Read the story precious dust

To my devoted friend Tatyana Alekseevna Paustovskaya,
Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.

You should always strive for beauty.

Much in this work is expressed fragmentarily and, perhaps, not clearly enough.

Much will be considered controversial.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.

Important issues of the ideological basis of our writing are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have any significant disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.

In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.

But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jeanne Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning the workshops of artisans in his neighborhood.

Shamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city. Of course, it would be possible to describe this outskirts in detail and thereby lead the reader away from the main thread of the story. But perhaps it’s only worth mentioning that the old ramparts are still preserved on the outskirts of Paris. At the time when this story took place, the ramparts were still covered with thickets of honeysuckle and hawthorn, and birds nested in them.

The scavenger's shack was nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinsmiths, shoemakers, cigarette butt collectors and beggars.

If Maupassant had become interested in the life of the inhabitants of these shacks, he would probably have written several more excellent stories. Perhaps they would have added new laurels to his established fame.

Unfortunately, no outsiders looked into these places except the detectives. And even those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen things.

Judging by the fact that the neighbors nicknamed Shamet “Woodpecker,” one must think that he was thin, sharp-nosed, and from under his hat he always had a tuft of hair sticking out, like the crest of a bird.

Jean Chamet once saw better days. He served as a soldier in the army of "Little Napoleon" during the Mexican War.

Shamet was lucky. At Vera Cruz he fell ill with a severe fever. The sick soldier, who had not yet been in a single real firefight, was sent back to his homeland. The regimental commander took advantage of this and instructed Shamet to take his daughter Suzanne, an eight-year-old girl, to France.

The commander was a widower and therefore was forced to take the girl with him everywhere. But this time he decided to part with his daughter and send her to her sister in Rouen. Mexico's climate was deadly for European children. Moreover, the chaotic guerrilla warfare created many sudden dangers.

During Chamet's return to France, the Atlantic Ocean was smoking hot. The girl was silent the whole time. She even looked at the fish flying out of the oily water without smiling.

Shamet took care of Suzanne as best he could. He understood, of course, that she expected from him not only care, but also affection. And what could he come up with that was affectionate, a soldier of a colonial regiment? What could he do to keep her busy? A game of dice? Or rough barracks songs?

But it was still impossible to remain silent for long. Shamet increasingly caught the girl’s perplexed gaze. Then he finally made up his mind and began awkwardly telling her his life, remembering in the smallest detail a fishing village on the English Channel, shifting sands, puddles after low tide, a village chapel with a cracked bell, his mother, who treated neighbors for heartburn.

In these memories, Shamet could not find anything to cheer up Suzanne. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories greedily and even forced him to repeat them, demanding more and more details.

Shamet strained his memory and extracted these details from it, until in the end he lost confidence that they really existed. These were no longer memories, but their faint shadows. They melted away like wisps of fog. Shamet, however, never imagined that he would need to recapture this long-gone time in his life.

One day a vague memory of a golden rose arose. Either Shamet saw this rough rose, forged from blackened gold, suspended from a crucifix in the house of an old fisherman, or he heard stories about this rose from those around him.

No, perhaps he even saw this rose once and remembered how it glittered, although there was no sun outside the windows and a gloomy storm was rustling over the strait. The further, the more clearly Shamet remembered this brilliance - several bright lights under the low ceiling.

Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman was not selling her jewel. She could fetch a lot of money for it. Only Shamet’s mother insisted that selling a golden rose was a sin, because it was given to the old woman “for good luck” by her lover when the old woman, then still a funny girl, worked at a sardine factory in Odierne.

“There are few such golden roses in the world,” said Shamet’s mother. “But everyone who has them in their house will definitely be happy.” And not only them, but also everyone who touches this rose.

The boy was looking forward to making the old woman happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house shook from the wind, and in the evenings there was no fire lit in it.

So Shamet left the village, without waiting for a change in the old woman’s fate. Only a year later, a fireman he knew from a mail boat in Le Havre told him that the old woman’s son, an artist, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, had unexpectedly arrived from Paris. From then on the shack was no longer recognizable. It was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, receive a lot of money for their daubs.

One day, when Chamet, sitting on the deck, combed Suzanne’s wind-tangled hair with his iron comb, she asked:

- Jean, will someone give me a golden rose?

– Where did this happen? – Susie asked doubtfully.

- I told you - in Annam. In Indochina. There, the ocean burns like hell, and jellyfish look like lace ballerina skirts. And it was so damp there that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let them hang me if I'm lying!

Before this incident, Shamet had heard a lot of soldiers’ lies, but he himself never lied. Not because he couldn’t do it, but there was simply no need. Now he considered it a sacred duty to entertain Suzanne.

Chamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed her over to a tall woman with pursed yellow lips - Suzanne's aunt. The old woman was covered in black glass beads and sparkled like a circus snake.

The girl, seeing her, clung tightly to Shamet, to his faded overcoat.

- Nothing! – Shamet said in a whisper and pushed Suzanne on the shoulder. “We, the rank and file, don’t choose our company commanders either. Be patient, Susie, soldier!

Source

Brief summary of Paustovsky’s “Golden Rose”

Precious Dust

Scavenger Jean Chamet cleans up craft workshops in a Parisian suburb.

While serving as a soldier during the Mexican War, Shamet contracted a fever and was sent home. The regimental commander instructed Shamet to take his eight-year-old daughter Suzanne to France. All the way, Shamet took care of the girl, and Suzanne willingly listened to his stories about the golden rose that brings happiness.

One day, Shamet meets a young woman whom he recognizes as Suzanne. Crying, she tells Shamet that her lover cheated on her, and now she has no home. Suzanne moves in with Shamet. Five days later she makes peace with her lover and leaves.

After breaking up with Suzanne, Shamet stops throwing away rubbish from jewelry workshops, in which a little gold dust always remains. He builds a small winnowing fan and winnows the jewelry dust. Shamet gives the gold mined over many days to the jeweler to make a golden rose.

Rose is ready, but Shamet finds out that Suzanne has left for America, and her trace has been lost. He quits his job and gets sick. Nobody takes care of him. Only the jeweler who made the rose visits him.

Soon Shamet dies. The jeweler sells a rose to an elderly writer and tells him the story of Shamet. The rose appears to the writer as a prototype of creative activity, in which, “like from these precious specks of dust, a living stream of literature is born.”

Inscription on a boulder

Paustovsky lives in a small house on the Riga seaside. Nearby lies a large granite boulder with the inscription “In memory of all who died and will die at sea.” Paustovsky considers this inscription a good epigraph for a book about writing.

Writing is a calling. The writer strives to convey to people the thoughts and feelings that concern him. At the behest of the call of his time and people, a writer can become a hero and endure difficult trials.

An example of this is the fate of the Dutch writer Eduard Dekker, known under the pseudonym “Multatuli” (Latin for “Long-suffering”). Serving as a government official on the island of Java, he defended the Javanese and took their side when they rebelled. Multatuli died without receiving justice.

The artist Vincent Van Gogh was equally selflessly devoted to his work. He was not a fighter, but he contributed his paintings glorifying the earth to the treasury of the future.

Flowers made from shavings

The greatest gift remaining to us from childhood is a poetic perception of life. A person who has retained this gift becomes a poet or writer.

During his poor and bitter youth, Paustovsky writes poetry, but soon realizes that his poems are tinsel, flowers made from painted shavings, and instead writes his first story.

First story

Paustovsky learns this story from a resident of Chernobyl.

The Jew Yoska falls in love with the beautiful Christa. The girl loves him too - small, red-haired, with a squeaky voice. Khristya moves into Yoska's house and lives with him as his wife.

The town begins to worry - a Jew lives with an Orthodox woman. Yoska decides to be baptized, but Father Mikhail refuses him. Yoska leaves, cursing the priest.

Upon learning of Yoska's decision, the rabbi curses his family. For insulting a priest, Yoska goes to prison. Christia dies of grief. The police officer releases Yoska, but he loses his mind and becomes a beggar.

Returning to Kyiv, Paustovsky writes his first story about this, re-reads it in the spring and understands that the author’s admiration for Christ’s love is not felt in it.

Paustovsky believes that his stock of everyday observations is very poor. He gives up writing and wanders around Russia for ten years, changing professions and communicating with a variety of people.

Lightning

The idea is lightning. It arises in the imagination, saturated with thoughts, feelings, and memory. For a plan to appear, we need a push, which can be everything happening around us.

The embodiment of the plan is a downpour. The idea develops from constant contact with reality.

Inspiration is a state of elation, awareness of one’s creative power. Turgenev calls inspiration “the approach of God,” and for Tolstoy “inspiration consists in the fact that suddenly something is revealed that can be done...”.

Riot of Heroes

Almost all writers make plans for their future works. Writers who have the gift of improvisation can write without a plan.

As a rule, the heroes of a planned work resist the plan. Leo Tolstoy wrote that his heroes do not obey him and do as they want. All writers know this inflexibility of heroes.

The story of one story. Devonian limestone

1931 Paustovsky rents a room in the city of Livny, Oryol region. The owner of the house has a wife and two daughters. Paustovsky meets the eldest, nineteen-year-old Anfisa, on the river bank in the company of a frail and quiet fair-haired teenager. It turns out that Anfisa loves a boy with tuberculosis.

One night Anfisa commits suicide. For the first time, Paustovsky witnesses immense female love, which is stronger than death.

The railway doctor Maria Dmitrievna Shatskaya invites Paustovsky to move in with her. She lives with her mother and brother, geologist Vasily Shatsky, who went crazy in captivity among the Basmachi of Central Asia. Vasily gradually gets used to Paustovsky and begins to talk. Shatsky is an interesting conversationalist, but at the slightest fatigue he begins to delirium. Paustovsky describes his story in Kara-Bugaz.

The idea for the story appears in Paustovsky during Shatsky’s stories about the first explorations of the Kara-Buga Bay.

Studying geographical maps

In Moscow, Paustovsky takes out a detailed map of the Caspian Sea. In his imagination, the writer wanders along its shores for a long time. His father does not approve of the hobby of geographical maps - it promises a lot of disappointments.

The habit of imagining different places helps Paustovsky to correctly see them in reality. Trips to the Astrakhan steppe and Emba give him the opportunity to write a book about Kara-Bugaz. Only a small part of the collected material is included in the story, but Paustovsky does not regret it - this material will be useful for a new book.

Notches on the heart

Every day of life leaves its marks in the writer’s memory and heart. A good memory is one of the foundations of writing.

While working on the story “Telegram,” Paustovsky manages to fall in love with the old house where the lonely old woman Katerina Ivanovna, the daughter of the famous engraver Pozhalostin, lives, for its silence, the smell of birch smoke from the stove, and the old engravings on the walls.

Katerina Ivanovna, who lived with her father in Paris, suffers greatly from loneliness. One day she complains to Paustovsky about her lonely old age, and a few days later she becomes very ill. Paustovsky calls Katerina Ivanovna’s daughter from Leningrad, but she is three days late and arrives after the funeral.

Next, Paustovsky reflects on the richness of the Russian language, dreams of publishing various explanatory dictionaries and a short book about the lives of remarkable people.

Diamond tongue

Spring in low forest

The wonderful properties and richness of the Russian language are revealed only to those who love and know their people and feel the charm of our land. In Russian there are many good words and names for everything that exists in nature.

We have books by experts on nature and folk language - Kaigorodov, Prishvin, Gorky, Aksakov, Leskov, Bunin, Alexei Tolstoy and many others. The main source of language is the people themselves. Paustovsky talks about a forester who is fascinated by the kinship of words: spring, birth, homeland, people, relatives...

Language and nature

During the summer Paustovsky spent in the forests and meadows of Central Russia, the writer relearned many words that were known to him, but distant and unexperienced.

For example, “rain” words. Each type of rain has a separate original name in Russian. The stinging rain is pouring vertically and heavily. A fine mushroom rain falls from the low clouds, after which mushrooms begin to grow wildly. People call blind rain falling in the sun “The princess is crying.”

One of the beautiful words in the Russian language is the word “zarya”, and next to it is the word “zarnitsa”.

Piles of flowers and herbs

Paustovsky fishes in a lake with high, steep banks. He sits near the water in dense thickets. Above, in a meadow overgrown with flowers, village children are collecting sorrel. One of the girls knows the names of many flowers and herbs. Then Paustovsky finds out that the girl’s grandmother is the best herbalist in the region.

Dictionaries

Paustovsky dreams of new dictionaries of the Russian language, in which it would be possible to collect words related to nature; apt local words; words from different professions; garbage and dead words, bureaucracy that clogs the Russian language. These dictionaries should have explanations and examples so that they can be read like books.

This work is beyond the power of one person, because our country is rich in words that describe the diversity of Russian nature. Our country is also rich in local dialects, figurative and euphonious. The maritime terminology and spoken language of sailors is excellent, which, like the language of people of many other professions, deserves a separate study.

Incident at Alschwang's store

Winter 1921. Paustovsky lives in Odessa, in the former ready-to-wear store Alshwang and Moryak, where many young writers work. Of the old writers, only Andrei Sobol often comes to the editorial office, he is always an excited person about something.

One day Sobol brings his story to The Sailor, interesting and talented, but torn and confused. No one dares to suggest that Sobol correct the story because of his nervousness.

Corrector Blagov corrects the story overnight, without changing a single word, but simply by placing the punctuation marks correctly. When the story is published, Sobol thanks Blagov for his skill.

It's like nothing

Almost every writer has his own kind genius. Paustovsky considers Stendhal his inspiration.

There are many seemingly insignificant circumstances and skills that help writers work. It is known that Pushkin wrote best in the fall, often skipped places that were not given to him, and returned to them later. Gaidar came up with phrases, then wrote them down, then came up with them again.

Paustovsky describes the features of the writing work of Flaubert, Balzac, Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Andersen.

Old man in the station cafeteria

Paustovsky tells in great detail the story of a poor old man who did not have money to feed his dog Petya. One day an old man walks into a cafeteria where young people are drinking beer. Petit starts begging them for a sandwich. They throw a piece of sausage at the dog, insulting its owner in the process. The old man forbids Petya to take a handout and buys her a sandwich with his last pennies, but the barmaid gives him two sandwiches - this will not ruin her.

The writer discusses the disappearance of details from modern literature. Detail is needed only if it is characteristic and closely related to intuition. Good detail evokes in the reader a true picture of a person, event, or era.

White Night

Gorky is planning to publish a series of books “The History of Factories and Charles Eugene Lonseville, Artillery Engineer of Napoleon’s Grand Army...”.

Materials about this person “consolidate” the data collected by the writer. A participant in the French Revolution, Charles Lonseville was captured by the Cossacks and exiled to the Petrozavodsk plant, where he died of fever. The material was dead until the man who became the hero of the story “The Fate of Charles Lonseville” appeared.

Life-giving principle

Imagination is a property of human nature that creates fictional people and events. Imagination fills the voids of human life. The heart, imagination and mind are the environment where culture is born.

Imagination is based on memory, and memory is based on reality. The law of associations sorts memories that are intimately involved in creativity. The wealth of associations testifies to the richness of the writer’s inner world.

Night stagecoach

Paustovsky plans to write a chapter on the power of imagination, but replaces it with a story about Andersen, who travels from Venice to Verona by night stagecoach. Andersen's traveling companion turns out to be a lady in a dark cloak. Andersen suggests turning off the lantern - the darkness helps him invent different stories and imagine himself, ugly and shy, as a young, lively handsome man.

Andersen returns to reality and sees that the stagecoach is standing, and the driver is bargaining with several women who are asking for a ride. The driver demands too much, and Adersen pays extra for the women.

Through the lady in the cloak, the girls try to find out who helped them. Andersen replies that he is a predictor, he can guess the future and see in the dark. He calls the girls beauties and predicts love and happiness for each of them. In gratitude, the girls kiss Andersen.

In Verona, a lady who introduces herself as Elena Guiccioli invites Andersen to visit. When they meet, Elena admits that she recognized him as a famous storyteller, who in life is afraid of fairy tales and love. She promises to help Andersen as soon as necessary.

A long-planned book

Paustovsky decides to write a book-collection of short biographies, among which there is room for several stories about unknown and forgotten people, unmercenaries and ascetics. One of them is the river captain Olenin-Volgar, a man with an extremely eventful life.

In this collection, Paustovsky also wants to mention his friend - the director of a local history museum in a small town in Central Russia, whom the writer considers an example of dedication, modesty and love for his land.

What follows are Paustovsky's notes about some of the writers on his list.

Chekhov

Some stories of the writer and doctor Chekhov are exemplary psychological diagnoses. Chekhov's life is instructive. For many years he squeezed the slave out of himself drop by drop - this is exactly what Chekhov said about himself. Paustovsky keeps a part of his heart in Chekhov's house on Outka.

Alexander Blok

In Blok’s early little-known poems there is a line that evokes all the charm of foggy youth: “The spring of my distant dream...”. This is an insight. The entire Block consists of such insights.

Guy de Maupassant

Maupassant's creative life is as swift as a meteor. A merciless observer of human evil, towards the end of his life he was inclined to glorify love-suffering and love-joy.

In his last hours, it seemed to Maupassant that his brain was being eaten away by some kind of poisonous salt. He regretted the feelings he had rejected in his hasty and tiresome life.

Maksim Gorky

For Paustovsky, Gorky is all of Russia. Just as one cannot imagine Russia without the Volga, one cannot imagine that there is no Gorky in it. He loved and knew Russia thoroughly. Gorky discovered talents and defined the era. From people like Gorky, one can begin the chronology.

Victor Hugo

Hugo, a frantic, stormy man, exaggerated everything he saw in life and wrote about. He was a knight of freedom, its herald and messenger. Hugo inspired many writers to love Paris, and for this they are grateful to him.

Mikhail Prishvin

Prishvin was born in the ancient city of Yelets. The nature around Yelets is very Russian, simple and sparse. This property of hers lies the basis of Prishvin’s literary vigilance, the secret of Prishvin’s charm and witchcraft.

Alexander Green

Paustovsky is surprised by Green's biography, his hard life as a renegade and restless vagabond. It is not clear how this withdrawn and suffering from adversity man retained the great gift of a powerful and pure imagination, faith in man. The prose poem “Scarlet Sails” ranked him among the wonderful writers seeking perfection.

Eduard Bagritsky

There are so many fables in Bagritsky’s stories about himself that sometimes it is impossible to distinguish the truth from the legend. Bagritsky's inventions are a characteristic part of his biography. He himself sincerely believed in them.

Bagritsky wrote magnificent poetry. He died early, without having achieved “a few more difficult peaks of poetry.”

The art of seeing the world

Knowledge of areas adjacent to art - poetry, painting, architecture, sculpture and music - enriches the writer’s inner world and gives special expressiveness to his prose.

Painting helps a prose writer to see colors and light. An artist often notices something that writers don't see. Paustovsky sees for the first time all the variety of colors of Russian bad weather thanks to Levitan’s painting “Above Eternal Peace.”

The perfection of classical architectural forms will not allow the writer to create a ponderous composition.

Talented prose has its own rhythm, depending on the sense of language and a good “writer's ear”, which is connected with a musical ear.

Poetry enriches the language of a prose writer most of all. Leo Tolstoy wrote that he would never understand where the border between prose and poetry is. Vladimir Odoevsky called poetry a harbinger of “that state of humanity when it will stop achieving and begin to use what has been achieved.”

In the back of a truck

1941 Paustovsky rides in the back of a truck, hiding from German air raids. A fellow traveler asks the writer what he thinks about during times of danger. Paustovsky answers - about nature.

Nature will act on us with all its strength when our state of mind, love, joy or sadness comes into full harmony with it. Nature must be loved, and this love will find the right ways to express itself with the greatest strength.

Parting words to yourself

Paustovsky finishes the first book of his notes on writing, realizing that the work is not finished and there are many topics left that need to be written about.

PRECIOUS DUST

I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jean Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning up craft workshops in his neighborhood.

Chamet lived in a shack on the outskirts of the city. Of course, it would be possible to describe this outskirts in detail and thereby take the reader away from the main thread of the story. But, perhaps, it is only worth mentioning that the old ramparts have still been preserved on the outskirts of Paris. At that time, When this story took place, the ramparts were still covered with thickets of honeysuckle and hawthorn, and birds nested in them.

The scavenger's shack was nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinsmiths, shoemakers, cigarette butt collectors and beggars.

Unfortunately, no outsiders looked into these places except the detectives. And even those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen things.

Judging by the fact that the neighbors nicknamed Shamet “the woodpecker,” one must think that he was thin, had a sharp nose, and from under his hat he always had a tuft of hair sticking out, like the crest of a bird.

Jean Chamet once saw better days. He served as a soldier in the army of “Little Napoleon” during the Mexican War.

During Chamet's return to France, the Atlantic Ocean was smoking hot. The girl was silent the whole time. She even looked at the fish flying out of the oily water without smiling.

In these memories, Shamet could not find anything funny to amuse Suzanne. But the girl, to his surprise, listened to these stories with greed and even forced him to repeat them, demanding new details.

Everyone in the village was surprised that the old woman was not selling her jewel. She could fetch a lot of money for it. Only Shamet’s mother insisted that selling the golden rose was a sin, because it was given to the old woman “for good luck” by her lover when the old woman, then still a funny girl, worked at a sardine factory in Odierne.

The boy Shamet was looking forward to making the old woman happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house shook from the wind, and in the evenings no fire was lit in it.

So Shamet left the village, without waiting for a change in the old woman’s fate. Only a year later, a familiar fireman from the mail boat in Le Havre told him that the old woman’s son, an artist, bearded, cheerful and wonderful, unexpectedly came from Paris. From then on the shack was no longer recognizable. It was filled with noise and prosperity. Artists, they say, receive a lot of money for their daubs.

One day, when Chamet, sitting on the deck, combed Suzanne’s wind-tangled hair with his iron comb, she asked:

- Jean, will someone give me a golden rose?

– Where did this happen? – Susie asked doubtfully.

- I told you - in Annam. In Indo-China. There, the ocean burns like hell, and jellyfish look like lace ballerina skirts. And it was so damp there that mushrooms grew in our boots overnight! Let them hang me if I'm lying!

Chamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed her over to a tall woman with a pursed yellow mouth - Suzanne's aunt. The old woman was covered in black glass beads, like a circus snake.

The girl, seeing her, clung tightly to Shamet, to his faded overcoat.

- Nothing! – Shamet said in a whisper and pushed Suzanne on the shoulder. “We, the rank and file, don’t choose our company commanders either. Be patient, Susie, soldier!

Source

Golden Rose – Paustovsky Konstantin Georgievich – Page 1

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Konstantin Paustovsky

Golden Rose

Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.

Saltykov-Shchedrin

You should always strive for beauty.

Honore Balzac

Much in this work is expressed abruptly and, perhaps, not clearly enough.

Much will be considered controversial.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.

Huge layers of ideological justification for our work as writers are not touched upon in the book, since we do not have major disagreements in this area. The heroic and educational significance of literature is clear to everyone.

In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.

But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

PRECIOUS DUST

I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jean Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning up craft workshops in his neighborhood.

The scavenger's shack was nestled at the foot of the northern ramparts, next to the houses of tinsmiths, shoemakers, cigarette butt collectors and beggars.

Unfortunately, no outsiders looked into these places except the detectives. And even those appeared only in cases where they were looking for stolen things.

Jean Chamet once saw better days. He served as a soldier in the army of "Little Napoleon" during the Mexican War.

During Chamet's return to France, the Atlantic Ocean was smoking hot. The girl was silent the whole time. She even looked at the fish flying out of the oily water without smiling.

The boy Shamet was looking forward to making the old woman happy. But there were no signs of happiness. The old woman's house shook from the wind, and in the evenings no fire was lit in it.

One day, when Chamet, sitting on the deck, combed Suzanne’s wind-tangled hair with his iron comb, she asked:

- Jean, will someone give me a golden rose?

“Anything is possible,” replied Shamet. “There will be some eccentric for you too, Susie.” There was one skinny soldier in our company. He was damn lucky. He found a broken golden jaw on the battlefield. We drank it down with the whole company. This was during the Annamite War. Drunk artillerymen fired a mortar for fun, the shell hit the mouth of an extinct volcano, exploded there, and from the surprise the volcano began to puff and erupt. God knows what his name was, that volcano! Kraka-Taka, I think. The eruption was just right! Forty civilian natives died. Just think that so many people disappeared because of a worn jaw! Then it turned out that our colonel had lost this jaw. The matter, of course, was hushed up - the prestige of the army is above all. But we got really drunk then.

– Where did this happen? – Susie asked doubtfully.

Chamet brought the girl to Rouen and handed her over to a tall woman with a pursed yellow mouth - Suzanne's aunt. The old woman was covered in black glass beads, like a circus snake.

The girl, seeing her, clung tightly to Shamet, to his faded overcoat.

- Nothing! – Shamet said in a whisper and pushed Suzanne on the shoulder. “We, the rank and file, don’t choose our company commanders either. Be patient, Susie, soldier!

Shamet left. Several times he looked back at the windows of the boring house, where the wind did not even move the curtains. On the narrow streets the bustling knocking of clocks could be heard from the shops. In Shamet's soldier's backpack lay a memory of Susie - a crumpled blue ribbon from her braid. And the devil knows why, but this ribbon smelled so tenderly, as if it had been in a basket of violets for a long time.

Golden Rose - Paustovsky K.G.

Literature has been removed from the laws of decay. She alone does not recognize death.

Saltykov-Shchedrin

You should always strive for beauty.

Honore Balzac

Much in this work is expressed abruptly and, perhaps, not clearly enough.

Much will be considered controversial.

This book is not a theoretical study, much less a guide. These are simply notes on my understanding of writing and my experiences.

In this book I have told so far only the little that I have managed to tell.

But if I, even in a small way, managed to convey to the reader an idea of the beautiful essence of writing, then I will consider that I have fulfilled my duty to literature.

Precious Dust

I can't remember how I came across this story about the Parisian garbage man Jean Chamet. Shamet made a living by cleaning up craft workshops in his neighborhood.