Читать книгу Chronicles of the coast, or a ray of sunshine in the semi-darkness. Fantasy - Larisa Sugatova - Страница 3

We’re here. It is a sparsely populated island at the edge of the world, cut off from the mainland by the waters of the Sea of Okhotsk. The ship comes twice a week. There is harsh nature here, but it is July, so it is warm, sunny days are quite often, but it is often cloudy, or there is a fine, like water dust, rain.

Next to the steep bank, an old wooden two-story building, a hostel for workers, is located nearby. It was to him that we were directed by an elderly employee of the plant who met us. The four of us took a room, two Lena, Alla and me.

On one of the sunny days we decided to go to the sea! A company of about a dozen people walked a little more than a minute and went down the path that goes steeply down to the rocky shore.

The boys took out old cards and offered us to switch. Oh, no! I could play, but I didn’t like it. I learned it at a summer sports camp. The girls and I were seriously engaged in volleyball in high school and had fun at a quiet hour sometimes.

They were sitting on the shore, huddled on small pebbles. There was a conversation about books:

– Have you read «The Master and Margarita»? one guy asked.

– yes. Have you read the Remark? I replied.

We discussed who likes what.

Someone ventured into the water, notifying everyone with a wild cry, what icy water, the Sea of Okhotsk, cold and harsh.

We had a good time, I even tanned myself that day, although the tan didn’t really bother me before, but that was in the middle of the continent, and this is at the end of the world. I enjoyed swimming. We had a nice rest.

They wanted to eat like hungry wolves. We returned and immediately went to the dining room for dinner. The noodles disappeared from the plates in an instant.

I really liked it on the shore. In the evenings, after working at the factory, I began to go there often, watch the sunset. The sun reflected so beautifully from the water. The silence around me calmed me down and made me think about my life and about many things in general. I remembered the words from the song: «Sunny Road sounds Norwegian Solveig.»

On one of these evenings, I got emotional, wanted to return home as soon as possible, looked at the sea surface for a long time, with dark waves running over each other, and the white foam on small stones remaining after the water running back, which reminded me of my lace collar on my school uniform, which my mother knitted.

The words themselves formed into verses:

The poems, of course, are not like those of a real poet, but they conveyed my mood at that moment.

A week after arriving, we decided to arrange a disco. In the building where we lived, there was a room at the end, something like a club. By the evening everyone was dressed up, Alla put on a bright red blouse with a dark skirt, her friend Lena a striped blouse in the style of «bat», and my new friend and I, without collusion, chose jeans and T-shirts for ourselves. We gathered with joy, at least some event in our monotonous, as it seemed to us, life.

We usually wore work clothes – rubber boots, black robes, red scarves and orange rubber aprons. We laughed at our appearance, and even all the clothes smelled mercilessly of fish. The smell accompanied us everywhere, so I tried very hard not to pay attention to it.

In fact, our life was not at all so monotonous, consisting of one job. Lena and I went to the local town, which surprised us with its very modest size, old wooden architecture and the same sidewalks. At the weekend, we visited the hot springs with the girls, where we really liked it. There was a library in the next building, where I took a thick book. But there was no such event that we all participated in it together.

One evening, when the sun was setting over the sea, I was sitting on my favorite stone and thinking. I didn’t want to see another life at all, I was just trying to escape from myself. My thoughts took me back to those not-so-distant days that I somehow survived, but my world of the girl I was has never been the same again.

Then I sat in my room for two days. Childhood pictures replaced one another. Here is a young and handsome father, with dark curls and strong arms, throws me up and catches me, and I am not afraid to fall. And this is a sunny August morning, my mother sees us off, standing in front of the house, My Father, Mukhtar and I are leaving by car for the forest. My father wants to pick mushrooms, I want berries. We are driving along a smooth asphalt road, on both sides of the field is still green, quietly swaying under a light wind of rye. We turn onto a narrow dirt road, drive for a while and stop. I can’t believe my eyes, we have such a beautiful ellipsoid clearing in front of us, tall trees, with green foliage rustling in the air, surround it tightly from all sides. It’s big, there’s tall grass on it, above the waist. We go out and slowly walk around the clearing, my father collects mushrooms, and I’m looking for a boneberry, there’s not much of it, but there are not many mushrooms. Dad says he’ll be waiting by the car. I found a berry place, I promise to quickly pick berries and return to the place where we stopped. He and Mukhtar leave, cross the clearing. The father walks, pushing the grass with his hands, and Mukhtar, a German shepherd of one and a half years old, joyfully jumps in the grass, then disappearing from sight, then appearing in a jump. I look, and my heart stops. I clearly understand that this day will never happen again, and I will never find myself in a forest, sunlit clearing next to my father and Mukhtar. I’ll never be fifteen again. This day will be one of my best memories in my life, I will remember it forever.

And then, a little more than six months later, the sunny April days turned gray. I remember the long horns of cars when the funeral procession went past my father’s work.. He was forty-nine years old. There was no joy anymore, I didn’t feel it in anything.

And here I am to try to forget myself, so that this pain will let go. I was trying to run away from myself. But is it possible?