Mowing
Автор: admin, 11 Ноя 2012
They got up early, before sunrise for mowing. The grass still bathed in dew ... Milk-white fog melted ... There was a smell of morning freshness.
Meadow, much looked like a field, but uneven, passed into the tiny patch of forest. Red bramble like red drops was burning in the grass ... young boletus hiding around clumps. Vladimir sat on an old fallen tree and waited for the mowing start. Time passed since that memorable winter's arrival to the orphanage. Now, his subconscious fear of the unknown was gone. And now this unknown place - the orphanage for the children of “enemies of the people” which broke the usual family life, was not frightened him anymore, for he was not alone here. And the unusual atmosphere joined him with the same as he, living here boys and girls, companions in his misfortune.
They raised the scythes and taking bars, sharpened steel. These sounds resembled a beautiful melodic chime, and, probably, this ringing woke a forest. Black thrush flew low over the meadow. Dragonfly-beauty with a blue belly sat on a daisy. Wind tore off a few pine cones, and they resoundingly flopped to the ground. The woodpecker tapped yet unwillingly and hesitantly.
At last children, lined up in a long straight line, waved with the scythes. Cut grass lay down gently, easily, covering the field with a green layer. The sky was painted in a pale pink color ... and then mixed with pure blue ... and, finally, with a bright golden-yellow.
At noon, the heat was hanging right over the head. Some bee hummed drowsy.
The wind ceased. They brought lunch. Hot food steamed. It smelled of boiled potatoes and dill. The cut pieces of bread looked like the porous honeycomb. While they were eating, was the sound of spoons. Scythes, burying its sharp ends into the ground, were resting. Pleasant weakness seized Volodya ... The whole body went limp. Bottomless sky dome floated before his eyes. He lay on his back under a pine tree and saw a large black ant, and droplets of resin, like frozen tears on the trunk ... It smelled of pine needles and the heated ground. And the blue dome of the sky is still sailed away with him.
In the evening there was a thunderstorm, which came from the forest - where the vast swamp stretched and there was a thick acrid fog. Huge space of quagmire evoked in the boy a strange feeling of stopped time, external peace and fear.
He liked to sit on the soft friable tussocks and watch the green motionless duckweed, listening to the screaming bittern in the reeds. Ducks rise noisy in the air, and then silence came again. Sometimes he saw the funny sandpiper paces on long stilted legs ... Then it seemed to him that this apparent stillness of the swamp persistently keeps its own secret.
Rain poured immediately. The big heavy drops tilted to the land not yet mown grass. Only sedge boldly exposed the sharp green leaves-arrows. The forest darkened. Scythes raised on the shoulders tinkled softly from fast walking. Suddenly they felt uncomfortable. In the twilight, fancy shadows were creeping and changed shape. Far ahead, where the forest switched to black and purple line and touched the edge of the sky, the last gleams of sunset burned out. And no one wanted the rain extinguished them altogether.
Wild raspberries grow freely. It is grown in man's height and stretched far away, about two kilometers along the edge of the forest. The berries were hanging by large clusters on the branches. The sun shone through their delicate watery-red flesh and attracted wasps. They bend the delicate striped waists and dived to the raspberry cane. Volodya looked at wasps. His face and his hands were covered with pink spots. Young nettles burned hands with sharp pain. The thick pale green caterpillar had finished raspberry leaf.
These pictures of childhood, with their colors, sounds and smells, Vladimir remembered later, much later, in the hardest and the difficult days of his life and made him miss the childhood ... such a heavy and desolate, yet childhood, but it will never return.
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