Free translation by Nadya N. aka AngelMercury

This is NOT the finished copy, I am definitely accepting editing suggestions!!!

"CRIMSON SAILS"

By Russian author A.S. Green

Part 2 - GRAY

If Caesar found that it is better to be first in a village, than second in Rome, then Arthur Gray would not envy Caesar in his wise wish. He was born a captain, wanted to be one and became one.

The enormous house that Gray was born in was gloomy inside and majestic outside. A flower garden and a part of a park joined the front facade. The best kinds of tulips - greyish-blue, violet and black with a pink shade - snaked though the lawn in lines of whimsically thrown necklaces. The ancient trees of the park dreamed in the scattered half-light above the reeds of a winding stream. The fence of the castle, as it was truly a castle, consisted of waving cast-iron pillars, joined by an iron design. Each pillar ended in a magnificent iron lily - these bowls were filled with oil on festive days, glowing in a vast line of fire at night.

Gray's father and mother were haughty slaves of their position, the riches and the laws of that society to which they could refer to as "we". The part of their soul that was a gallery of ancestors deserves little description, and the other part - the imaginary continuation of the gallery - began with young Gray, doomed to live and die by a known and already made up plan, so that his portrait could be hung on the wall without hurting the family pride. However, a small error creeped into that plan - young Arthur Gray was born with a living soul, one that was absolutely not inclined to continue with this family line.

The boy's liveliness, vivacity, this utter perversion began to show on his eighth year. The type of the knight of peculiar impressions, the seeker and creator of miracles - that is, the type of man who, among the neverending variety of roles in life, chooses the most dangerous and touching - the role of prophecy - began to be outlined in little Gray. It showed when the boy, standing on a chair so he could reach the painting of the Crucifixion, took the nails out of Christ's bleeding hands - that is, simply painted over them with blue paint stolen from the painter. He found the picture more bearable this way. Carried away in this pursuit, he began to paint over the crucified man's feet as well, but was found out by his father. The old man took the boy off the chair by the ears and asked:

"Why did you ruin the painting?"

"I didn't."

"This is the work of a famous artist."

"I don't care," Gray said. "I could not allow nails to be stuck in hands and blood to flow. I don't want it."

In his son's answer Lionel Gray, hiding a smile in his moustache, recognized himself and did not impose punishment.

Gray tirelessly explored the castle, making shocking discoveries. In the attic he found steel rubble from the times of knights, books bound in iron and leather, decaying clothing and hordes of pigeons. In the wine-cellar he got interesting information regarding Madeira wines and sherry. Here, in the lacklustre light of pointed windows, weighed down by the triangles of stone arches, big and small barrels stood. The biggest one, in the form of a flat circle, took up the entire transverse wall of the cellar. The hundred-year-old oak of the barrel glistened, like newly polished. Empty bottles made of green and blue glass stood in woven baskets among the barrels. Grey mushrooms with thin legs grew on the stone and earth floor - everywhere there was mould, moss, moisture, and a sour, stifling smell. A huge spiderweb sparkled gold in the far corner, when in the evening, the sun searched for it with its last rays. In one spot, two barrels of the best "Alicante" since Cromwell's times were buried, and the cellar-keeper, pointing out the empty corner, never missed a chance to recount the tale of a famous grave in which lay a dead man more alive than a herd of fox-terriers. Beginning the story, the storyteller never forgot to check if the faucet of the big barrel still worked, and left it, seemingly with a great feeling of relief because the involuntary tears of overly strong happiness sparkled in his cheerful eyes.

"So, this is how it goes," Poldishok the cellar-keeper said to Gray, sitting down on an empty box and stuffing his sharp nose with tobacco. "You see that spot? There lies such wine, that any drunkard would agree to have his tongue cut out for a small glass of it. In every barrel there is a hundred litres of substance that explodes the soul and turns the body into still dough. Its color is darker than cherry, and it will not leak from a bottle. It is as thick as cream. It is trapped in barrels of black wood, hard as iron. On them are double hoops of red copper. There is latin writing on these hoops: "Gray will drink me when he is in heaven." This writing was explained in so many ways, that your great-grandfather, Simeon Gray, built a cottage, called it "Heaven" and thought that he could satisfy the mysterious aphorism with his innocent wit. But what do you think happened? He died from heart failure, just when the hoops were being taken off - the dear old man was so excited. Since then no one touches this barrel. They're sure that this priceless wine will bring misfortune. But really, not even the Egyptian Sphinx asked a riddle like this! Although he did ask one wise man once 'Will I eat you, like I eat everyone else? Answer truthfully and you will be spared.' But even that, under sober consideration..."

"Oh, I think the faucet is leaking again," Poldishok interrupted himself, rushing to the corner where, closing the faucet, he returned with an open, joyful face. "Yes. Thinking well, and most importantly, thinking slowly, the wise man could have told the sphinx 'Let's go have a drink, my friend, and you'll forget about this silliness.' But 'Gray will drink me when he is in heaven'! How do you understand that? He'll drink it when he's dead? Strange. Therefore, he must be a saint, and therefore, he doesn't drink wine or even good old vodka. Let's say that 'heaven' means 'happiness'. But if that is the question, any happiness will lose half its glittering feathers when the lucky man asks himself if this is really heaven. That's the thing. To drink from this barrel with a light heart and laugh, my boy, really laugh, one has to have one foot on earth and one in the sky. Of course there is a third theory - that someday Gray will be drunk to such a blissful-heavenly state that he'll open the barrel and empty it out. But that, my boy, wouldn't be the relization of a prophecy, it would be a drunken brawl."

Once again assuring himself of the good condition of the faucet of the big barrel, Poldishok gloomily finished:

"These barrels were brought in 1793 by your ancestor, John Gray, on the ship "Beagle" from Lisbon. Two thousand gold piastres were paid for this wine. The inscription on the barrels was made by the weapons-master Benjamin Elian from Wales. The barrels are six feet underground, covered by ashes from grapevines. No one has ever drunk this wine, and no one ever will."

"I'll drink it," young Gray once announced, stomping his foot.

"What a brave young man!" Poldishok noticed. "You'll drink it in heaven?"

"Of course. Heaven's right here! I have it, see?" Gray chuckled, opening his hand. The gentle, yet strictly outlined palm was illuminated by the sun, and the boy closed his hand into a fist. "Here it is! Here, and then not here..."

Saying this, he opened and closed his hand, and finally, satisfied with his joke, he ran out in front of Poldishok into the corridor of the lower level.

Visiting the kitchen was strictly forbidden to Gray. But, once he discovered this amazing world burning with fire from stoves - a world of steam, soot, hissing noises, the tapping of knives, the bubbling of boiling liquids, and drifting tasty smells - the boy never missed a chance to visit this enormous room. The cooks moved in severe silence, like priests - their white hats against the background of blackened walls gave their work an air of a religious ceremony. Cheerful, heavy dish-washing girls washed the dishes by the barrels of water, the china and silver ringing like bells. Boys carried in baskets full of food, stooping under the weight of fish, oysters, lobsters and fruits. Rainbow pheasants, gray ducks and motley chickens lay on the long table; elsewhere was a pig carcass with a short, curly little tail; in another spot were rutabagas, cabbages, nuts, raisins, tanned peaches.

Gray grew slightly timid around the kitchen - it seemed to him that dark powers moved everything here and controlled the entire castle. Calls sounded like commands and spells, the movement of workers, owing to their long acquired habit, achieved that clear, stinted precision that appears like inspiration. Gray was not tall enough yet to look into the biggest pot that was boiling like Mt. Vesuvius, but felt a special respect for it. He watched with trepidation how two servants moved it around. Smoky foam splashed out onto the stove, and the steam, rising from the noisy stove, filled the kitchen in hot waves. Once so much liquid had splashed out that it scalded one girl's hand. Her skin, even her nails, immediately turned red from the flow of blood, and Betsy (that was the servant girl's name) rubbed ointment over the injured spots, crying. Tears unstoppably flowed down her round, frightened face.

Gray stood still. Meanwhile the other women fussed around Betsy, he endured a sharp feeling of another's suffering, that he could not experience himself.

"Does it really hurt?" he asked.

"You try it and find out," Betsy answered, hiding her hand in her apron.

With a frown, the boy climbed up onto a stool, he spooned up the hot liquid with a ladle (it was soup with mutton, by the way) and splashed it onto his wrist. The pain was strong, and he staggered from the sudden weakness. A flour-white Gray approached Betsy, hiding his burning hand into his pocket.

"I think it really hurts," he said, not mentioning his experiment. "Betsy, let's go to the doctor. Come on!"

He kept pulling her by the skirt, while in the meantime the supporters of home remedies showered the servant girl with recipes. But the girl, who was in great pain, went with Gray. The doctor alleviated the pain by putting on a bandage - and only after Betsy left did Gray show his own hand.

This small episode made the twenty-year-old Betsy and ten-year-old Gray true friends. She filled his pockets with pastries and apples, and he told her fairy-tales and other stories that he read from his books. One day he found out that Betsy cannot marry Jim, who looked after the stables, because they did not have enough money to get a place of their own. Gray broke his porcelain money-box with tongs from the fireplace, and emptied it out - the sum was around one hundred pounds. Getting up early, when the poor bride-to-be walked off to the kitchen, he sneaked into her room and, hiding the gift in the girl's trunk, he also left a note: "Betsy, this is yours. The leader of bandits, Robin Hood." The commotion that this caused in the kitchen reached such dimensions that Gray was forced to admit this forgery. He did not take the money back and wished to hear no more of it.

His mother was one of those people whom life molds in a ready, premade shape. She lived in a half-dream that provided for all the wishes of an ordinary soul - so she had nothing else to do but talk with the dressmakers, the doctor and the butler. But her passionate, almost religious attachment to her strange child was perhaps the only valve to those of her tendencies that were chloroformed by her upbringing and fate - tendencies that do not live anymore, they simply wander listlessly, leaving the will to be idle. The noble lady resembled a peahen who has hatched a swan from an egg. She over-sensitively felt her son's beautiful uniqueness. Sadness, love and constraint filled her when she held the boy close, where the heart spoke differently than the tongue that habitually reflected the conventional forms of thoughts and feelings. This was like the cloudy effect, peculiarly shaped by sunlight, that penetrates into the symmetrical form of a formal building, depriving it of trite dignity. The eye sees but does not recognize the room - the mysterious game of shadow and light creates a blinding harmony among the wretchedness.

The aristocratic lady, whose face and figure, it seemed, could only answer life's fiery voices with an icy silence; the delicate beauty of whose face repelled rather than attracted, because a haughty force was felt in it, a force that lacked all female magnetism. This Lilian Gray became simply a mother when left alone with her son, speaking a mother's heartfelt nonsense words in a loving, gentle voice. Those words could not be expressed on paper - their power is in the feeling they carry, not in the words themselves. She could never refuse her son anything. She forgave him everything - his presence in the kitchen, his revulsion to studies, his disobedience and his many oddities.

If he did not want the trees to be trimmed - they were left untouched; if he asked someone to be forgiven or rewarded - the concerned person knew that that would happen. He could ride any horse, bring any dog into the castle, he could dig up books in the library, run around barefoot and eat whatever he wanted.

His father fought against it for some time, but he finally yielded - not to principles but to his wife's wishes. He limited himself to sending all of the servants' children away from the castle, for fear that because of this low society, his son's whimsies would turn to tendencies that would not be easy to eradicate. Overall, he was busy in the all-consuming, innumerable family processes, the beginning of which was lost in the time of the first paper factories, and its end - in the death of all complainers. Besides that, government business, estate business, dictations of memoirs, hunting excursions, reading newspapers, and complex correspondence distanced him from his family. He saw his son so rarely, that sometimes he even forgot how old his son is.

Because of this, Gray lived in his own world. He played alone - usually in the backyards of the castle, that had military importance in the old days. These vast, empty plots of land, with the remains of high trenches, stone storage-buildings covered by moss, were overgrown with tall weeds, nettles, burdocks, blackthorns and motley wildflowers. Gray stayed there for hours exploring mole-hills, battling thorny bushes, lying in wait for butterflies, and building castles and fortresses from broken bricks, which he then bombarded with sticks and cobblestones.

He was already in his twelfth year, when all the hints of his soul, all separate outlines of his spirit and shades of secret wishes came together in one strong moment - and then, receiving a harmonious expression, became an untameable desire. Before that, he only found separate parts of his garden - a patch of light, a shadow, a flower, a luxuriant tree trunk - in the multitude of other gardens, and suddenly he saw them all, clearly - in a beautiful, striking accordance.

It happened in the library. Its tall door with a dull window at the top was usually shut, but the latch of the lock held weakly in the hinges of the doors. If it was pushed by hand, the door pulled back, strained, and finally opened. When Gray's spirit of exploration made him penetrate into the library, he was dumb-struck by the dusty light, all power and uniqueness of which was in the flowery designs on the top of the windows. The silence of abandonment stood still here, like water in a pond. Dark rows of bookcases sometimes touched the windows, hiding half of them, and the passageways inbetween the bookcases were filled with piles of books. There - an opened album with the inside sheets slipping out; there - parchments tied with a gold ribbon; heaps of gloomy-looking books; thick piles of manuscripts, some small volumes of books piled up, crackling like bark if someone opened them; here - sketches and tables, rows of new publications, maps. A multitude of book-bindings - tough, delicate, black, multicolored, blue, grey, thick, thin, rough and smooth. The bookcases were tightly filled with books. They seeemed like walls, encasing life in themselves. Other bookcases, covered with colorless, glittering spots, were seen reflected in bookcase mirrors. An enormous globe of the Earth, trapped in a spherical copper cross of the equator and the meridian, stood on a round table.

Turning to the exit, Gray saw a huge painting above the door, suddenly filling the stifling numbness of the library with meaning. The painting showed a ship rising on the crest of a sea wave. Streams of sea-foam flowed down its sides. The vessel was shown in the last moment of flight, heading straight for the viewer. The foundations of the masts were blocked by the high-rising bowsprit. The crest of the wave, its foam strewn about by the ship's keel, resembled the wings of a gigantic bird. Seafoam flew through the air. The mass of sails, barely visible because of the bow and bowsprit, fell back, full of the raging strength of the storm - only to straighten out again after the flight over the wave, and then, bending over the abyss, to speed the vessel on to new waves. The torn clouds fluttered low over the ocean. The dull, doomed light fought against the approaching darkness of night. But the most noticeable in the picture was the figure of a man, standing on the bow with his back to the observer. The figure expressed all the attitude and character of the moment. The man's pose (he stood with his legs apart, flinging up his arms) did not really tell what he was doing, but it compelled one to make an assumption about the extreme tenseness of attention, directed at something on the deck, invisible to the viewer. The turned sides of his caftan flapped in the wind; the white braid and black rapier-sword stretched out into the air. The richness of his clothes clearly showed that he was a captain, the almost dancing position of his body - the flying wave. Without his hat, he was, seemingly, consumed by a dangerous moment, and he was yelling something - but what? Was he seeing how a person was falling overboard, was he ordering to turn to a new course, or was he trying to drown out the wind, calling the boatswain? Not thoughts, but the shadows of thoughts rose in Gray's mind as he looked at the painting. Suddenly it seemed to him as if an invisible stranger approached him from his left. It would only take one turn of the head for the odd sensation to disappear, Gray knew. But he did not put out the strange light of imagination - he listened to it instead. A soundless voice yelled a few abrupt phrases, incomprehensible like the Malayan language. A noise, like the sound of long waves crashing, was heard, an echo and a gloomy wind filled the library. Gray heard all of this within himself. He looked around - silence immediately rose, dispelling the resounding spider-web of fantasy. The link with the storm was broken.

Gray came to look at this painting several times. To him, it became that essential word in the discussion between soul and life, without which it is hard to understand oneself. An enormous sea gradually grew in the little boy. He identified himself with it, digging in the library, searching for and greedily reading those books, beyond the golden door of which lay the blue glow of the ocean. There, sowing seafoam behind, ships moved. Some of them lost their sails, their masts and, choking with water, sank into the darkness of the depths, where the phosphoric eyes of fish ocasionally blink. Others, caught by bow-waves, shattered against reefs. A lonely, unpeopled ship, with torn sails and rigging, lived through a long agony until it was broken into wood-chips by another storm. Still others were happily loaded in one port and unloaded in another, while their crew, sitting in an inn, sang praises to sailing and vodka. There were also pirate ships, with a black flag and a terrifying, dagger-wielding crew. There were ghost ships, glowing with a deathly blue light; there were warships with soldiers, cannons and music; scientific exploration ships looking for volcanoes, plants and animals; ships with dark secrets and riots; ships of discoveries and adventures.

Of course, in this world, the figure of the captain rose above all else. He was the fate, the soul and the mind of the ship. His personality determined the work and leisure time of the crew. The crew itself was picked by the captain himself, and in many ways reflected his tendencies. He knew the habits and family affairs of every crewmember. In the eyes of his subordinates, he possessed magic knowledge which enabled him to travel confidently, say, from Lisbon to Shanghai over immense spaces. He battled fierce storms by way of a system of complex efforts, he sailed and stopped wherever he wanted, managed the departures and loading of his ship, the repairs and free time. It was hard to imagine a greater and wiser power in a living business that is full of non-stop activity. This power was equal to the power of Orpheus in reserve and completeness.

This vision of a captain, this image and this reality of his situation were first and above all in Gray's radiant conscience. No other profession could so fully alloy all the treasures of life into one whole, keeping the delicate design of each separate happiness clear. Danger, risk, the power of nature, the light of a faraway land, the beautiful unknown, glimpses of love, blossoming with meetings and separations, captivating meetings, faces, events, the immeasurable diversity of life. Meanwhile, either the Southen Cross or the Northern Big Dipper are high in the sky, and all the continents - in alert eyes, although your quarters are full of never-leaving homeland with its books, paintings, letters and dried flowers, entwined with a silky curl in a suede amulet on a strong chest.

In the autumn, in his fifteenth year, Arthur Gray secretly left home and went beyond the golden gates to the sea. Soon the schooner "Anselm" left from the port of Dubelt heading to Marseilles, carrying away a sea cadet with the outward appearance of a cross-dressing girl. This cadet was Gray, the owner of an elegant traveling-bag, glove-thin polished boots and silk linen with stitched crowns on it.

In the course of a year, while the "Anselm" visited France, America and Spain, Gray ran through his belongings, thus paying tribute to his past, and the rest - for the present and the future - he lost through card-playing. He wanted to be a "devilish" sailor. He drank vodka, gasping for breath, and when swimming, he leapt headfirst off heights of ten feet with a sinking heart. Gradually he lost everything, except the most important thing - his strange flying soul. He lost his weakness, becoming broad-shouldered and strong, he exchanged paleness for a dark sun-tan, he gave his refined, careless movements for the confident accuracy of a working hand, and in his thoughtful eyes shone a glimmer like that of a person looking at fire. And his speech, losing its uneven, haughtily shy flow, became short and swift, like a seagull's strike at the quivering silver of fish.

The "Anselm's" captain was a kind man but a strict sailor, who took the boy along out of a certain gloating delight. He only saw an eccentric whimsy in Gray's desperate dream, and gloried beforehand, imagining how in a month or two, Gray would say to him, avoiding his eyes: "Captain Gop, I bruised my elbows climbing on rigging. My sides and back hurt, my fingers can't unbend, my head is throbbing and my legs are trembling. All these wet ropes weigh a hundred pounds on hands, all these bowsprits, leadlines, braces, top-sails, jibs, booms and so on were created to torture my delicate body. I want home to mommy." Hearing such a statement in his mind, Captain Gop held, once again in his mind, this speech: "Go wherever you want, my little fledgling. If resin has stuck to your sensitive wings, you can wash it away at home with the "Rosa-Mimosa" eau-de-cologne." This made-up eau-de-cologne cheered the captain most of all, and, finishing this imaginary confession, he repeated aloud:

"Yes, go to the "Rosa-Mimosa"."

Meanwhile the impressive dialogue came less and less often to the captain's mind, as Gray was going for his goal with clenched teeth an a paling face. Gray endured the uneasy work with the determined strength of will, feeling that this work became easier and easier as he grew more accustomed to the severe ship, and clumsiness was replaced by habit. Sometimes he was thrown off his feet by the loops of the anchor-chain, slamming him into the deck; sometimes a loosely-held rope slipped out of his hands, ripping the skin on the palms; sometimes the wind battered him with a wet corner of a sail with an iron ring sewn into it. To be brief, all work was torture, requiring undivided attention. But, however heavily Gray was breathing, straightening his back with effort, a smile of disdain never left his face. He bore all laughs, insults and the unavoidable swearing directed at him quietly, until he belonged in the new sphere of society, and until then he answered any insult with a punch.

Once Captain Gop, upon seeing Gray masterfully tie a sail to the mast, said to himself "victory is on your side, you rogue." When Gray came down to the deck, Gop called him to his cabin and, opening a tattered book, said:

"Pay attention! Stop smoking! The making of a puppy into a captain starts here."

And he began reading - or rather, talking and yelling - the ancient words of the sea from the book. This was Gray's first lesson. In the course of a year he became acquainted with navigation, practice, shipbuilding, the laws of the sea, sailing directions and bookeeping. Captain Gop reached his hand out to him and said "we".

In Vancouver, Gray was found by his mother's letter, which was full of fear and tears. He answered: "I know. But if only you saw, like me - look through my eyes. If only you heard, like me - put a seashell to your ear, you will hear the eternal waves. If only you loved, like me - everything. Then, besides love and a cheque, I would have found a smile in your letter..." And he continued sailing, until the "Anselm" came with cargo to Dubelt, where, taking advantage of the stop, twenty-year-old Gray went off to visit the castle.

All around, everything was the same. Just as indestructible in details and in overall impression, as it was five years ago. Only the foliage of young elm-trees became denser, their leafy design on the facade of the building moved and grew.

The servants, running up to him, were happy, startled, and froze in the same respect, as if they met this Gray not longer ago than yesterday. He was told where his mother is. He walked into the lofty room and, quietly closing the door, soundlessly stopped, watching the grey-haired woman in a black dress. She stood before the Crucifixion, her passsionate whisper was heard like the beating of the heart: "...for the sailing, the traveling, the sick, the suffering and the imprisoned," Gray heard, breathing shallowly. "...and for my boy..." Then he said "I...", but could not utter anything more. His mother turned around. She was thinner, but in the haughtiness of her face shone a new expression, like that of her youth returned. She quickly approached her son - a short chest laugh, a restrained exclamation, and tears in her eyes - that was all. But in this minute she lived more powerfully and better than she had her entire life. "I recognized you immediately, oh my little one!" And Gray really stopped being big. He heard of his father's death, then he told about himself. She listened without rebukes or objections, but to herself, in everything that Gray said was the truth of his life, she saw only toys that her little boy was playing with. Continents, oceans and ships were those toys.

Gray spent seven days in the castle. On the eighth, taking a large sum of money, he returned to Dubelt and said to Captain Gop "Thank you. You were a good comrade. Goodbye now, old friend" - here he secured the meaning of those two words with a handshake as firm as a vice - "Now I will be sailing separately, on my own ship." Gop flushed, spat, tore his hand away from Gray's grip and walked off, but Gray chased him and hugged him. They sat at an inn, all together, twenty-four men with the crew, and drank, and yelled, and sang, and ate and drank everything that was in the inn's kitchen.

A little time passed, and in the port of Dubelt, the evening star shone above the dark line of a new mast. That was the "Secret", bought by Gray - a three-mast brig in two-hundred-and-sixty tons deadweight. Arthur Gray sailed for another four years as the captain and owner of a ship, until fate brought him to Lyss. But he always remembered that short chest laugh, full of heartfelt music, with which he was greeted at home. Once or twice a year he visited the castle, leaving the woman with gray hair the uncertain reassurance that such a big boy might be able to manage his toys.