Читать книгу Dark Avenues / Темные аллеи. Книга для чтения на английском языке - Иван Бунин, Иван Алексеевич Бунин - Страница 12

The nocturnal dark-blue blackness of the sky, covered in quietly floating clouds, everywhere white, but beside the high moon pale blue. If you look closely, it isn’t the clouds floating, it’s the moon, and near it, together with it, a star’s golden tear is shed: the moon glides away into the heights that have no end, and carries the star away with it, ever higher and higher.

She is sitting sideways on the ledge of a wide open window and, with her head leaning out, is looking up – her head is spinning a little from the movement of the sky. He is standing at her knees.

“What colour is it? I can’t define it! Can you, Tolya?”

“The colour of what, Kisa?”

“Don’t call me that, I’ve told you a thousand times already…”

“I obey, Ksenya Alexandrovna, ma’am.”

“I’m talking about that sky between the clouds. What a marvelous colour! Both terrifying and marvellous. Now that is truly heavenly, there aren’t any like that on earth. A sort of emerald.”

“Since it’s in the heavens, of course it’s heavenly. Only why an emerald? And what’s an emerald? I’ve never seen one in my life. You simply like the word.”

“Yes. Well, I don’t know – maybe not an emerald, but a ruby… Only such a one as is probably only found in paradise. And when you look at it all like this, how can you possibly not believe that there is a paradise, angels, the throne of God…”

“And golden pears on willows…”

“How spoilt you are, Tolya. Maria Sergeyevna’s right in saying that the very worst girl is still better than any young man.”

“Truth itself speaks with her lips, Kisa.”

The dress she is wearing is cotton, speckled, the shoes cheap; her calves and knees are plump, girlish, her little round head with a small braid around it is so sweetly thrown back… He puts one hand on her knee, clasps her shoulders with the other, and half-jokingly kisses her slightly parted lips. She quietly frees herself, removes his hand from her knee.

“What is it? Are we offended?”

She presses the back of her head against the jamb of the window, and he sees that she is crying.

“But what’s the matter?”

“Oh, leave me alone…”

“But what’s happened?”

She whispers:

“Nothing…”

And jumping down from the window ledge, she runs away.

He shrugs his shoulders:

“Stupid to the point of saintliness!”

3rd October 1940