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

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

Old Izergil

I

II

III

Chelkash

I

II

III

The Philanderer

Makar Chudra

Afloat. An Easter Story

I

II

Twenty-Six Men and a Girl

The Romancer

The Breakup

Отрывок из книги

These stories were told to me on the shore of the sea near Akkerman, in Bessarabia.

One evening, when our grape-picking was over for the day, the group of Moldavians with whom I had been working went down to the sea-shore, leaving me and an old woman named Izergil lying in the deep shadow of the grape-vines, silently watching the silhouettes of the people who had gone down to the shore merge with the blue shadows of night.

.....

“But wait: what happened to the Turkish boy?”

“Oh, him? He died. He pined away with homesickness, or perhaps it was love. He began to wither like a sapling that has too much sun. Just withered away. I remember him lying there blue and transparent as ice, yet consumed by the flames of love. He kept asking me to bend over and kiss him. I loved him dearly and kissed him a lot. Little by little he became so weak he could hardly move. He would just lie there and beg me, as if he were begging alms, to lie down beside him and warm his poor body. And I did. The minute I lay down beside him he would be all aflame. One day I woke up to find him stone-cold. He was dead. I wept over him. Who can tell? Perhaps it was I who had killed him. I was twice his age and very strong and vigorous, but he? – he was just a child.”

.....