Голубые ступени / Stepping into the blue

Then all the little kids would go and sit in a row on the old damp log at the sand-lot, planting themselves on scraps of old leatherette handbags and dried-up newspapers.

There was no anticipation for him. He dozed on through one unending day, momentarily waking from his dank drowsiness only to immerse himself in it once again, not daring to turn over or even move his fingers – actions which would only provoke acute pain. And he would put up with it – he would put up with it until the very last moment when it seemed his stomach would burst, and never mind the throbbing and spinning in his head, he would make his way across the cold floor, hanging on to the walls, to the bathroom, and stand for what seemed forever over the rusty toilet bowl with its steady trickle of water.

Then, feeling a sudden chill, he would go lightly tripping with an inexplicable delight back to his now-cold bed, tuck in his feet, curl up and practically faint – now he had to pay the penalty. Pricks of pain came one after another with relentless cruelty, and his only defense was to lie completely still, and that was so hard when everything hurt. He would close his eyes, and again his hungry, exhausted little body would be swallowed up in a soft and pleasing drowsiness.

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notes

Примечания

1

Ten years with no outside communication permitted – a Soviet euphemism indicating execution by a firing squad.

2

It was a common occurrence for families of anyone imprisoned as an ’enemy of the state’ to be ostracized by most of their acquaintances.

3

Alexander Pushkin – a celebrated Russian poet of the early 19th century, considered by many to be the father of Russian literature.

4

The Doctors’ plot (in Russian: delo vrachej – literally, «the doctors’ case») – a supposed plot by a number of doctors (many of them Jewish) to kill Stalin, widely held to be a ruse perpetrated by Stalin himself.