Kar yağıp ortalık ağarmıştı. Ağaçlar da öyle; gelin gibi giyinip. Duvaklı başlarıyla, rüzgâr esmeyegörsün. Ağabeyim gelecek diye ormana bakıp durmuştuk bir zaman. Bir ağabey nedir? Mesela yolda karşınıza ansızın bir elma ağacı çıksa? Dev, dallı budaklı bir ağaç? O zaman ağabeyin o ağaçtan farkı neden bulunsun? Baş niyetine bir de meyve bulunur. Kırmızı, tatlı mı tatlı bir baş. Böylece eğilir, sizi boynunuzdan tutar. Ama, yaz aylarının ağabeyidir bu çoğunlukla. Karakışın değil. Kar zamanı bu kişi ormanın derinliklerinden gelir ve güz aylarında verdiği haber için bekletir sizi; bir gelinle dönecektir eve. Hem de ne gelin.

                     İnsanları konuşmaya, çektikleri acılar-

                     dan daha çok hiçbir şey itemez.                     

   Michel del Castillo

         Yağmur hafifçe çiselemeye başlamıştı. Babamla, bin yıllık ayrılığın özlemini giderircesine, söze dalmıştık. Kiraz ağacının dalları hışırdıyordu. Arada bir kulağım o seslere gidiyordu. Annem, ”bu sohbet çaysız gitmez”, deyip, semaveri yeniden alevlendirmişti. Babam, sırtını ağacın gövdesine yaslamış, çevredeki kirlilikten söz ediyordu. Buradan,bu bahçeden dışarıya adım atmak istemediğini;atınca,bir başka dünyayla karşılaşmanın dayanılmazlığını dile getiriyordu.

THE whole sky had been overcast with rain-clouds from early morning; it was a still day, not hot, but heavy, as it is in grey dull weather when the clouds have been hanging over the country for a long while, when one expects rain and it does not come. Ivan Ivanovitch, the veterinary surgeon, and Burkin, the high-school teacher, were already tired from walking, and the fields seemed to them endless. Far ahead of them they could just see the windmills of the village of Mironositskoe; on the right stretched a row of hillocks which disappeared in the distance behind the village, and they both knew that this was the bank of the river, that there were meadows, green willows, homesteads there, and that if one stood on one of the hillocks one could see from it the same vast plain, telegraph-wires, and a train which in the distance looked like a crawling caterpillar, and that in clear weather one could even see the town. Now, in still weather, when all nature seemed mild and dreamy, Ivan Ivanovitch and Burkin were filled with love of that countryside, and both thought how great, how beautiful a land it was.

 I shuffled down the gangplank, trying my best to avoid eye contact.

“Welcome to Branten,” the creature said. “This visit is a most… pleasant surprise.”

That was easy for it to say. It didn’t have to travel across the Barren Sea on the King’s errand. And amongst these abominations! “I’m here to pick up the portrait.” The words stuck in my mouth. “From the artist.”

“Ah,” it said, eyeing the passenger ship I had arrived on. “Will your companions be joining us?”

"To whom shall I tell my grief?"

The twilight of evening. Big flakes of wet snow are whirling lazily about the street lamps, which have just been lighted, and lying in a thin soft layer on roofs, horses' backs, shoulders, caps. Iona Potapov, the sledge-driver, is all white like a ghost. He sits on the box without stirring, bent as double as the living body can be bent. If a regular snowdrift fell on him it seems as though even then he would not think it necessary to shake it off.... His little mare is white and motionless too. Her stillness, the angularity of her lines, and the stick-like straightness of her legs make her look like a halfpenny gingerbread horse. She is probably lost in thought. Anyone who has been torn away from the plough, from the familiar gray landscapes, and cast into this slough, full of monstrous lights, of unceasing uproar and hurrying people, is bound to think.