Читать книгу Человек, который смеется / The Man Who Laughs. Уровень 4 - Виктор Мари Гюго, Clara Inés Bravo Villarreal - Страница 6

The child remained motionless on the rock – no calling out, no appeal. He spoke not a word. The same silence reigned in the vessel. No cry from the child to the men – no farewell from the men to the child. The child watched the departing bark. It seemed as if he realized his position. What did he realize? Darkness.

A moment later the boat gained the crook and entered it. Then it was seen no more – all was over – the dark had gained the sea.

The child watched its disappearance – he was astounded. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of the dark reality of existence. He yielded. There was no complaint – the irreproachable does not reproach.

He forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave wetted his feet – the tide was flowing; a gust passed through his hair – the north wind was rising. He shivered. There came over him, from head to foot, the shudder of awakening. He cast his eyes about him. He was alone. Those men had just gone away. And those men, the only ones he knew, were unknown to him.

He could not say who they were. His childhood passed among them. He was in juxtaposition to them, nothing more. He had just been forgotten by them.

He had no money about him, no shoes to his feet, scarcely a garment to his body, not even a piece of bread in his pocket. It was winter – it was night. It will be necessary to walk. He did not know where he was. He knew nothing. He was ten years old. The child was in a desert, between depths where he saw the night and depths where he heard the waves.

He stretched his little thin arms and yawned. Then suddenly with the agility of a squirrel, or perhaps of an acrobat he turned his back on the creek, and began to climb up the cliff. To climb is the function of a man; to clamber is that of an animal – he did both.

The intensity of cold had, however, frozen the snow into dust very troublesome to the walker. His man’s jacket, which was too big for him, got in his way[12]. Now and then he came upon a little ice. Once he came on a vein of slate, which suddenly gave way under him.

Crumbling slate is treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a tile on a roof. He rolled to the extreme edge of the decline; a tuft of grass saved him. Finally he jumped on the level ground, or rather landed, for he rose from the precipice.

Scarcely was he on the cliff when he began to shiver. The bitter north-wester[13] was blowing; he tightened his rough sailor’s jacket about his chest.

The child gained the tableland, stopped, placed his feet firmly on the frozen ground, and looked about him. Behind him was the sea; in front the land; above, the sky – but a sky without stars; an opaque mist masked the zenith.

Far away the waters stirred confusedly in the ominous clear-obscure of immensity. The boat was going quick away. It seemed to grow smaller every minute. Nothing appears so rapid as the flight of a vessel melting into the distance of ocean.

A storm threatened in the air. Chaos was about to appear. Suddenly there came a gust of wind. The boat sank into the horizon. The little star which she carried into shadow paled. More and more the boat became amalgamated with the night, then disappeared.

At least the child seemed to understand it: he ceased to look at the sea.