Читать книгу Direville Dreams - Lina Dee - Страница 4

The golden sun of the eleventh month, drowned in the sunset clouds, gave way to a dark short evening. The most ferocious force of nature broke out in Direville that evening

Many residents were already slumbering sweetly, hiding in their cozy or not beds, but in the window of house number 17 on Dire Street one could see a dim light of light.

Mr. Melville probably for the hundredth time was perplexedly strolling around the perimeter of his small house, often stopping and looking at his insensible shadow, blackening on the wide and empty olive-green wall, trying to see his eyes in his shadow. But they were absent…

Recently he especially often noticed that, while his mind was partially engulfed in fragmentary visions, his eyesight remained a firm foothold restraining growing insanity.

Perhaps this madness began to exist already separately from his visions, the man did not understand it anymore.

Melville went out into the yard. After sitting there in an open arbor for some time, studying with his eyes the movement of the foliage of trees bending in different directions, he returned to the dark house and went the bed. The Moon appeared out of the darkness, and its soft light streaming out of the window illuminated the pale blond hair of a pale man and his unusual sparkling eyes with rectangular pupils, which Mel did not want to close.

A gray mouse ran silently across the floor; her small eyes blinked with red lights, the fur flashed with silver, and it suddenly disappeared as well as it had appeared.

After lying for some time in the flow of this monotonous light, looking indifferently at the Earth’s companion, which once resembled him a gold coin he sucked in the unventilated, musty air of the house and got up exhaustedly. Passing on the carpet of scattered papers with sketches covered with a thin layer of dust, he put on his shoes again, threw on overclothes, slammed the door loudly, and went out without closing it with a key. Leaving, he wanted to look in the mirror, but he did not. In the hallway were left to stand three pairs of identical shoes, lined up in a row.

***

First snow felled diagonally.

However, being so attentive to everything around before, Melville, only threw an indifferent look at the tiny snow-white stars flying exactly from the lantern. The searchlight opened a dark stone road covered with fallen purple leaves.

Snowflakes landed on the crooked autumn leaves one by one. Picking up one of them the cold wind whirled around it just a little and dropped it in a couple of steps from the previous location. Fresh unique stars immediately changed melted one. But, not having sat in a new place even for a second the shabby sheet crumbled under the heavy sole of Mr. Melville’s boot into many pieces.

If on the way one could fail and get somewhere else, Melville would have done it: he wanted to disappear.

It was deserted. The houses on the left and on the right squeezed the narrow street on which homeless dogs and cats of various stripes were swarming, trying to pull out the leftovers from the garbage cans.

Crossing the city center, Mel could have heard drunken obscene jokes coming from a familiar bar from Stove Street, the hysterical cry of a woman who scolded her husband in a new house on Veil Street, and the crying of little children. But he was deaf and dumb, and therefore the sounds did not touch his ears; he continued to walk without fear of a gusting wind blowing directly into his face and open neck with a nasty ice cold chilling down to his bones until another vision took him by surprise.

The man punched himself on the head, but the vision only became clearer. Then Melville stopped near the majestic marble arch and leaned against the column. In a vision, an unfamiliar woman appeared on his knees in the Direville Forest, which the inhabitants called «hissing». A woman wearing a light dress with a fur cape looked like a queen. She looked straight ahead into the void at someone or something, and uttered some words. But there was not a soul around her. Land and trunks were covered with moss. And through the mist-shrouded crowns of trees rays of light penetrated from all sides.

The vision ceased. Melville shook his head and walked on.

His weathered white face became red, but a calm and purposeful walk led him, now over the ruts, to the coast.

Without going down to the shoreline, Mel found the highest cliff, and, going to the edge, without looking down, he slowly began to undress.

Melville unbuttoned the buttons and took off his coat, boots, pants, shirt, several amulets, underwear – and all this neatly, lined up to a millimeter, folded in separate piles – out of habit. Having tucked his hair behind his ears, a naked man held his gaze on the shoes he’d taken off, as if he had noticed something on them – or remembered something – and, turning around, lifted his head up, directing his gaze to the bottomless dark-blue abyss.

The moon illuminated his body again, snowflakes cluttered around skin, face, eyes. He noticed them for the first time, but did not move.

Realizing that he was standing on the edge of a cliff he took a desperate step forward, straightened his shoulders and jumped headfirst down. Approaching the water, Melville closed his eyes for fear, not noticing how his shadow, turning into reflection, had a different outline.

A loud outburst followed, which Mel could not hear, the blinding brilliance of the moonlit splashes and dark waves enveloped him with calmness.

Diligently folded shirt, riding up in the wind, unfolded like a Christmas gift, and a light bracelet made from dried rowan berries was blown into the air and swirled, taking it off the cliff in search of a new shelter.