Read Online Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Vasily Grossman
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know what’s what, that I mistake vision for blindness.”
“So where are we going to put Vanya?” asked Maria Pavlovna. “Where’s he going to be most comfortable?”
“No, no thank you,” said Ivan Grigoryevich. “I won’t be able to spend the night with you.”
“Why not? Where else are you going to go? Come on, Masha, we’ll have to tie him up.”
“No, no,” said Ivan Grigoryevich. “Not that.”
Nikolay Andreyevich fell silent and frowned.
“Forgive me, I just can’t, but it’s not...it’s something quite different.”
“Listen, Vanya...” said Nikolay Andreyevich, and then said nothing.
After Ivan Grigoryevich had left, Maria Pavlovna looked at the table, still covered with dishes, and at the chairs that had been pushed back from the table.
“We gave him a royal welcome,” she said. “As good as we gave the president of the Academy of Sciences and his wife.”
Mean, stingy people, on occasion, outdo generous, expansive people in the scale of their generosity. Maria Pavlovna had indeed prepared a lavish meal.
Nikolay Andreyevich went up to the table. “Yes,” he said, “if a man’s mad, then he stays mad forever.”
She placed her palms on his temples and, kissing him on the forehead, said, “Don’t let it upset you. You really mustn’t, my incorrigible idealist!”
5
I van Grigoryevich awoke at dawn, lying on the boards of a “hard-class” railway carriage. He listened to the noise of the wheels. Then he half opened his eyes and stared out into the gray dawn light beyond the window.
During his twenty-nine years as a prisoner, he had dreamed several times of his childhood. Once he had dreamed of a small bay. The water was calm, the bottom was covered with pebbles, and some little crabs had hurried past, moving sideways and silently in their underwater way, and disappeared into the seaweed. He had walked slowly over the rounded stones, feeling the gentle touch of the sea grass on his feet, and then dozens of elongated drops of quicksilver—baby scad and mackerel—had spurted up out of the water and scattered. The sun had lit up the green underwater meadows and clumps of spruce—and this beloved little bay had seemed to be filled not with salty water but with salty light.
He had dreamed this dream in a freight wagon. That had been twenty-five years ago, but he still remembered the despair that had gripped him when he saw the gray wintry light and the gray faces of the other prisoners, when he heard the creak of boots in the snow outside, the resonant knocking of the guards’ hammers as they checked the bottom of the carriage.
Sometimes he saw a house overlooking the sea, the branches of an old cherry tree bending over the roof, a well...
He had developed his memory to a painful degree of sharpness, and he could remember the gleam of a thick magnolia leaf, the flat stone in the middle of the stream. He remembered the design of the tablecloth—and the quiet cool of rooms with white, limewashed walls. He remembered reading, on the couch with his legs drawn up—on a hot summer day the oilcloth was pleasantly cool. Sometimes he tried to remember the face of his mother, and his heart would ache, and he would screw up his face, and there would be tears in his tightly closed eyes—just as in childhood, when you try to look at the sun.
He could remember the mountains easily, and in full detail; it was as if he were leafing through a familiar book, one that falls open of itself at the right page.
Scrambling through brambles and twisted elms, slipping on the stony, cracked, yellowy-gray earth, he would make his way to the pass and, after looking back at the sea, enter the cool half dark of the forest...With their stout branches, the powerful oaks effortlessly raised up to the very sky their hills of intricate foliage; all about, a solemn silence reigned.
In the middle of the previous century, the coastal areas had been inhabited by Circassians.
The old Greek, the father of
“So where are we going to put Vanya?” asked Maria Pavlovna. “Where’s he going to be most comfortable?”
“No, no thank you,” said Ivan Grigoryevich. “I won’t be able to spend the night with you.”
“Why not? Where else are you going to go? Come on, Masha, we’ll have to tie him up.”
“No, no,” said Ivan Grigoryevich. “Not that.”
Nikolay Andreyevich fell silent and frowned.
“Forgive me, I just can’t, but it’s not...it’s something quite different.”
“Listen, Vanya...” said Nikolay Andreyevich, and then said nothing.
After Ivan Grigoryevich had left, Maria Pavlovna looked at the table, still covered with dishes, and at the chairs that had been pushed back from the table.
“We gave him a royal welcome,” she said. “As good as we gave the president of the Academy of Sciences and his wife.”
Mean, stingy people, on occasion, outdo generous, expansive people in the scale of their generosity. Maria Pavlovna had indeed prepared a lavish meal.
Nikolay Andreyevich went up to the table. “Yes,” he said, “if a man’s mad, then he stays mad forever.”
She placed her palms on his temples and, kissing him on the forehead, said, “Don’t let it upset you. You really mustn’t, my incorrigible idealist!”
5
I van Grigoryevich awoke at dawn, lying on the boards of a “hard-class” railway carriage. He listened to the noise of the wheels. Then he half opened his eyes and stared out into the gray dawn light beyond the window.
During his twenty-nine years as a prisoner, he had dreamed several times of his childhood. Once he had dreamed of a small bay. The water was calm, the bottom was covered with pebbles, and some little crabs had hurried past, moving sideways and silently in their underwater way, and disappeared into the seaweed. He had walked slowly over the rounded stones, feeling the gentle touch of the sea grass on his feet, and then dozens of elongated drops of quicksilver—baby scad and mackerel—had spurted up out of the water and scattered. The sun had lit up the green underwater meadows and clumps of spruce—and this beloved little bay had seemed to be filled not with salty water but with salty light.
He had dreamed this dream in a freight wagon. That had been twenty-five years ago, but he still remembered the despair that had gripped him when he saw the gray wintry light and the gray faces of the other prisoners, when he heard the creak of boots in the snow outside, the resonant knocking of the guards’ hammers as they checked the bottom of the carriage.
Sometimes he saw a house overlooking the sea, the branches of an old cherry tree bending over the roof, a well...
He had developed his memory to a painful degree of sharpness, and he could remember the gleam of a thick magnolia leaf, the flat stone in the middle of the stream. He remembered the design of the tablecloth—and the quiet cool of rooms with white, limewashed walls. He remembered reading, on the couch with his legs drawn up—on a hot summer day the oilcloth was pleasantly cool. Sometimes he tried to remember the face of his mother, and his heart would ache, and he would screw up his face, and there would be tears in his tightly closed eyes—just as in childhood, when you try to look at the sun.
He could remember the mountains easily, and in full detail; it was as if he were leafing through a familiar book, one that falls open of itself at the right page.
Scrambling through brambles and twisted elms, slipping on the stony, cracked, yellowy-gray earth, he would make his way to the pass and, after looking back at the sea, enter the cool half dark of the forest...With their stout branches, the powerful oaks effortlessly raised up to the very sky their hills of intricate foliage; all about, a solemn silence reigned.
In the middle of the previous century, the coastal areas had been inhabited by Circassians.
The old Greek, the father of
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