Opal

King Nurredin ascended to the throne of Syria at the age of sixteen. This was at a time when, according to the testimony of Ariost, the spirit of chivalry subordinated all nations to the same laws of honor, and united all tribes of different confessions into one worship of beauty. King Nurredin wore the royal crown not without glory; he surrounded it with the splendor of war and victories, and the thunder of the Syrian weapons carried far beyond the borders of our country. In battles and duels, in magnificent tournaments and in lonely wanderings, among Muslims and infidels, everywhere Nurredin’s sword left deep traces of his happiness and courage. His name was often repeated at the round table of the twelve braves, and many of Charles's famous companions bore on their fearless breasts the tale of the Nurredinov's exploits, inscribed with clear scars through their hacked armor. Thus, through luck and courage, the Syrian king acquired both power and honor; but his heart, deafened by the thunder of battle, understood only one beauty - danger, and knew only one feeling - the thirst for glory, unquenchable, boundless. Neither the clink of glasses, nor the songs of troubadours, nor the smiles of beauties interrupted for a minute the monotonous course of his thoughts; after the battle he prepared for a new battle; After the victory, he was not looking for rest, but was thinking about new victories, plotting new labors and conquests. Despite this, however, it happened that Syria was at peace with all its neighbors when Origellus, king of China, presented a new work to the sword of Nurredin. Minor dissensions between their subjects accidentally reached the ears of the rulers; the resentment grew reciprocated, and soon the death of one of the kings became the only fair condition for peace. Setting out on a campaign, Nurredin swore with his head and honor before the people and the army: until then the walls of Damascus will not be seen until all of China submits to his scepter and Origell himself repays with his head for the insults inflicted on him. “Nurredin has never sworn in vain.” A month later, all the Chinese regions, one after another, bowed to the sword of Nurredin. Defeated, Origells and the remainder of his chosen troops locked themselves in their capital. The siege began. Finding no means of salvation, Origell began to ask for peace, conceding half of his kingdom to the winner. Nurredin replied that he would not share it with the enemies, and the siege continued. Origello's army is daily decreasing in number and losing heart; supplies are running low; Nurredine does not give in to the most humiliating requests. Dejection took possession of the king of China; every day Origell's situation becomes worse; every day Nurredin gains new benefits. In desperation, the Chinese king offered Nurredin his entire kingdom of China, all his Indian possessions, all rights, all titles, so that he would be allowed to bring out his treasures, his wives, children and favorites. Nurredine remained relentless - and the siege continues. Finally, seeing the inevitability of his death, Origell cedes everything, treasures, favorites, children, and wives, and asked only for life. Nurredin, remembering his oath, rejected this proposal as well. The siege continues every day stronger, every day more irresistible. Ready for anything, the Chinese king decided to try the last, desperate means of salvation: sorcery. In his besieged capital stood a huge, ancient palace, which had remained empty for more than a century, because a terrible crime had once been committed there, so terrible that even the story of it had disappeared from people’s memory; for whoever knew it did not dare repeat it to another, and whoever did not know it was afraid to listen. From there, the only legend was that some kind of atrocity had been committed, and that the palace had remained unclean since then. Origell went there, consoling himself with the thought that it couldn’t be worse than what would happen. In the middle of the palace he found a platform; in the middle of the site there was a tent with a golden cone; in the middle of the tent there was a ladder with living railings; the stairs led him to an underground passage; an underground passage led him to a smooth field surrounded by impenetrable forest; There was a hut in the middle of the field; A Dervish sat in the middle of the hut and read the Black Book. Origell told him his situation and asked for help. The Dervish opened the Book of Heaven, and found in it under what star Nurredin was born, and in what constellation that star was, and how far it was from the sublunary earth. Having found the place of the star in the sky, Dervish began to look for its place in the destinies of heaven, and for this he opened another book, the Book of Magic Signs, where on a black page a fiery circle appeared before him: many stars glittered in the circle and on the circumference, some inside, others around the edges; Nurredin's star stood in the very center of the circle of fire. Seeing this, the sorcerer thought about it, and then turned to Origell with the following words: “Woe to you, King of China, for your enemy is invincible and no spell can overcome his happiness; his happiness is contained within his heart, and his soul is firmly created, and all his intentions must be fulfilled; for he never desired the impossible, never sought the unrealizable, never loved the unprecedented, and therefore no witchcraft can act on him!” “However,” continued Dervish, “I could overcome his happiness, I could entangle him with magic and slander, if there was such a beauty in the world who could arouse in him such love that would raise his heart above its star and make him think inexpressible thoughts, seek unbearable feelings and speak incomprehensible words; then I could destroy him.” “I could still destroy him when there was such an old man in the world who would sing him such a song that would take him far away to the thirtieth state, where the stars set.” “I could also have destroyed him when there was such a place in nature, with mountains, with hills, with forests, with valleys, with rivers, with gorges, such a place that would be so beautiful that Nurredin, looking at it, would forget even for a minute the ordinary worries of the current day.” “Then my charms could work on him.” “But there is no such beauty in the world, there is no such old man in the world, there is no such song, and there is no such place in nature.” “Therefore Nurredin cannot die.” “And for you, King of China, there is no salvation even in sorcery”: At these words of the warlock, Origell's despair reached its highest degree, and he was about to leave the Dervish's hut, when the latter restrained him with the following words: “Wait a little longer, King of China! There is still one way to destroy your enemy. Look: do you see the star Nurredinova? She seems to stand high in the sky; but if you want, my spells will go even higher. I will pluck a star from the sky; I will draw her to earth; I will compress it into a spark; I will lock her in a strong prison, and I will save you; but for this, sir, you must bow to my lord and offer him a sacrifice of subjection.” Origell agreed to everything. Tryn-grass was lit, a sign was drawn on the ground, the word was spoken, and the ritual was completed. That night - the troops were resting both in the city and in the camp - the sentries silently walked back and forth, and slowly called to each other; - suddenly: some star fell from the sky and falls, falls - along the dark vault, behind the dark forest; The sentries stopped: the star had disappeared - where? unknown; only where it fell was there still a light path flowing, and then only for a minute; - the sky is dark and quiet again; - The sentries again went their way. In the morning, the squire entered Nurredin’s tent: “Sovereign! some monk from Mount Ararat asks to see your bright face; he says that he has important secrets to tell you.” “Let him in!” “What do you want from me, Holy Father?” “Sovereign! For sixty years I did not leave my cell, experiencing the wisdom and secrets of creation in the stars and books. I penetrated into the innermost nature; I see the interior of the earth and the sun: the future is clear to my eyes; the fate of people and nations is open before me!..” "Monk! what do you want from me? “Sovereign! I brought you the ring in which your star is enclosed. Take it and your fate will be in your hands. If you put it on the little finger of your left hand and look into the shine of this stone, then your happiness will appear in it; but there you will see your death, and then your fate, great sovereign, will depend on you alone...” "Old man! - Nurredin interrupted him, - if everything hidden is open to you, then how did what has long been known to the whole world remain a secret for you? “Maybe you’re the only one who doesn’t know, hundred-year-old hermit, that Nurredin’s fate is in his hands even without your ring, that his happiness lies in his sword.” I don’t need another star except the one that plays on this blade - look how this iron shines - and how it knows how to punish deceivers!..” At this word Nurredin grabbed his sword; but when he unsheathed it, the old monk was already far behind the royal tent, on the road to the enemy camp. A few minutes later the squire re-entered Nurredin's headquarters. “Sovereign! the monk, who just now left you, returned again. He told me to give you this ring and asks you to verify with your own eyes the truth of his words.” “Where is he? Bring him here? “Leaving me the ring, he immediately disappeared into the forest adjacent to our camp, and only said that he would come tomorrow.” - Fine. Leave the ring here, and when the monk comes, send it to me. The ring did not sparkle with the richness of its decorations. The round opal, simply trimmed in gold, cast a dull rainbow of colors. “Isn’t my destiny already in this stone? – thought Nurredin. Tomorrow you will surely learn your fate from me, you impudent deceiver!..” And meanwhile the king put the ring on the little finger of his left hand and, looking at the iridescent stone, tried to discover something unusual in it. And in fact, in the cloudy-sky color of this ring there was some special shine that Nurredin had not noticed before in other opals. It was as if there was a spark of fire hidden inside him, which played and ran, then went out, then flared up again, and with every movement of his hand it flared up brighter and brighter. The more Nurredin looked at the ring, the more clearly he distinguished the light, and the more transparent the stone became. Here the light stopped like a bright star, deep inside the opal, the misty brilliance of which spread inside it, like the air of the evening sky, slightly covered with light clouds. In this light fog, in this bright, distant star, there was something irresistibly attractive to the king of Syria; not only could he not take his eyes off the wonderful ring, but, forgetting for this time and the war and Origella, he lost all his attention and all his thoughts in the contemplation of the wonderful light, which, now splitting into a rainbow, now again merging into one sun, grew and came closer more and more. The more closely Nurredin looked inside the opal, the deeper and more bottomless it seemed to him. Little by little, the golden hoop of the ring turned into a round window, through which another sky shone, brighter than ours, and another sun, just as bright, radiant, but seemingly even more cheerful and not so dazzling. This new sky became constantly brilliant and more diverse; this sun is getting bigger and bigger; now it has grown larger than the above-ground one, even brighter, even more solemn, and although dazzling, it is still invisible and attractive; it rolled quickly closer and closer; or, better said, Nurredin did not know whether the sun was approaching him or whether he was flying towards the sun. Now a new phenomenon strikes his intense feelings: from under the rolling sun comes a dull and indistinct hum, like the roar of a distant wind, or like the groan of silent bells; and the closer the sun, the louder the roar. Now Nurredin’s ear can clearly recognize different sounds in it: as if thousands of harps with multi-stringed ringings are merging into one consonant song; as if thousands of different voices are differently built into one consonance, some dying, some being born, and all obeying one, variously iridescent, immense harmony. These sounds, these songs penetrated to the depths of Nurredin's soul. For the first time he experienced what delight is. It was as if his heart, hitherto dumb, struck by the voice of its star, suddenly gained both hearing and language; just as a ringing metal, brought into the light for the first time by the hand of art, when meeting another metal, is shaken to the depth of its composition and rings with a response sound. Eagerly listening to the music around him, Nurredin could not distinguish what was coming from inside his heart and what was being heard from the outside. Now the sun has set and obscured the entire round arch of its sky; everything glowed with radiance; the air became hot, and stuffy, and dazzling; the music turned into deafening thunder; - but behold - the flame disappeared, the sounds fell silent, and the silent sun lost its rays, although it still did not stop growing and approaching, shining with the cold radiance of the rising month. But, constantly growing pale, soon this radiance was eclipsed; the sun took the form of the earth, and then it flew... hit... turned over... and - where is the earth? where is the ring?... Nurredin, without knowing how, found himself on a new planet. Everything here was strange and unprecedented: mountains made of cut diamonds; huge cliffs of pure silver, decorated with native reliefs, graceful statues, regular columns grown from gold and marble. There are dazzling gazebos made of multi-colored crystals. There is a grove there, and its cool shadow is filled with the most delicate, most intoxicating fragrance. There is a fountain of boiling and bright wine. There the bright river quietly splashes against its green banks; but in this splashing, in this conversation of the waves there is something reasonable, something understandable without words, some sophisticated story about the unrealizable, but happened, some kind of magical and tempting fairy tale. Instead of wind, music blew here; instead of the sun, the air itself shone here. Instead of clouds, transparent images of gods and people flew; as if taken by a magic wand from a painting by some great master, they, light, rose to the sky and, floating in harmonious movements, bathed in the air. For a long time the Syrian king walked in sweet thought around the new world, and neither his eyes nor his ears rested for a minute from the incessant rapture. But in the midst of the delights that surrounded him, another thought involuntarily pressed into his soul: with a sigh he recalled the music that his star made as it approached; he loved this music as if it were not a voice, but a living creature, a being with a soul and an image; longing for her interfered with his every feeling, and to hear those enchanting sounds again now became his only, painful desire. Meanwhile, in the depths of the green forest, a brilliant palace opened before him, miraculously fused from stopped smoke. The palace seemed to flow and wave and shimmer, and despite that, it stood motionless and firmly in one position. Transparent columns of pearl color were entwined with light garlands of pink clouds. The smoky portico rose harmoniously and iridescently, flaunting the grace of the most austere proportions; the huge vault seemed like a round cascade that fell in all directions in a bright arc, without a river and without splashes: everything in the palace was alive, everything was playing, and the whole of it seemed like a flying cloud, and yet this cloud constantly retained its strict forms. Nurredinovo’s heart began to beat strongly as he approached the palace: a premonition of some unexperienced happiness occupied his spirit and tormented his chest. Suddenly the light doors opened, and a maiden came out, dressed in the sun's rays, wearing a crown of bright stars, girded with a rainbow. "It's her!" exclaimed the Syrian king. Nurredin recognized her. True, her face was not visible under the foggy blanket; but by her flexible figure, by her graceful movements and slender gait, could a blind man not recognize in his place that this girl was the very Music of the Sun who so captivated his heart, As soon as the girl saw the Syrian king, at that very moment she turned her back to him and, as if frightened, began to run along a wide alley strewn with fine silver sand. The king is behind her. The closer he gets to her, the faster the girl runs, and the more the king speeds up his run. Grace in all her movements; her hair flowed over her shoulders; fast legs barely leave their narrow, slender footprints on the silver sand; but now the king is not far from her; Now he has overtaken her, wants to grab her slender figure - she passes by, quickly, quickly... as if Grace had turned into Lightning; easy, beautiful... as if Lightning turned into Grace. The girl disappeared; the king was left alone, tired, dissatisfied. In vain he looked for her in the palace and in the gardens; there was no trace of the girl anywhere. Suddenly, from behind a bush, he heard music, as if asking: what did you come here for? – “I swear by the beauty of this world,” answered Nurredin, “that I did not come here to harm you, and I will not do anything contrary to your will, beautiful maiden, if only you will come to me and open your face even for a minute.” “How did you come here?” the same music wafted to him. Nurredin told how he got the ring, and as soon as he finished, the same girl suddenly appeared to him from the shady gazebo; and at the same moment the king woke up in his tent. The ring was on his hand, and before him stood Khan Arbaz, the bravest of his commanders and the smartest of his advisers. “Sovereign! - he said to Nurredin - while you were sleeping, the enemy burst into our camp. None of the courtiers dared to wake you up; but I dared to interrupt your sleep, fearing that without your presence victory would be doubtful.” A stern, angry look was the answer to the minister; Nurredin reluctantly belted his sword and walked out of the headquarters with quiet steps. The battle is over. – The Chinese troops locked themselves within their walls again; Nurredin, returning to his tent, looked at the ring again. Again a star, again the sun and music, and a new world, and a cloud palace, and a maiden. Now she was bolder with him, although she did not want to lift her covers yet. The Chinese made a new sortie. The Syrians again repelled them; but Nurredin lost the best part of his army, which in the battle was no longer helped much by his hand, which was sometimes irresistible. Often, in the heat of battle, the Syrian king thought about his ring, and in the midst of the battle he remained an indifferent spectator, and, having been a spectator, seemed to see something else. Several days passed like this. Finally, the king of Syria became bored with the anxiety of the battle camp. Every minute he spent not inside the opal was unbearable to him. He forgot both glory and oath: the first sent Origella a proposal for peace, and, having concluded it on shameful terms, returned to Damascus; He entrusted the viziers with the rule of the kingdom, locked himself in his palace, and, under the death penalty, forbade his courtiers to enter the royal chambers without a special command. Nurredin spent almost all his time on the star, near the girl; but until now he had not yet seen her face. One day, moved by his requests, she agreed to lift the veil; and the beauty that then appeared before his eyes cannot be expressed in words, even magical ones, and the feeling that took possession of him at her gaze cannot be imagined even in a dream. If at that moment the Syrian king did not lose his life, then, of course, it was not because people did not die of delight, but probably only because there was no death on that star. Meanwhile, the Nurredinov ministers thought more about their own benefit than about the benefit of the state. Syria was exhausted from disorder and lawlessness. The servants of the ministers' servants oppressed the citizens; honors fell on the rich; the poor suffered; the people were overcome by despondency, and the neighbors laughed. Nurredin's life on the star was the middle ground between dreams and reality. Clarity of thoughts, holiness and freshness of impressions could only belong to waking life; but the magic of objects, the continuous rapture of feelings, the musicality of heart movements and the dreaminess of everything around him made his life more like a dream than reality. Maiden Music also seemed like a fusion of two worlds. The emotional expression of her face, constantly changing, was always in agreement with Nurredin’s thoughts, so that her beauty seemed to him as much a mirror of his heart as a reflection of her soul. Her voice was between sound and feeling: listening to it, Nurredin did not know whether he really heard the music, or whether everything was quiet and he was only imagining it? In every word of hers he found something new for his soul, and everything together was like some kind of happy memory of something before his life. Her conversation always went where his thoughts went, since her facial expression always followed his feelings; and yet everything she said constantly elevated his previous concepts, since her beauty constantly surprised his imagination. Often, hand in hand, they walked silently through the magical world; or, sitting by the magic river, listened to its fairy tales; or looked at the blue glow of the sky; or, relaxing on the wavy sofas of the cloud palace, they tried to collect into certain words everything scattered in their lives; or, spreading out her blanket, the girl turned it into an airplane carpet, and together they flew into the air, and bathed, and swam among the beautiful clouds; or, having risen high, they surrendered to the will of a random wind and rushed quickly across the boundless space and were carried away where the eye could not reach, where the thought could not reach, and they flew and flew so that the spirit froze... But the situation in Syria continually became worse, and all the more dangerous because terrible upheavals then took place in the whole of Asia. Ancient cities collapsed; great kingdoms wavered and fell; new ones arose violently; the nations moved from their places; unknown tribes came from nowhere; there were no limits between states; no one believed in tomorrow; everyone was trembling for the current minute; Nurredin alone did not care about anything. Internal unrest on all sides opened Syria to external enemies; one region fell away after another, and the most short-sighted minds began to predict its imminent destruction. “Girl! - Nurredin once said to the maiden Music - kiss me! “I can’t,” answered the girl, “if I kiss you, I will lose all the distinction of my charm, and in my beauty I will become equal to the ordinary beauties of the sublunary land. However, there is a way to fulfill your desire without losing my beauty... it depends on you... listen: if you love me, give me your ring; shining on my hand, it will destroy the harmful effect of your kiss.” “But how can I come to you without a ring?” “As you now see my land in this ring, so I will then see your land in it; “As you come to me now, so I will come to you,” said the maiden Music, and, taking the ring from Nurredin’s hand with one hand, she hugged him with the other. And at the moment when her lips touched the Nurredinovs’ lips, and the ring from his hand passed onto the girl’s hand, in that moment, which lasted perhaps no more than one minute, the new world suddenly disappeared along with the girl, and Nurredin, still tired from delight, found himself alone on the soft sofa of his palace. He waited a long time for the promised arrival of the maiden Music; but that day she did not come; not in two, not in a month, not in a year. In vain did he send messengers to all corners of the world to look for the Ararat hermit; the last of them has already returned without success. In vain he exhausted his treasures, buying round opals from everywhere; in none of them did he find his star. “For every person there is one star,” the Magi told him, “you, sir, have lost yours, you will never find another!” Melancholy took possession of the king of Syria, and he, of course, would not have thought of drowning her in the icy waves of his golden-sand Bardinez, if only, along with life, he had not been afraid of losing the last shadow of his former pleasures - the sad, dark pleasure of remembering his sun! Meanwhile, the same Origell, who had recently trembled at the sword of Nurredinov, was now himself besieging his capital. Soon the walls of Damascus were destroyed, the Chinese army broke into the royal palace, and all of Syria, together with its king, fell under the rule of the Chinese emperor. “This is an example of the rotating nature of happiness,” said Origell, pointing out to his commanders the chained Nurredin - now he is a slave, and along with freedom he has lost all the splendor of his former name. “You deserve your death,” he continued, addressing the king of Syria, “but I cannot deny you regret, seeing in your misfortunes the power of fate even more than your own guilt. I want to reward you as much as possible for the loss of your throne. Tell me: what do you want from me? What loss do you regret most? Which palace do you want to preserve? Which slave should I keep? Choose the best of my treasures and, if you want, I will allow you to be my deputy on your former throne!” “Thank you, sir! - answered Nurredin - but of all that you took from me, I do not regret anything. When I valued power, wealth and glory, I knew how to be both strong and rich. I was deprived of these blessings only when I stopped desiring them, and I consider that which people envy unworthy of my care. Vanity, all the blessings of the earth! Everything that deceives the desires of man is vanity, and the more captivating, the less true, the more vanity! Deception is all beautiful, and the more beautiful, the more deceptive; for the best thing in the world is a dream.”