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In which he served for ten years and to whom he was more attached than another son to his own mother, he had to finally leave this service.

It happened like this. On one of his rare returns home, he did not see, as always from a distance, his wife Mary on the threshold of the house, throwing up her hands and then running towards him until she lost her breath. Instead, an excited neighbor stood by the crib - a new item in Longren's small house.

“I followed her for three months, old man,” she said, “look at your daughter.”

Dead, Longren bent down and saw an eight-month-old creature intently looking at his long beard, then he sat down, looked down and began to twirl his mustache. The mustache was wet, as if from rain.

- When did Mary die? - he asked.

The woman told a sad story, interrupting the story with touching gurgles to the girl and assurances that Mary was in heaven. When Longren found out the details, heaven seemed to him a little brighter than a woodshed, and he thought that the fire of a simple lamp - if all three of them were now together - would be an irreplaceable consolation for a woman who had gone to an unknown country.

Three months ago, the young mother’s economic affairs were very bad. Of the money left by Longren, a good half was spent on treatment after a difficult birth and on caring for the health of the newborn; Finally, the loss of a small but necessary amount for life forced Mary to ask Menners for a loan of money. Menners ran a tavern and a shop and was considered a wealthy man.

Mary went to see him at six o'clock in the evening. At about seven the narrator met her on the road to Liss. Tearful and upset, Mary said that she was going to the city to pawn her engagement ring. She added that Menners agreed to give money, but demanded love for it. Mary achieved nothing.

“We don’t even have a crumb of food in our house,” she told her neighbor. “I’ll go into town, and the girl and I will get by somehow until my husband returns.”

The weather was cold and windy that evening; The narrator tried in vain to persuade the young woman not to go to Liss at nightfall. “You’ll get wet, Mary, it’s drizzling, and the wind, no matter what, will bring downpour.”

Back and forth from the seaside village to the city was at least three hours of quick walking, but Mary did not listen to the narrator’s advice. “It’s enough for me to prick your eyes,” she said, “and there is almost not a single family where I would not borrow bread, tea or flour. I’ll pawn the ring and it’s over.” She went, returned, and the next day fell ill with fever and delirium; bad weather and evening drizzle struck her with double pneumonia, as the city doctor said, caused by the kind-hearted narrator. A week later, there was an empty space on Longren’s double bed, and a neighbor moved into his house to nurse and feed the girl. It was not difficult for her, a lonely widow.

“Besides,” she added, “it’s boring without such a fool.”

Longren went to the city, took payment, said goodbye to his comrades and began to raise little Assol. Until the girl learned to walk firmly, the widow lived with the sailor, replacing the orphan’s mother, but as soon as Assol stopped falling, lifting her leg over the threshold, Longren decisively announced that now he himself would do everything for the girl, and, thanking the widow for her active sympathy, lived the lonely life of a widower, focusing all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories on a small creature.

Ten years of wandering life left very little money in his hands. He started working. Soon his toys appeared in city stores - skillfully made small models of boats, cutters, single- and double-decker sailing ships, cruisers, steamships - in a word, what he knew intimately, which, due to the nature of the work, partly replaced for him the roar of port life and painting work swimming. In this way, Longren obtained enough to live within the limits of moderate economy. Unsociable by nature, after the death of his wife he became even more withdrawn and unsociable. On holidays, he was sometimes seen in a tavern, but he never sat down, but hurriedly drank a glass of vodka at the counter and left, briefly throwing around: “yes”, “no”, “hello”, “goodbye”, “little by little” - at all the calls and nods from the neighbors. He could not stand guests, quietly sending them away not by force, but with such hints and fictitious circumstances that the visitor had no choice but to invent a reason not to allow him to sit longer.

He himself did not visit anyone either; Thus, a cold alienation lay between him and his fellow countrymen, and if Longren’s work - toys - had been less independent from the affairs of the village, he would have had to more clearly experience the consequences of such a relationship. He bought goods and food supplies in the city - Menners could not even boast of the box of matches that Longren bought from him. He also did all the housework himself and patiently went through the difficult art of raising a girl, which is unusual for a man.

Assol was already five years old, and her father began to smile softer and softer, looking at her nervous, kind face, when, sitting on his lap, she worked on the secret of a buttoned vest or amusingly hummed sailor songs - wild rhymes. When narrated in a child's voice and not always with the letter "r", these songs gave the impression of a dancing bear decorated with a blue ribbon. At this time, an event occurred, the shadow of which, falling on the father, covered the daughter as well.

It was spring, early and harsh, like winter, but of a different kind. For three weeks, a sharp coastal north fell to the cold earth.

Fishing boats pulled ashore formed a long row of dark keels on the white sand, reminiscent of the ridges of huge fish. No one dared to fish in such weather. On the only street of the village it was rare to see a person who had left the house; the cold whirlwind rushing from the coastal hills into the emptiness of the horizon made the open air a severe torture. All the chimneys of Kaperna smoked from morning to evening, spreading smoke over the steep roofs.

But these days of the Nord lured Longren out of his small warm house more often than the sun, which in clear weather covered the sea and Kaperna with blankets of airy gold. Longren went out onto a bridge built along long rows of piles, where, at the very end of this plank pier, he smoked a pipe blown by the wind for a long time, watching how the bottom exposed near the shore smoked with gray foam, barely keeping up with the waves, the thundering run of which towards the black, stormy horizon filled the space with herds of fantastic maned creatures, rushing in unbridled ferocious despair towards distant consolation. Moans and noises, the howling gunfire of huge upsurges of water and, it seemed, a visible stream of wind striping the surroundings - so strong was its smooth run - gave Longren's exhausted soul that dullness, stunnedness, which, reducing grief to vague sadness, is equal in effect to deep sleep .

On one of these days, Menners’s twelve-year-old son, Hin, noticing that his father’s boat was hitting the piles under the bridge, breaking the sides, went and told his father about it. The storm began recently; Menners forgot to take the boat out onto the sand. He immediately went to the water, where he saw Longren standing at the end of the pier, with his back to it, smoking. There was no one else on the shore except the two of them. Menners walked along the bridge to the middle, descended into the madly splashing water and untied the sheet; standing in the boat, he began to make his way to the shore, grabbing the piles with his hands. He did not take the oars, and at that moment, when, staggering, he missed to grab the next pile, a strong blow of the wind threw the bow of the boat from the bridge towards the ocean. Now, even with the entire length of his body, Menners could not reach the nearest pile. The wind and waves, rocking, carried the boat into the disastrous expanse. Realizing the situation, Menners wanted to throw himself into the water to swim to the shore, but his decision was late, since 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 waves promised certain death. Between Longren and Menners, carried away into the stormy distance, there was no more than ten fathoms of still saving distance, since on the walkway at Longren’s hand hung a bundle of rope with a load woven into one end. This rope hung in case of a pier in stormy weather and was thrown from the bridge.

“If Greene had died, leaving us with only one of his prose poems, “Scarlet Sails,” then this would have been enough to place him in the ranks of wonderful writers who disturb the human heart with a call to perfection” (Konstantin Paustovsky).

The genre of this wonderful work by A. Green is defined in different ways: an extravaganza story (as the author himself defines it), a poem. But essentially this is a fairy tale, a touching story invented by the writer with a good ending. But this fairy tale is much deeper than the “wandering plot” about Cinderella, who was found by the prince and made her happy, although this plot is present here. The main idea of the book is that you can do miracles yourself, with your own hands. And then everyone around you will be happy.

Petrograd 1920. Cold, lonely. Exhausted, hungry, homeless, Green had just recovered from typhus. Every night he sought lodgings with random acquaintances and lived on handouts. Then Maxim Gorky helped him: he gave him a job and provided him with a room where there was a table - he could write quietly at it. The fates of these writers are similar: the same change of places, professions in search of income, homelessness, revolutionary work, prison, exile.
The writer himself spoke about this time like this:

A miserable day, like gray ashes,
Above the cooling Neva
Carries with known measure
Drink of the fatal cup.

It was during this difficult time that Green created his brightest work - the extravaganza “Scarlet Sails”, which affirms the strength of the human spirit, which, like the morning sun, is illuminated through and through by the love of life and the belief that a person, in a rush to happiness, is able to accomplish with his own hands miracles.
Anyone who reads Green’s biography before reading “Scarlet Sails” will be struck by the inconsistency: it is not clear “how this gloomy man, without staining, carried through a painful existence the gift of a powerful imagination, purity of feelings and a shy smile” (K. Paustovsky).
Anyone who first reads “Scarlet Sails” and then gets acquainted with the author’s biography will be no less surprised by this discrepancy.

From the biography of Alexander Green

Konstantin Paustovsky wrote that “Green’s life is a merciless verdict on the imperfection of human relations. The environment was terrible, life was unbearable. From childhood, his love for reality was taken away from him. Green survived, but his mistrust of reality remained with him throughout his life. He always tried to get away from her, believing that it was better to live in a fictional reality than the “trash and rubbish” of every day.”
His real name is Alexander Stepanovich Grinevsky.

Childhood

He was born on August 23, 1880 in the family of a participant in the Polish uprising of 1863, exiled to Vyatka (now the city of Kirov), who worked as an accountant in a hospital, drank himself and died in poverty, and the Russian nurse Anna Stepanovna Lepkova. Sasha was the long-awaited first-born, who was even spoiled in infancy.
But when the boy was 14 years old, his mother died of tuberculosis, and his father married for the second time just 4 months later. Soon the child was born. Life, which was very difficult before, has now become unbearably difficult. Green, who lost his mother in adolescence, always lacked feminine, maternal love and affection, and this death greatly influenced his character. Sasha’s relationship with her stepmother did not work out. He often quarreled with her and composed sarcastic poems. They beat him mercilessly. The father, torn between his teenage son and his new wife, was forced to “remove him from himself” and began renting a separate room for the boy. This is how Alexander began his independent life. “I grew up without any education,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Sasha's character was very difficult. He did not have a good relationship with his family, teachers, or classmates. The guys did not like Grinevsky and even came up with the nickname “Green-pancake” for him, the first part of which later became the writer’s pseudonym.

Vyatka real school

He was expelled from a real school for innocent poems about one of the teachers, his father severely beat him and tried to get him into a gymnasium, but the boy had already received a “wolf ticket” and was not accepted anywhere.
He began to earn money on his own: he rewrote roles for actors in a provincial theater, glued paper lanterns for festive illumination in the city - all this was a pittance of earnings.
But this was external life. No one knew about his inner life. Meanwhile, from the age of 8, the boy began to think about sea voyages. Where this comes from in him, who has never seen the sea, is unknown. He retained his thirst for travel until his death.
From an early age, Green had a very accurate imagination. But he belonged to the number of people who did not know how to get settled in life. He always hoped for chance, for unexpected happiness. But for some reason this very happiness always passed him by.
One day, amid the dull and monotonous life of Vyatka, Green saw two navigator students in a white sailor uniform on the river pier. “I stopped, experiencing delight and melancholy,” the writer recalled. Dreams of naval service took possession of him with renewed vigor.
Green had long been a burden to the family, so the father quickly said goodbye to his gloomy son, who had not known his father’s affection or love for a long time.

Meeting with the sea

And here he is in Odessa. Here Greene's first meeting with the sea took place. The dream was achieved, but happiness remained as inaccessible as before, life still remained turned to Green with its wrong side: for a long time he could not find work, he was not hired as a sailor on the ship because of his thin build. One day he was “lucky”: he was taken on a voyage, but was soon put ashore - he could not pay for food.
Another time, the owner of the schooner threw him ashore without paying money. There were still attempts to find a job, but they all ended in vain. I had to return to Vyatka - the damned Vyatka life began again.
Then there were years of fruitless searches for some place in life: Green worked as a bath attendant, a scribe in the office, wrote petitions to the court in taverns for illiterate people...
Again he went to the sea - to Baku. There he drove piles in the port, peeled paint from old ships, loaded timber, put out fires on oil rigs... He died of malaria. Premature old age from life in Baku remained with Green forever.
Then there was the Urals, gold mines, timber rafting. Then service in the infantry regiment in Penza. Here he met the Social Revolutionaries and joined their party. Revolutionary activity began. In 1903, Green was arrested in Sevastopol for this activity and served in prison until 1905. It was in prison that Green began to write.

The beginning of creativity

He came to St. Petersburg with someone else’s passport and here his story was published for the first time. Greene began to be published, and the years of humiliation and hunger very slowly began to become a thing of the past.
Soon he took his first book to his father in Vyatka. He wanted to please the old man, who had already come to terms with the idea that Alexander’s son had turned out to be a worthless tramp. Green's father didn't believe him until he showed him various contracts with publishing houses. This meeting between father and son was the last.
He greeted the revolution of 1917 with joy. In 1920 he was drafted into the Red Army, he served near Pskov and there he became seriously ill with typhus. He was transported to Petrograd and put in the Botkin barracks. Green left the hospital almost disabled. Homeless, half-sick and hungry, with severe dizziness, he wandered around the granite city for days in search of food and warmth. It was a time of queues, rations, stale bread and icy apartments. And at this time, a book about happiness began to appear in his imagination - “Scarlet Sails”,
Green's savior, as we have already said, was Maxim Gorky.
The last years of the writer were spent in Crimea - in Feodosia and in the city of Old Crimea. Green's museums are open in these cities.

In Feodosia, the inside of the museum represents the structure of a ship. The side of the house is decorated with a large relief panel in a romantic style - “Brigantine”.

A. Green Museum in Old Crimea

"Scarlet Sails"

Green designated the genre of his work as FAIRY (translated from French as “fantastic, magical, fabulous spectacle”).
Every person, especially young people, should read this book. In it you will meet two heroes who create happiness with their own hands.

Assol

Assol is the main character. Her mother died when the girl was only 5 months old. There is one very tragic story connected with the death of his mother, which everyone should read about for themselves.
At first, the child was in the care of a neighbor, “but as soon as Assol stopped falling, lifting her leg over the threshold, Longren decisively announced that now he would do everything for the girl himself, and lived the lonely life of a widower, focusing all his thoughts, hopes, love and memories on little creature."
Her father Longren, a former sailor, was always by his daughter’s side and taught her everything, including love. To love is to sacrifice your interests, yourself, for the sake of others.
The girl was disliked by the other children in their village of Kaperne. Longren, calming Assol, who was offended by the children, said: “Eh, Assol, do they know how to love? You have to be able to love, but they can’t do that.”

Gray

At the same time, Gray was growing up in a completely different city. His childhood was completely different from Assol’s childhood - he grew up in a huge old mansion, adored by his parents.
Already in early childhood he showed himself to be a real man with strong convictions.
One day, Betsy's maid scalded her hand with hot broth. Gray, seeing the girl’s suffering, wanted to sympathize with her and asked:
-Are you in a lot of pain?
“Try it, you’ll find out,” she answered.
The boy climbed onto a stool, scooped up a long spoon of hot liquid and splashed it onto the crook of his wrist. Pale as flour, Gray approached Betsy, putting his burning hand in his panties pocket.
“It seems to me that you are in a lot of pain,” he said, keeping silent about his experience. - Let's go, Betsy, to the doctor! So he “experienced someone else’s suffering.”
Later, he broke his porcelain piggy bank and gave the dowry Betsy money “in the name of Robin Hood.”
A painting of the crucifixion of Christ hung in his house. One day Gray took paint and a brush, climbed the ladder and covered the nails with which Christ was nailed in the painting. When asked why he did this, Gray replied: “I can’t have nails sticking out of my hands and blood flowing. I do not want it".
Gray wanted to become a sea captain and became one.
You understand, of course, that Assol and Gray were supposed to meet.

Meeting

Assol grew up to be a very gentle girl who loves life, nature and animals. In her mental structure, she was very different from the rude and down-to-earth inhabitants of Kaperna. Every feature of Assol was expressively light and pure, like the flight of a swallow.

One day she was returning from the city, where she was carrying sailboats made by her father for sale, and she met the wandering storyteller Egle. He immediately realized that Assol was an extraordinary girl and said: “I don’t know how many years will pass, but in Kaperna one fairy tale will bloom, memorable for a long time. You will be big, Assol. One morning, in the distant sea, a scarlet sail will sparkle under the sun. The shining bulk of the scarlet sails of the white ship will move, cutting through the waves, straight towards you. This wonderful ship will sail quietly, without shouts or shots; a lot of people will gather on the shore, wondering and gasping: and you will stand there.

Still from the movie “Scarlet Sails”

The ship will approach majestically to the very shore to the sounds of beautiful music; elegant, in carpets, in gold and flowers, a fast boat will sail from him.
- Why did you come? Who are you looking for? - people on the shore will ask. Then you will see a brave handsome prince; he will stand and stretch out his hands to you.

Still from the movie “Scarlet Sails”

Hello, Assol! - he will say. “Far, far from here, I saw you in a dream and came to take you to my kingdom forever.” You will live there with me in the deep pink valley. You will have everything you want; We will live with you so friendly and cheerfully that your soul will never know tears and sadness.
He will put you on a boat, bring you to the ship, and you will leave forever
a brilliant country where the sun rises and where the stars will descend from the sky to congratulate you on your arrival.
At home, Assol told her father about this meeting. A beggar overheard their conversation and told the residents of Kaperna. Since then, they began to offend her even more and considered her a fool, crazy.
At this time, Gray arrived at the shore of Kaperna. When he saw Assol, his heart trembled. He began asking residents about her. He was given this very characteristic. But Gray didn't believe it. One day he saw her, tired and asleep in the forest, and put a ring on her finger.
And then everything happened exactly as Egle predicted. “There are many words in the world in different languages and different dialects, but with all of them, even remotely, you cannot convey what they said to each other on that day.”

Green's books, including Scarlet Sails, make you believe in life, in its unpredictability and the possibility of happiness. You need to be able to believe, love and never give up even in the most difficult moment of life.

Aphorisms from A. Green’s extravaganza “Scarlet Sails”

* I understood one simple truth. It is about doing so-called miracles with your own hands. When the main thing for a person is to receive the dearest nickel, it is easy to give this nickel, but when the soul conceals the seed of a fiery plant - a miracle, give him this miracle, if you are able.
* But there are no less miracles: a smile, fun, forgiveness, and the right word spoken at the right time. To own this is to own everything.
* When the head of the prison himself releases the prisoner, when the billionaire gives the scribe a villa, an operetta singer and a safe, and the jockey at least once holds his horse for another horse who is unlucky, then everyone will understand how pleasant it is, how inexpressibly wonderful.
* When the soul conceals the grain of a fiery plant - a miracle, give it this miracle if you are able

Film

In 1961, a film of the same name directed by Alexander Ptushko was shot at the Mosfilm studio. The main roles were played by Anastasia Vertinskaya and Vasily Lanovoy.

Monument “Scarlet Sails” in Gelendzhik (Krasnodar Territory)

Monument to Assol in Gelendzhik (Krasnodar region)

Current page: 1 (book has 5 pages in total)

Alexander Green
Scarlet Sails

Green brings it to Nina Nikolaevna and dedicates it

Chapter 1
Prediction

Longren, sailor of the Orion, a strong three-hundred-ton brig 1
Brig- a two-masted sailing vessel with square sails on both masts.

In which he served for ten years and to whom he was more attached than another son to his own mother, he had to finally leave this service.

“I followed her for three months, old man,” she said, “look at your daughter.”

Dead, Longren bent down and saw an eight-month-old creature intently looking at his long beard, then he sat down, looked down and began to twirl his mustache. The mustache was wet, as if from rain.

- When did Mary die? - he asked.

“We don’t even have a crumb of food in our house,” she told her neighbor. “I’ll go into town, and the girl and I will get by somehow until my husband returns.”

“Besides,” she added, “it’s boring without such a fool.”

Assol was already five years old, and her father began to smile softer and softer, looking at her nervous, kind little face, when, sitting on his lap, she worked on the secret of a buttoned vest or amusingly hummed sailor songs - wild rhymes 2
Revostishia– word formation A.S. Greena.

It was spring, early and harsh, like winter, but of a different kind. For three weeks, a sharp coastal north fell to the cold earth.

- Longren! - shouted the mortally frightened Menners. - Why have you become like a stump? You see, I'm being carried away; leave the pier!

Longren was silent, calmly looking at Menners, who was rushing about in the boat, only his pipe began to smoke more strongly, and he, after hesitating, took it out of his mouth in order to better see what was happening.

- Longren! - Menners cried, - you can hear me, I’m dying, save me!

But Longren did not say a single word to him; he did not seem to hear the desperate scream. Until the boat carried so far that Menners’ words and cries could barely reach him, he did not even shift from foot to foot. Menners sobbed in horror, begged the sailor to run to the fishermen, call for help, promised money, threatened and cursed, but Longren only came closer to the very edge of the pier so as not to immediately lose sight of the throwing and jumping boats. “Longren,” it came to him muffledly, as if from the roof, sitting inside the house, “save me!” Then, taking a deep breath and taking a deep breath so that not a single word would be lost in the wind, Longren shouted:

“She asked you the same thing!” Think about this while you are still alive, Menners, and don’t forget!

Then the screams stopped, and Longren went home. Assol woke up and saw that her father was sitting in front of a dying lamp, deep in thought. Hearing the girl's voice calling him, he went up to her, kissed her deeply and covered her with a tangled blanket.

“Sleep, honey,” he said, “the morning is still far away.”

- What are you doing?

“I made a black toy, Assol, sleep!”

The next day, all the residents of Kaperna could talk about was the missing Menners, and on the sixth day they brought him himself, dying and angry. His story quickly spread around the surrounding villages. Until the evening wore Menners; broken by shocks on the sides and bottom of the boat, during a terrible struggle with the ferocity of the waves, which, tirelessly, threatened to throw the maddened shopkeeper into the sea, he was picked up by the steamer Lucretia, heading to Kasset. A cold and shock of horror ended Menners' days. He lived a little less than forty-eight hours, calling upon Longren all the disasters possible on earth and in the imagination. Menners' story of how the sailor watched his death, refusing help, eloquent all the more so since the dying man was breathing with difficulty and groaning, amazed the residents of Kaperna. Not to mention the fact that very few of them were able to remember an insult even more severe than that suffered by Longren, and to grieve as much as he grieved for Mary for the rest of his life - they were disgusted, incomprehensible, and amazed that Longren was silent. Silently, until his last words sent after Menners, Longren stood; stood motionless, sternly and quietly, like judge, showing deep contempt for Menners - there was more than hatred in his silence, and everyone felt it. If he had shouted, expressing with gestures or fussiness gloating, or in some other way his triumph at the sight of Menners’ despair, the fishermen would have understood him, but he acted differently from what they did - he acted impressive, incomprehensible and by this he placed himself above others, in a word, he did something that cannot be forgiven. No one else bowed to him, extended their hands, or cast a recognizing, greeting glance. He remained completely aloof from village affairs; The boys, seeing him, shouted after him: “Longren drowned Menners!” He didn't pay any attention to it. It also seemed that he did not notice that in the tavern or on the shore, among the boats, the fishermen fell silent in his presence, moving away as if from the plague. The case of Menners cemented the previously incomplete alienation. Having become complete, it caused lasting mutual hatred, the shadow of which fell on Assol.

The girl grew up without friends. Two or three dozen children of her age who lived in Kaperna, soaked like a sponge with water, a rough family principle, the basis of which was the unshakable authority of the mother and father, re-important, like all children in the world, once and for all crossed out little Assol from the sphere of their patronage and attention. This happened, of course, gradually, through suggestion and shouting from adults, it acquired the character of a terrible prohibition, and then, reinforced by gossip and rumors, it grew in children’s minds with fear of the sailor’s house.

In addition, Longren's secluded lifestyle has now freed the hysterical language of gossip; They used to say about the sailor that he had killed someone somewhere, which is why, they say, he is no longer hired to serve on ships, and he himself is gloomy and unsociable, because “he is tormented by remorse of a criminal conscience.” While playing, the children chased Assol if she approached them, threw dirt and teased her that her father ate human flesh and was now making counterfeit money. One after another, her naive attempts to get closer ended in bitter crying, bruises, scratches and other manifestations public opinion; She finally stopped being offended, but still sometimes asked her father: “Tell me, why don’t they like us?” “Eh, Assol,” said Longren, “do they know how to love? You have to be able to love, but they can’t do that.” - "Like this - be able to? - "And like this!" He took the girl in his arms and deeply kissed her sad eyes, which were squinting with tender pleasure. Assol's favorite pastime was in the evenings or on holidays, when her father, having put aside jars of paste, tools and unfinished work, sat down, taking off his apron, to rest with a pipe in his teeth - climb onto his lap and, turning in the careful ring of his father's hand, touch various parts of toys, asking about their purpose. Thus began a kind of fantastic lecture about life and people - a lecture in which, thanks to Longren’s previous way of life, accidents, chance in general, outlandish, amazing and extraordinary events were given the main place. Longren, telling the girl the names of rigging, sails, and marine items, gradually became carried away, moving from explanations to various episodes in which either a windlass, or a steering wheel, or a mast or some type of boat, etc. played a role, and then From these individual illustrations he moved on to broad pictures of sea wanderings, weaving superstition into reality, and reality into the images of his imagination. Here appeared a tiger cat, the messenger of a shipwreck, and a talking flying fish, disobeying whose orders meant going off course, and the “Flying Dutchman” 3
Flying Dutchman- in maritime legends - a ghost ship, abandoned by its crew or with a crew of the dead, as a rule, a harbinger of trouble.

With its frantic crew; omens, ghosts, mermaids, pirates - in a word, all the fables that while away a sailor's leisure time in calm or in his favorite tavern. Longren also talked about the castaways, about people who had gone wild and had forgotten how to speak, about mysterious treasures, convict riots and much more, which the girl listened to more attentively than, perhaps, the first time she listened to Columbus’s story about the new continent. “Well, say more,” Assol asked when Longren, lost in thought, fell silent, and fell asleep on his chest with a head full of wonderful dreams.

It also gave her great, always materially significant pleasure, to see the clerk of a city toy shop who willingly bought Longren’s work. To appease the father and bargain for excess, the clerk took with him a couple of apples, a sweet pie, and a handful of nuts for the girl. Longren usually asked for the real price out of dislike for bargaining, and the clerk would reduce it. “Oh, you,” Longren said, “I spent a week working on this bot. - The boat was five vershoks. - Look at this strength, what about the cage, what about kindness? This boat can withstand fifteen people in any weather.” The end result was that the quiet fuss of the girl, purring over her apple, deprived Longren of his stamina and desire to argue; he gave in, and the clerk, having filled the basket with excellent, durable toys, left, chuckling in his mustache.

Longren did all the housework himself: he chopped wood, carried water, lit the stove, cooked, washed, ironed clothes and, besides all this, managed to work for money. When Assol was eight years old, her father taught her to read and write. He began to occasionally take her with him to the city, and then send her even alone if there was a need to intercept money in a store or carry goods. This did not happen often, although Liss lay only four miles from Kaperna, but the road to it went through the forest, and in the forest there is a lot that can frighten children, in addition to physical danger, which, it is true, is difficult to encounter at such a close distance from the city, but still... it doesn't hurt to keep this in mind. Therefore, only on good days, in the morning, when the thicket surrounding the road is full of sunny showers, flowers and silence, so that Assol’s impressionability was not threatened by phantoms 4
Phantom- ghost, ghost.

Imagination, Longren let her go to the city.

One day, in the middle of such a journey to the city, the girl sat down by the road to eat a piece of pie that had been placed in her breakfast basket. While snacking, she sorted through the toys; two or three of them turned out to be new to her: Longren made them at night. One such novelty was a miniature racing yacht; This white boat carried scarlet sails made from scraps of silk, used by Longren for lining steamship cabins - toys for a rich buyer. Here, apparently, having made a yacht, he did not find suitable material for the sails, using what he had - scraps of scarlet silk. Assol was delighted. The fiery, cheerful color burned so brightly in her hand as if she were holding fire. The road was crossed by a stream with a pole bridge across it; the stream to the right and left went into the forest. “If I put her in the water for a little swim,” Assol thought, “she won’t get wet, I’ll dry her later.” Moving into the forest behind the bridge, following the flow of the stream, the girl carefully launched the ship that had captivated her into the water near the shore; the sails immediately sparkled with a scarlet reflection in the clear water; the light, penetrating the matter, lay as a trembling pink radiation on the white stones of the bottom. “Where did you come from, captain? – Assol asked the imaginary face importantly and, answering herself, said: “I came... I came... I came from China.” -What did you bring? – I won’t tell you what I brought. - Oh, you are so, captain! Well, then I’ll put you back in the basket.” The captain was just getting ready to humbly answer that he was joking and that he was ready to show the elephant, when suddenly a quiet retreat of the coastal stream turned the yacht with its bow towards the middle of the stream, and, like a real one, leaving the shore at full speed, it floated smoothly down. The scale of what was visible instantly changed: the stream seemed to the girl like a huge river, and the yacht seemed like a distant, large ship, to which, almost falling into the water, frightened and dumbfounded, she stretched out her hands. “The captain was scared,” she thought and ran after the floating toy, hoping that it would wash ashore somewhere. Hastily dragging the not heavy but annoying basket, Assol repeated: “Oh, my God! After all, if something happened...” She tried not to lose sight of the beautiful, smoothly running triangle of sails, stumbled, fell and ran again.

Assol has never been so deep in the forest as she is now. She, absorbed in the impatient desire to catch the toy, did not look around; Near the shore, where she was fussing, there were quite a few obstacles that occupied her attention. Mossy trunks of fallen trees, holes, tall ferns, rose hips, jasmine and hazel trees interfered with her at every step; Overcoming them, she gradually lost strength, stopping more and more often to rest or wipe the sticky cobwebs off her face. When sedge and reed thickets stretched out in wider places, Assol completely lost sight of the scarlet sparkle of the sails, but, running around a bend in the current, she again saw them, sedately and steadily running away. Once she looked around, and the forest mass with its diversity, passing from smoky pillars of light in the foliage to the dark crevices of the dense twilight, deeply struck the girl. Shocked for a moment, she remembered again about the toy and, letting out a deep “f-fu-u-u” several times, ran with all her might.

In such an unsuccessful and alarming pursuit, about an hour passed, when with surprise, but also with relief, Assol saw that the trees ahead freely parted, letting in the blue flood of the sea, clouds and the edge of a yellow sandy cliff, onto which she ran out, almost falling from fatigue. Here was the mouth of the stream; Having spread not wide and shallow, so that the flowing blue of the stones could be seen, it disappeared into the oncoming sea wave. From a low cliff, pitted with roots, Assol saw that by the stream, on a large flat stone, with his back to her, a man was sitting, holding a runaway yacht in his hands, and was carefully examining it with the curiosity of an elephant who had caught a butterfly. Partially reassured by the fact that the toy was intact, Assol slid down the cliff and, coming close to the stranger, looked at him with a searching gaze, waiting for him to raise his head. But the unknown man was so immersed in the contemplation of the forest surprise that the girl managed to examine him from head to toe, establishing that she had never seen people like this stranger.

But in front of her was none other than Aigle, traveling on foot, a famous collector of songs, legends, tales and fairy tales. Gray curls fell in folds from under his straw hat; a gray blouse tucked into blue trousers and high boots gave him the appearance of a hunter; a white collar, a tie, a belt, studded with silver badges, a cane and a bag with a brand new nickel lock - showed a city dweller. His face, if one can call a face his nose, lips and eyes, looking out from a rapidly growing radiant beard and a lush, fiercely raised mustache, would seem sluggishly transparent, if not for his eyes, gray as sand and shiny as pure steel, with a look that is bold and strong.

“Now give it to me,” the girl said timidly. -You've already played. How did you catch her?

Egle raised his head, dropping the yacht, as Assol’s excited voice suddenly sounded. The old man looked at her for a minute, smiling and slowly letting his beard fall into a large, stringy handful. The cotton dress, washed many times, barely covered the girl’s thin, tanned legs to the knees. Her dark thick hair, pulled back into a lace scarf, tangled, touching her shoulders. Every feature of Assol was expressively light and pure, like the flight of a swallow. Dark eyes, tinged with a sad question, seemed somewhat older than the face; his irregular, soft oval was covered with that kind of lovely tan that is inherent in healthy white skin. The half-opened small mouth sparkled with a gentle smile.

“I swear by the Grimms, Aesop and Andersen,” said Egle, looking first at the girl and then at the yacht. – This is something special. Listen up, plant! Is this your thing?

– Yes, I ran after her all over the stream; I thought I was going to die. Was she here?

- At my very feet. The shipwreck is the reason why I, as a shore pirate, can give you this prize. The yacht, abandoned by the crew, was thrown onto the sand by a three-inch shaft - between my left heel and the tip of the stick. – He tapped his cane. -What's your name, baby?

“Assol,” said the girl, hiding the toy given by Egl in the basket.

“Okay,” the old man continued his incomprehensible speech, without taking his eyes off, in the depths of which a smile of a friendly disposition gleamed. “Actually, I shouldn’t have asked your name.” It’s good that it’s so strange, so monotonous, musical, like the whistle of an arrow or the noise of a sea shell; What would I do if you were called one of those euphonious, but unbearably familiar names that are alien to the Beautiful Unknown? Moreover, I don’t want to know who you are, who your parents are and how you live. Why break the spell? Sitting on this rock, I was engaged in a comparative study of Finnish and Japanese stories... when suddenly a stream splashed out this yacht, and then you appeared... Just as you are. I, my dear, am a poet at heart, although I have never composed anything myself. What's in your basket?

“Boats,” said Assol, shaking her basket, “then a steamer and three more of these houses with flags.” Soldiers live there.

- Great. You were sent to sell. On the way, you started playing. You let the yacht sail, but it ran away - right?

-Have you seen it? – Assol asked doubtfully, trying to remember if she had told this herself. - Did someone tell you? Or did you guess right?

- I knew it.

- What about it?

- Because I am the most important wizard.

Assol was embarrassed; Her tension at these words of Egle crossed the border of fear. The deserted seashore, the silence, the tedious adventure with the yacht, the incomprehensible speech of the old man with sparkling eyes, the majesty of his beard and hair began to seem to the girl as a mixture of the supernatural and reality. Now if Egle made a grimace or screamed something, the girl would rush away, crying and exhausted from fear. But Egle, noticing how wide her eyes opened, made a sharp volte-face.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said seriously. “On the contrary, I want to talk to you to my heart’s content.” “It was only then that he realized what was so closely marked by his impression in the girl’s face. “An involuntary expectation of a beautiful, blissful fate,” he decided. - Oh, why wasn’t I born a writer? What a glorious story." “Come on,” Egle continued, trying to round out the original position (the tendency to create myths, a consequence of constant work, was stronger than the fear of planting the seeds of a major dream on unknown soil), “come on, Assol, listen to me carefully.” I was in the village where you must be coming from; in a word, in Kaperna. I love fairy tales and songs, and I sat in that village all day, trying to hear something no one had heard. But you don't tell fairy tales. You don't sing songs. And if they tell and sing, then, you know, these stories about cunning men and soldiers, with the eternal praise of cheating, these dirty, like unwashed feet, rough, like a rumbling stomach, short quatrains with a terrible motive... Stop, I’m lost. I'll speak again.

After thinking, he continued like this:

“I don’t know how many years will pass, but in Kaperna one fairy tale will bloom, memorable for a long time.” You will be big, Assol. One morning, in the distant sea, a scarlet sail will sparkle under the sun. The shining bulk of the scarlet sails of the white ship will move, cutting through the waves, straight towards you. This wonderful ship will sail quietly, without shouts or shots; a lot of people will gather on the shore, wondering and gasping; and you will stand there. The ship will approach majestically to the very shore to the sounds of beautiful music; elegant, in carpets, in gold and flowers, a fast boat will sail from him. “Why did you come? Who are you looking for?" - people on the shore will ask. Then you will see a brave handsome prince; he will stand and stretch out his hands to you. “Hello, Assol! - he will say. “Far, far from here, I saw you in a dream and came to take you to my kingdom forever.” You will live there with me in the deep pink valley. You will have everything you want; We will live with you so friendly and cheerfully that your soul will never know tears and sadness.” He will put you on a boat, bring you to the ship, and you will leave forever to a brilliant country where the sun rises and where the stars will descend from the sky to congratulate you on your arrival.

- It's all for me? – the girl asked quietly. Her serious eyes, cheerful, shone with confidence. A dangerous wizard, of course, would not talk like that; she came closer. - Maybe he has already arrived... that ship?

“Not so soon,” Egle objected, “first, as I said, you will grow up.” Then... What can I say? - This will, and it's over. What would you do then?

- I? “She looked into the basket, but apparently did not find anything there worthy of serving as a significant reward. “I would love him,” she said hastily and added, not quite firmly: “If he doesn’t fight.”

“No, he won’t fight,” said the wizard, winking mysteriously, “he won’t, I guarantee it.” Go, girl, and don’t forget what I told you between two sips of aromatic vodka and thinking about the songs of convicts. Go. May there be peace to your furry head!

Longren was working in his small garden, digging up potato bushes. Raising his head, he saw Assol running headlong towards him with a joyful and impatient face.

“Well, here...” she said, trying to control her breathing, and grabbed her father’s apron with both hands. “Listen to what I’ll tell you... On the shore, far away, there’s a wizard sitting...

She started with the wizard and his interesting prediction. The fever of her thoughts prevented her from conveying the incident smoothly. Next came a description of the wizard’s appearance and, in reverse order, the pursuit of the lost yacht.

Longren listened to the girl without interrupting, without smiling, and when she finished, his imagination quickly depicted an unknown old man with aromatic vodka in one hand and a toy in the other. He turned away, but, remembering that on great occasions in a child’s life it is proper for a person to be serious and surprised, he solemnly nodded his head, saying:

- So-so; according to all signs, there is no one else to be but a wizard. I would like to look at him... But when you go again, don’t turn aside; It's not difficult to get lost in the forest.

Throwing away the shovel, he sat down by the low brush fence and sat the girl on his lap. Terribly tired, she tried to add some more details, but the heat, excitement and weakness made her sleepy. Her eyes were stuck together, her head fell on her father’s hard shoulder, a moment - and she would have been carried away into the land of dreams, when suddenly, troubled by a sudden doubt, Assol sat up straight, with her eyes closed and, resting her fists on Longren’s vest, said loudly:

– Do you think the magic ship will come for me or not?

“He will come,” the sailor calmly answered, “since they told you this, it means everything is correct.”

“When he grows up, he’ll forget,” he thought, “but for now... it’s not worth taking such a toy away from you. After all, you will have to see a lot in the future not of scarlet, but of dirty and predatory sails; From a distance they are smart and white, but up close they are torn and brazen. A passing man joked with my girl. Well?! Good joke! Nothing - just a joke! Look how tired you were - half a day in the forest, in the thicket. And about the scarlet sails, think like me: you will have scarlet sails.”

Assol was sleeping. Longren, taking out his pipe with his free hand, lit a cigarette, and the wind carried the smoke through the fence into the bush growing on the outside of the garden. A young beggar sat by a bush, with his back to the fence, chewing a pie. The conversation between father and daughter put him in a cheerful mood, and the smell of good tobacco put him in a prey mood.

“Give the poor man a smoke, master,” he said through the bars. “My tobacco versus yours is not tobacco, but, one might say, poison.”

- What a problem! He wakes up, falls asleep again, and a passerby just smokes.

“Well,” Longren objected, “you’re not without tobacco after all, but the child is tired.” Come back later if you want.

Alexander Green's fairy tale "Scarlet Sails" is heard by many. Several film adaptations have been made based on it and many plays have been staged. This romantic story wins the hearts of all sensitive people and is not forgotten until the end of their lives. She gives hope for the best. The writer tells a touching story through which he tries to say that miracles happen if you believe in them with all your heart. He says that a person himself is capable of creating a miracle. Despite the fact that the story was written in difficult times of hunger, illness and death, it is imbued with the warmth and love that was in the writer’s soul. And any reader will agree with this.

Assol was always considered a slightly strange girl, too thoughtful, unsociable, dreamy. She grew up without a mother, and her father was a retired sailor who tried to give her everything he could. However, in the fishing town they did not really like him, which also affected the attitude towards Assol. Once upon a time, the girl’s father did not help his neighbor in trouble and allowed him to die. Few people knew the truth why this happened, and all the residents of the town disliked Longren.

Since childhood, Assol believed in fairy tales and miracles. One day, an old man whom she accidentally met in the forest predicted to her that a ship with scarlet sails would come for her and take her to a better life. And Assol does not doubt this for a minute, although everyone around her mocks her dream. And far, far away lives a young guy, Arthur Gray, who also believes in miracles. And he decides to leave his rich family and go on a journey by sea to one day become a captain...

The work belongs to the genre Prose, Adventure. It was published in 1923 by Bustard Plus. The book is part of the series "List of school literature for grades 5-6". On our website you can download the book "Scarlet Sails" in epub, fb2, pdf, txt format or read online. The book's rating is 4.1 out of 5. Here, before reading, you can also turn to reviews from readers who are already familiar with the book and find out their opinion. In our partner's online store you can buy and read the book in paper form.

Offered and dedicated to Nina Nikolaevna Green by the Author

I. PREDICTION

Longren, a sailor of the Orion, a strong three-hundred-ton brig on which he served for ten years and to which he was more attached than another son to his own mother, had to finally leave the service.

It happened like this. On one of his rare returns home, he did not see, as always from afar, his wife Mary on the threshold of the house, throwing up her hands and then running towards him until she lost her breath. Instead, an excited neighbor stood by the crib - a new item in Longren's small house.

“I followed her for three months, old man,” she said, “look at your daughter.”

Dead, Longren bent down and saw an eight-month-old creature intently looking at his long beard, then he sat down, looked down and began to twirl his mustache. The mustache was wet, as if from rain.

- When did Mary die? - he asked.

Three months ago, the young mother’s economic affairs were very bad. Of the money left by Longren, a good half was spent on treatment after a difficult birth and on caring for the health of the newborn; finally, the loss of a small but necessary amount for life forced Mary to ask Menners for a loan of money. Menners ran a tavern and a shop and was considered a wealthy man.

Mary went to see him at six o'clock in the evening. At about seven the narrator met her on the road to Liss. Mary, tearful and upset, said that she was going to the city to pawn her engagement ring. She added that Menners agreed to give money, but demanded love for it. Mary achieved nothing.

“We don’t even have a crumb of food in our house,” she told her neighbor. “I’ll go into town, and the girl and I will get by somehow until my husband returns.”

The weather was cold and windy that evening; The narrator tried in vain to persuade the young woman not to go to Lis before nightfall. “You’ll get wet, Mary, it’s drizzling, and the wind, no matter what, will bring downpour.”

Ten years of wandering life left very little money in his hands. He started working. Soon his toys appeared in city stores - skillfully made small models of boats, cutters, single- and double-decker sailing ships, cruisers, steamships - in a word, what he knew intimately, which, due to the nature of the work, partly replaced for him the roar of port life and painting work swimming. In this way, Longren obtained enough to live within the limits of moderate economy. Unsociable by nature, after the death of his wife, he became even more withdrawn and unsociable. On holidays he was sometimes seen in a tavern, but he never sat down, but hurriedly drank a glass of vodka at the counter and left, briefly throwing around “yes”, “no”, “hello”, “goodbye”, “little by little” - at everything addresses and nods from neighbors. He could not stand guests, quietly sending them away not by force, but with such hints and fictitious circumstances that the visitor had no choice but to invent a reason not to allow him to sit longer.

He himself did not visit anyone either; Thus, a cold alienation lay between him and his fellow countrymen, and if Longren’s work - toys - had been less independent from the affairs of the village, he would have had to more clearly experience the consequences of such a relationship. He purchased goods and food supplies in the city - Menners could not even boast of the box of matches that Longren bought from him. He also did all the housework himself and patiently went through the difficult art of raising a girl, which is unusual for a man.

It was spring, early and harsh, like winter, but of a different kind. For three weeks, a sharp coastal north fell to the cold earth.