the beautiful triangle of the sails flying smoothly away. She stumbled, fell and ran again every now and then.
Asoule had never been so deep in the forest. Absorbed in her impatient desire to catch the toy, she could not look around. There were quite many obstacles occupying her attention along the bank, where she was bustling about. Mossy trunks of fallen trees, pits, high ferns, dog-rose, jasmine and hazel bushes blocked her way at every step. Getting over them she was becoming exhausted little by little. She stopped more and more often to take breath or to whisk sticky cobwebs off her face. When thickets of sedges and reeds began to be come across in the broader parts, Asoule nearly lost sight of the scarlet glitter of the sails. But when she ran round the bend of the flow, she saw them again, as they were floating sedately and steadily away. Once she looked around and the great bulk of the forest with its diversity of colours passing from the smoky columns of light in the leafage to the dark rifts in the thick dusk struck the little girl deeply. For a moment she got frightened but then thought of the toy again. “O-oh-h-h,” she breathed out deeply several times and ran as fast as she could.
About an hour had passed in that unsuccessful and uneasy pursuit when Asoule saw with astonishment and relief that the trees parted widely in front of her to reveal a dark blue expanse of the sea, clouds and the brink of a yellow sandy bluff onto which she ran out, nearly being ready to drop with fatigue. There was the mouth of the brook. Spreading not wide and not deep, so that one could see the stones through its streaming blueness, it disappeared in the contrary sea-waves. From the low bluff, dug up with roots, Asoule saw a man sitting by the brook on a flat big stone with his back to her. He held the yacht that had run away, in his hands and examined it thoroughly with a curiosity of an elephant that had caught a butterfly. Partly calmed down with the fact that the toy was safe, Asoule scrambled down the bluff. She came close to the stranger and fixed her exploring gaze on him while waiting for him to raise his head. But the unknown man was so absorbed in his contemplation of the forest surprise that the little girl had time to examine him from head to foot and to determine that she had never seen anybody like that stranger before.
In front of her there was none other than Eglle, a well-known wandering collector of folk-songs, legends, traditions and tales. His silver curls fell in folds from under his straw hat. His grey blouse tucked into dark blue trousers together with his top-boots gave him the semblance of a hunter. A white collar, a necktie, a belt covered with silver badges, a cane and a bag with its brand-new little nickel lock indicated a townsman. His face – if that nose, those lips and eyes peeping out of a radial beard growing luxuriantly and a fluffy moustache horned up fiercely could be called a face – could seem listless and insipid if it were not for his eyes. They were grey like sand and shining like pure steel and the way they looked was daring and powerful.
“Give it back to me now,” the girl said timidly. “You’ve played with it enough already. How did you manage to catch it?”
Eglle raised his head and dropped the yacht – Asoule’s anxious voice rang too unexpectedly. The old man examined her for about a minute, smiling and passing his beard through the hollow of his large sinewy hand. The printed cotton frock faded from many washings hardly reached the knees of the girl’s slim, sunburnt legs. Her dark thick hair tied up in a lace kerchief had come out over her shoulders. Every feature of Asoule was expressively light and clear like the flight of a swallow. Her dark eyes with a tinge of a sad question in them seemed slightly older than the rest of her face. Its irregular delicate oval was covered with charming sunburn so characteristic of a healthy white skin. Her half open tiny mouth shone with a gentle smile.
“I swear by the Brothers Grimm, Aesop and Andersen,” Eglle said shifting his gaze from the girl to the yacht and back, “this is something special. Listen, you, little weed! Is it your thing?”
“Yes, I have been running after it all the way down the brook. I thought I would die. Was it it right here?”
“It was right by my feet. By reason of a shipwreck I, as a land pirate, can present this prize to you. The yacht left by the crew was cast up on the sand with the roller of three vershoks between my left heel and the extremity of my walking-stick.” He struck his cane on the ground. “What is your name, little one?”
“Asoule,” the girl replied putting the toy Eglle handed her back into the basket.
“Good,” the old man went on in his obscure manner without taking his eyes off her and there was a gleaming grin of friendly humour deep inside them. “Strictly speaking I should not have asked you about your name. It’s nice that it turned to be so strange, so monotonous and tuneful like the whizz of an arrow or the sound of a sea shell. What would I have done had you one of those euphonic but unendurably ordinary names so alien to the Beautiful Uncertainty? All the more I don’t wish to know who you are, who your parents are, or how you live. Why disturb fascination? Sitting on this stone I was engaged in the comparative study of Finnish and Japanese subjects... when all at once the brook washed this yacht ashore and then you made your appearance... Just as you are. I am a poet at heart, my dear, though I’ve never written anything of my own. What have you got in your basket?”
“Little boats,” said Asoule shaking her basket. “There is a steamer and besides three little houses with flags, you know, where soldiers live.”
“Excellent! You were sent to sell them. On the way you set to play. You let the yacht sail a little and it ran away. Am I right?”
“Have you seen it?” Asoule asked doubtfully, trying to recollect whether she had not told him about it herself. “Did anybody tell you? Or did you guess?”
“I knew it.”
“And how did you know?”
“Because I am the greatest magician.”
Asoule was embarrassed. Her nervous state, when she heard those words of Eglle, overstepped the bounds of fright. The deserted sea coast, the silence everywhere, her wearisome pursuit of the yacht, the obscure words of the old man with flashing eyes, his majestic beard and hair began to create a confusion of the supernatural and reality in the little girl’s imagination. If Eglle made a face or gave a shout, the girl would rush away bursting into tears and growing faint from fright. But having noticed her wide-open eyes Eglle made an abrupt volte.
“You should not be afraid of me,” he said seriously. “On the contrary, I’d like to have a heart-to-heart talk with you.” Only then he made out, what his impression had noted so intently in the face of the little girl. “It’s an involuntary expectation of the beautiful, of a blissful fate,” he thought to himself. “Ah, why am I not a writer? What a nice subject!”
“Now then,” Eglle went on trying to round off the uncommon situation. (His inclination to mythicizing, a result of his usual work, was stronger than his prudence in dropping seeds of a big dream on the unknown soil.) “Now then, Asoule, listen to me carefully. I’ve been in the village where you are probably going from. In a word, I’ve been in Kaperna. I like tales and songs and I spent the whole day in that village in hope to hear something nobody had heard before. But they tell no tales in your village. They sing no songs. And if they tell or sing any, then, you know, these are those stories about cunning peasants and soldiers, with their usual praising of trickery. These are those short quatrains, dirty like unwashed feet and coarse like tummy-rumbling, with an awful tune... Wait a bit, I’ve got off the point. I shall begin again.”
He thought for a while and went on that way: “I don’t know how many years will go by, only a certain tale will blossom out in Kaperna to be memorable for a long time. You will grow up, Asoule. One morning, far in the sea, a scarlet sail will flash in the sun. A white ship with its great shining bulk of scarlet sails will move, cleaving the waves, straight to you. This wonderful ship will sail quietly without shouts or shots. Many people will gather on the shore, wondering and exclaiming. And you will be there. The ship will come grandly close to the very shore to the strains of beautiful music. A quick boat, all decorated with carpets, gilt and flowers, will sail from it. “Why have you come? Whom are you looking for?” the people on the shore will inquire. Then you will see a brave and handsome prince. He will stand in the boat, stretching out his arms towards you. “Hello, Asoule!” he will say. “A great distance away from here I saw you in my dream and I’ve come to take you away to my kingdom for ever. There you will live with me in a deep rose valley. You will have everything you ever want. We shall live together in such harmony and joy that your soul will never know tears or sorrow.” He will take you into his boat and bring you to the ship, and you will leave for ever for the splendid land where the sun will rise and the stars will descend from the sky to welcome you.”
“Is all this for me?” the little girl asked in a low voice. Her serious eyes cheered up and brightened with trust. To be sure, if the magician were dangerous he would not talk like that. She came up closer.
“May it have already come – the ship?..”
“Not that soon,” Eglle returned. “Firstly, as I’ve said, you have to grow up. Then... What’s the use of talking? It will happen and that’s that. What would you do then?”
“Me?” she looked into her basket but seemed to find nothing there that could serve as an impressive compensation. “I would love him,” she said hurriedly and added not quite resolutely, “if he doesn’t fight.”
“No, he won’t fight,” the magician said giving an enigmatic wink at her. “He won’t, I promise. Keep going, girlie, and don’t forget what I’ve told you between two drinks of aromatic vodka and reflections on the songs of convicts. Keep going. Peace attend your fluffy-haired head!”
Longren was working in his small kitchen-garden, digging round the potato plants. When he raised his head he saw Asoule running headlong towards him with a joyful and impatient face.
“Well...” she said, making efforts to recover her breath, and caught hold of her father’s apron with her both hands. “Listen to what I’ve got to tell you... There is a magician sitting there on the shore a long way off...”
She began with the magician and his interesting prediction. The feverish haste of thoughts made it difficult for her to reproduce the events in succession. Further came the depiction of the magician’s appearance and, in the opposite order, the story of her pursuit of the yacht she had missed.
Longren listened to the little girl without smiling or interrupting her. By the time she finished, his imagination had quickly drawn an unknown old man with a bottle of aromatic vodka in one hand and the toy in the other. He averted his face, but then recalled, that in remarkable cases of a child’s life one should be serious and surprised. He nodded his head solemnly, saying: “Well, well... Everything indicates that it was none other than a magician. I wish I could have a look at him... But don’t turn aside, when you go there again. You may easily get lost in the forest.”
Having thrown aside his spade, he sat by the low wattle-fence and put the little girl on his lap. Being awfully tired she still tried to add one or two details to her story, but the heat, excitement and fatigue made her sleepy. She could hardly keep her eyes open. She bent her head on her father’s strong shoulder. One more instant – and she would be carried away to the land of dreams, when suddenly, alarmed with a sudden doubt, Asoule sat straight with her eyes closed. Setting her little fists against Longren’s breast she asked him loudly: “What do you think, will the magician’s ship come for me or not?”
“It will,” the sailor answered calmly. “Since you’ve been told so, everything is true.”
“She will grow up and forget it,” he thought. “But for the time being... you shouldn’t have a toy like that taken from you. You know, in future you’ll have to see not scarlet but many dirty and predatory sails, smart and white – from a distance, torn and impertinent – close by. A passer-by had a joke with my little girl. What of that?! It’s a good joke! It’s not a bad one! See, you are quite overcome by sleep: you’ve spent half a day in the thick of the forest. And as for scarlet sails think like me: there will be scarlet sails for you.”
Asoule was sleeping. Having got his pipe with his free hand Longren lit it up, and the wind carried the smoke through the wattle into the bush outside the kitchen-garden. By the bush there was a young beggar sitting with his back to the fence and chewing a pie. The talk between father and daughter put him in a cheerful mood and the smell of a good tobacco disposed him to get some.
“Give some tobacco to the poor man, master,” he said through the wattle. “My tobacco as against yours is not tobacco, but poison, if one may put it that way.”
“I should give you some,” Longren answered in an undertone, “but my tobacco is in the other pocket. I don’t like to wake up my daughter, you see?”
“So what? She’ll wake up and go back to sleep again while a passer-by would just have a smoke.”
“Well,” Longren returned, “you’ve still got some tobacco whereas the child is tired. You may call later, if you want.”
The beggar spat contemptuously, hitched his bag up to the stick and said sarcastically: “She is a princess, I see! You’ve knocked those overseas ships into her head, you know! Well, really, you’re a queer fish! – A master like you!”
“Look here,” Longren whispered. “Perhaps I shall wake her up but only in order to give you a good dressing-down. Get out!”
Half an hour later the beggar was sitting in the tavern at table with a dozen fishermen. Behind them, pulling their husband’s sleeves and taking glasses of vodka off the table over their shoulders, for themselves of course, every now and then, there were tall and muscular women with bushy brows and arms as round as cobble-stones. The beggar boiling with resentment was telling his story: “And he didn’t give me tobacco. “You’ll be of the full legal age,” he says, “and then,” he says, “there’ll be a special red ship... for you, since your lot is to marry a prince. So,” he says, “just trust that magician.” Then I say: “Come on, wake her up to get the tobacco.” So he ran after me half-way, you see.”
“Who? What? What is he talking about?” there were curious women’s voices.
The fishermen, hardly turning their heads, made them understand, curling their lips: “Longren and his daughter have run wild and perhaps even have gone off their heads. Here the man is telling. A sorcerer must have very likely visited them. They’re waiting – old girls, you’d better keep your eyes open! – for a foreign prince and, what is more, on a ship with red sails!”
Three days later, coming back from the town shop, Asoule heard for the first time: “Hey you, gallows-bird! Asoule! Just look over there! There are the red sails!”
The little girl started and involuntarily cast her eyes from under her hand on the wide spread of the sea. Then she turned in the direction of the exclamations. There was a small group of children twenty steps away from her. They made faces putting out their tongues at her. The girl sighed and ran home.
*Sazhen – old Russian measure of length, 7 feet. (Translator’s note.)
**Vershok – old Russian measure of length, 1 ; inches. (Translator’s note.)
***Verst – old Russian measure of length, 3500 feet or 1, 06 km. (Translator’s note.)