Old Izergil and other stories / Старуха Изергиль и другие рассказы. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Even now tattered storm-clouds were meandering across the sky in odd forms and colourings – here they were vague, like columns of smoke, grey and ashen-blue; there they were mottled black and brown and as sharp as fragments of rock. And between them gleamed the tender night sky dotted with gold. All of this – the sounds and the smells, the clouds and the people – was sad and beautiful and seemed to be the introduction to a marvellous tale. It was as if everything had been checked in its growth and was dying.

“Why did you not go with them?” asked old Izergil, nodding in the direction of the sea.

She had become bent in two by time, her eyes, once shining black, were now dull and rheumy. And she had a strange voice – it sounded as if her tongue were made of crunching bone.

“I did not wish to,” I replied.

“You Russians are born old. All of you are as gloomy as demons. Our girls are afraid of you.

The moon came up. Large, round and blood-red, it seemed to have emerged from the bowels of that steppe which had swallowed up so much human flesh and blood; this, perhaps, was why it was so rich and fertile. The old woman and I were caught in the lacy shadow of the leaves as in a net. Across the steppe, which extended to our left, flitted cloud shadows made pale and transparent by the blue moonshine.

“Look, there goes Larra!”

I turned to where the old woman pointed a crooked shaking finger and saw the shadows moving – there were many of them, and one, darker than the others, was travelling faster; it was cast by a wisp of cloud sailing closer to the earth and more swiftly than its sisters.

“There is no one there,” I said.

“You are blinder than me, an old woman. Look. Do you not see something dark fleeing across the steppe?”

I looked again, and again saw nothing but shadows.

“It is only a shadow.

“Because it is Larra. A shadow is all that is left of him, and no wonder – he has been living for thousands of years. The sun has dried up his flesh and blood and bones and the wind has scattered them like dust. Just see how God can punish a man for his pride!”

“Tell me the story,” I said to the old woman, anticipating one of those delightful tales born of the steppe.

And she told me the story.