Marchuk Nina Grigoryevna

Based on Korotkevich's novel
The states pass, and kingdoms pass, only the love is eternal, and the person cannot die, without having left marks on the earth. Vasily lived with the wife only seven years. She got sick and died, having left to the widower of the two-year-old son. Happiness which is pulled out at God was short.

… And he should have lived somehow further. For the sake of the son. And the prince lived almost like severe monk now. Hunted, spent the night on meadows, became permeated with the smell of a smoke of fires and a heather. From severe life of an eye of steel at it naive, as the world, and artless, as the wide sky over the head. Women were not necessary to it now. He it is firm, without seeing in it the victim, decided that they at him will never be him any more.

And here the family legend began. In the spring of 1775 the empress Catherine II decided to visit the new lands. It went there for a meeting with the Austrian emperor who had to arrive to Mogilev. Potemkin threw the Crimea and hurried to Polotsk – the first point where the autocratrix had to stop. From everywhere noblemen were going to Polotsk. The armed magnates went with the banners, conducting under them groups of the shlyakhta.

From the Mogilev nobility for a meeting of the empress the prince Vasily Zagorski was sent to Polotsk. He did not refuse – meeting did him the honor. Ekaterina went to Mogilev with the new favourite Lansky. That there about it is mute did not speak, but he really, not from respect, loved it.... He was afraid. He knew that it is unarmed that nothing depends on it that during every instant it together with his love can be thrown into a black chasm which presented to it the world without it...

In it there was a terrible bitterness because he soul felt: if to leave it, then on merits. It had neither force, nor Potyomkin's mind, nor Zorich's beauty. Than to hold it? It had only a love. All this does clear what occurred further.

... The most ancient city of east Slavs was decorated with flags, shone gold, rattled music, was poured by all flowers of clothes.

... The earth shivered from a rumble of bells. Two sparkling processions flew on the city. The empress went in the Orthodox Christian, Potemkin – to an uniatsky cathedral.

So two men connected with one woman faced in festive Polotsk. But any of them did not become the hero of these days. The person of 36 years in local clothes modest in appearance which cost if to take together with a saber became the hero, clothes of all others are more expensive. Only his look did not express either expectation, or irony, or sufferings, and was a simple polite and devoted look. Simple, as the free sky over this river. And Ekaterina noticed this look. Noticed still when he easy and naturally offered it a hand to build to a carpet at a cathedral.

Bells beat. Trees blossomed. And for an instant it seemed to it that here it – the one who will exempt it from hopeless love and irony of another. And he went aside and did not think of anything. It also priobnazhit a saber not from respect for the queen because never thought, good or bad she is a lord. And from respect for the woman. He did not know whether these lungs and hair which are slightly powdered by golden powder, bright blue eyes, dimples on cheeks and pleasant completeness are pleasant to it. She was a woman, and he respected the real women.

And she felt this special, majestic warehouse of soul of the prince unknown to it, and for an instant it was captured by such desire at all to incline to it on a shoulder the head that it constrained only big effort of will itself.... Illumination filled in all city. Five pyramids towered above the building of a Jesuit kollegium, rockets flew, fiery wheels violently span. And all the time, all this evening she at decent distance saw the person of surprising beauty, ingenuous, sincere and not absolutely indifferent to it. When the prince incidentally was near, it did not sustain.

– As it is beautiful! – she told. – To admit, even I never saw such high pyramids.

– What surprising? – artlessly he told. – They were made by me.

And it was not boasting.

– Why? – she asked.

– If it is not here, and in the capital where it is more of all, I would make them three times higher. For the sake of you.

It was too simply and faithfully for a compliment. He was the most attractive being who she happened to meet in life. And the first being whom she did not understand at all.

– I hope, you will not leave me on this travel, the prince?

– I accompany you to Mogilev. Order of the nobility.

Nightingales sang. Interest in the prince was so big that she almost did not notice and did not remember the first days of travel, did not pay attention to luxury of reception of Zorich in Shklov.

And he about Zorich's miracles only told:

– It is not enough taste. Rich Roman freedman.

It besides was not impudence – tone was not that.

– And what would be made by you? – not without coquetry she asked.

– I will not make it to you. And not because I cannot. But because I do not want. I will simply deliver you tents, the monarchess. He really put tents. During one of day's rests of a big train. Put on the high coast of Dnieper from where it was visible on thirty versts, put in a gray-haired magnificent wormwood and a heather.

… Infinite quantity of white silk tents with gold tops and one highest, from red silk. And in a wormwood were nearby grazed white as snow, horses. As if so was always. All day boats in which people played a sad melody floated the river.

After noisy, wasteful festivals it was the best of all happened to be worried, it was such rest that she did not know how to thank him.... It was with it above break. The suite sat in tents, such is there was its order. And what it was to the suffering Lansky's eyes?

– You loved sometime, the prince?

– Loved, the monarchess.

– Well, and I am pleasant to you? – she joked.

– I in admiration from you, – he artlessly answered.

– I hope, you admire me not as the state person? – she threatened.

– I did not think of you in this sense, – he just told.

No, she did not understand it. However, to anybody so did not attract it.

– I wait for you tonight, the prince – she said in low tones. It silently inclined the head. They met once again. In ten years. All these years Zagorski lived in the estate, brought up the son, built the palace in Vechetarevo. Surprised all that he received nothing for this favor. It was strange because all remembered the empress's eye which she looked at it at farewell.

In the summer of 1785 the empress went to the Crimea. In a year Alexander Lansky died before. Died of abuse of a kontaridama (drugs). She got used, got used to it in ten years. There's nothing to be done, if there is no present? Six months it was inconsolable. And here the road waited. Expected the cleaned galleries in Kiev, expected a window-dressing. All the time she was tormented by thought: whether he will meet her? Whether will leave towards?

When Dnieper opened to eyes, on a steep of the opposite coast riders took off, and horses under them up to the breast sank in the blossoming herbs. Fellow travelers still argued what it could be, and only she knew – IT. The flotilla of boats flew cost the parties, on wide rafts carried horses, spotty drykgant for whom this earth was famous. Water under oars boiled, and on a nose of a forward boat there was with an oar in a hand the one whom heart because it revived for one, last night youth with a bitter smell of a wormwood behind tent silk could not forget.

Without having waited when the boat hits against the coast, he jumped almost knee-deep in water and a measured, easy step began to climb a gentle slope to its carriage. It was the same, only the gray hair densely lay in hair and is quieter than eye steel. And he just threw to her legs a casket with gold and a skin of a silvery fox. And quiet eyes were finished speaking: "I remember". "And I cannot forget", – her eyes answered. And suddenly pain squeezed her heart. Here again the river flows, the wormwood as a skin of this fox is again silvered, again there is IT. Nothing changed. Only irreparably grew old, she only changed.

– Take this herd, the great monarchess! – he told. – There are no such horses any more anywhere. Let them truly carry you as my earth will truly carry you.

– It is not necessary, the prince.

And it inclined friendly and easy the gray-haired head.

– And where your son, prince? It here?

– Igor! – the prince called. – Leave.

And here she saw how from motley crowd the young man, harmonous acted, similar and not similar to the father. An easy step approached it, dexterous as the fantastic tsarevitch, in the embroidered blue clothes, in blue boots, with a gilded dagger on one side, exactly as then the father, ten years ago.

Went and did not know that each its step – a step on heart of that which looked at it. Igor approached and stopped. It was the queen. That which should worship. The young man looked at it. And she seemed it a beauty.

– Little Litvin, – she sadly told. – Sometime it will replace this dagger with a saber and will go to us.

His cheeks flashed, he deeply sighed. And then took out an edge from a sheath, broke steel and threw to her legs.... Driving off, she told the prince Zagorski:

– Did not want to take then – take now. For it.

– For it I will take.

It were lands in the south. Igor saw the queen to Kiev. She asked about it. Igor Zagorski was 24 years old when the empress died. Vasily Zagorski died a year earlier. In some fifty with small. Finished its this way of life which he lived lately. Memory. Son moreover hunting. And as the son matured, fading began. The prince Zagorski was on hunting in two days prior to death. And for tomorrow got sick. Strong hands not movably lay on the atlas of a cover. Prichastivshis, he said goodbye to the son and stopped.

And only one couple of minutes prior to death, he opened eyes, told one word is hardly heard:

– Wormwood...

Also it was unknown about what it it, about that lunar wormwood and a heather or in general about life. … The son reported about death of the father to St. Petersburg. Saying goodbye, Ekaterina asked to write it and gave the press. He told nothing at that time to the father. And now wrote. Month two answers was not. And then on a vechetarevsky farmstead the eight of horses brought the vehicle fettered by iron. On it there was a big integral block of malachite. Surprising smoky-green malachite in gray stains – as a wormwood. On a block there were only four words: "Vale, principium finis mie!" In translation – "hi, the beginning of my end". Several months later the empress died.

Shag newspaper, on December 21, 2000



• The one whom heart could not forget
• To return back