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Катаев, Валентин - Катаев - A White Sail GleamsПроза и поэзия >> Русская современная проза >> См. также >> Катаев, Валентин Читать целиком Valentin Katayev. A White Sail Gleams
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Translated from the Russian by Leonard Stoklitsky
Illustrated by Vitali Goryaev
бЮКЕМРХМ йЮРЮЕБ
Original Russian title: аЕКЕЕР ОЮПСЯ НДХМНЙХИ
мЮ ЮМЦКХИЯЙНЛ ЪГШЙЕ
First printing 1954
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
________________________________________________________
CONTENTS
A Few Words About Myself
1. The Farewell
2. The Sea
3. In the Steppe
4. The Watering
5. The Runaway
6. The Turgenev
7. The Photograph
8. "Man Overboard!"
9. Odessa by Night
10. At Home
11. Gavrik
12. "Call That a Horse?"
13. Madam Storozhenko
14. "Lower Ranks"
15. The Boat at Sea
16. "Turret Gun, Shoot!"
17. The Owner of the Shooting Gallery
18. Questions and Answers
19. A Pound and a Half of Rye Bread
20. Morning
21. Word of Honour
22. Near Mills
23. Uncle Gavrik
24. Love
25. "I Was Stolen"
26. The Pursuit
27. Grandpa
28. Stubborn Auntie Tatyana
29. The Alexandrovsky Police Station
30. The Preparatory Class
31. The Box on the Gun Carriage
32. Fog
33. Lugs
34. In the Basement
35. A Debt of Honour
36. The Heavy Satchel
37. The Bomb
38. HQ of the Fighting Group
39. The Pogrom
40. The Officer's Uniform
41. The Christmas Tree
42. Kulikovo Field
43. The Sail
44. The May Day Outing
45. A Fair Wind
A FEW WORDS ABOUT MYSELF
Looking back on my life, I recall to mind some episodes that were
instrumental in shaping my understanding of the writer's mission.
The power of the printed word was first really brought home to me when
I landed at the front during the First World War. I mentally crossed out
nearly all I had written up until then and resolved that from now on
everything I write should benefit the workers, peasants and soldiers, and
all working people.
In 1919, when I was in the ranks of the Red Army and was marching
shoulder to shoulder with revolutionary Red Army men against Denikin's
bands, I vowed to myself that I would dedicate my pen to the cause of the
revolution.
Many Soviet writers took part in the Civil War, and their words and
their actions inspired the fighting men. Alexander Serafimovich was a war
correspondent. Alexander Fadeyev shared the privations of the Far Eastern
partisans. Dmitry Furmanov was the Commissar of Chapayev's division. Nikolai
Ostrovsky fought the interventionists in the Ukraine. Mikhail Sholokhov took
part in the fighting against Whiteguard bands. Eduard Bagritsky went to the
front as a member of a travelling propaganda team. More than 400 Soviet
writers gave their lives on the battlefronts of the Great Patriotic War of
1941-45. Their names are inscribed on a marble memorial plaque in the
Writers Club in Moscow.
At the time of the Russian revolution of 1905 I was just a boy of
eight, but I clearly remember the battleship Potemkin, a red flag on her
mast, sailing along the coast past Odessa. I witnessed the fighting on the
barricades, I saw overturned horse-trams, twisted and torn street wires,
revolvers, rifles, dead bodies.
Many years later I wrote A White Sail Gleams (Written in 1936.-Ed.) a
novel in which I tried to convey the invigorating spirit that had been
infused into the life of Russia by her first revolution.
A Son of the Working People is a reminiscence of the First World War,
in which I fought.
When construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric power station began I
went there together with the poet Demyan Bedny. Afterwards we visited
collective farms in the Don and Volga areas and then set out for the Urals.
I remember that when our train stopped at Mount Magnitnaya in the Urals
I was so impressed by what I saw that I decided to leave the train at once
and remain in the town of Magnitogorsk. I said good-bye to Demyan Bedny and
jumped down from the carriage.
"Good-bye and good luck!" he called out. "If I were younger and didn't
have to get back to Moscow I'd stay here with pleasure."
I was struck by all I saw in Magnitogorsk, by the great enthusiasm of
the people building for themselves. This was a revolution too. It inspired
my book Time, Forward! During the last war, as a correspondent at the front,
I saw a great deal, but for some reason it was the youngsters that made the
biggest impression on me-the homeless, destitute boys who marched grimly
along the war-torn roads. I saw exhausted, grimy, hungry Russian soldiers
pick up the unfortunate children. This was a manifestation of the great
humanism of the Soviet man. Those soldiers were fighting against fascism,
and therefore they, too, were beacons of the revolution. This prompted me to
write Son of the Regiment.
When I look around today I see the fruits of the events of 1917, of our
technological revolution, of the construction work at Magnitogorsk. I see
that my friends did not give their lives on the battlefronts in vain.
What does being a Soviet writer mean? Here is how I got the answer.
Returning home one day, a long time ago, I found an envelope with
foreign stamps on it in my letter-box. Inside there was an invitation from
the Pen Club, an international literary association, to attend its next
conference, in Vienna. I was a young writer then, and I was greatly
flattered. I told everyone I met about the remarkable honour that had been
accorded me. When I ran into Vladimir Mayakovsky in one of the editorial
offices I showed him the letter from abroad. He calmly produced an elegant
envelope exactly like mine from the pocket of his jacket.
"Look," he said. "They invited me too, but I'm not boasting about it.
Because they did not invite me, of course, as Mayakovsky, but as a
representative of Soviet literature. The same applies to you. Understand?
Reflect, Kataich (as he called me when he was in a good mood), on what it
means to be a writer in the Land of Soviets."
Mayakovsky's words made a lasting impression on me. I realised that I
owed by success as a creative writer to the Soviet people, who had reared
me. I realised that being a Soviet writer means marching in step with the
people, that it means being always on the crest of the revolutionary wave.
In my short story The Flag, which is based on a wartime episode, the
nazis have surrounded a group of Soviet fighting men and called on them to
give up. But instead of the white flag of surrender they ran up a crimson
flag which they improvised from pieces of cloth of different shades of red.
Similarly, Soviet literature is made up of many works of different
shades which, taken together, shine like a fiery-red banner of the
revolution.
Once, walking round Shanghai I wandered into the market where the
so-called "Temple of the City Mayor" stood. Here they sold candles for
church-goers. An old Chinese woman was standing at a table giving out some
strange sticks from two vases. For ten yuans you were allowed to take one of
these sticks with hieroglyphics on it. Then the woman would ask you what
number page was marked on the stick, and turning to her book for reference,
she would find the appropriate page, tear it out and give it to you. On my
piece of paper was written: "The Phoenix sings before the sun. The Empress
takes no notice. It is difficult to alter the will of the Empress, but your
name will live for centuries."
We haven't got an Empress, and so that part of the prophecy does not
apply. It's highly unlikely that my name will live for centuries, and so
that part doesn't apply either.
All that remains is the phrase "The Phoenix sings before the sun". I
can agree with that since the sun is my homeland.
A WHITE SAIL GLEAMS
1958
Valentin Katayev
1
THE FAREWELL
The blast of the horn came from the farmyard at about five o'clock in
the morning.
A piercing, penetrating sound that seemed split into hundreds of
musical strands, it flew out through the apricot orchard into the deserted
steppe and towards the sea, where its rolling echo died mournfully along the
bluff.
That was the first signal for the departure of the coach.
It was all over. The bitter hour of farewell had come.
Strictly speaking, there was no one to bid farewell to. The few summer
residents, frightened by recent events, had begun to leave in mid-season.
The only guests now remaining at the farm were Vasili Petrovich
Batchei, an Odessa schoolmaster, and his two sons, one three and a half
years old and the other eight and a half. The elder was called Petya, and
the younger Pavlik. Today they too were leaving for home.
It was for them the horn had been blown and the big black horses led
out of the stable.
Petya woke up long before the horn. He had slept fitfully. The
twittering of the birds roused him, and he dressed and went outside.
The orchard, the steppe, and the farmyard all lay in a chill shadow.
The sun was rising out of the sea, but the high bluff still hid it from
view.
Petya wore his city Sunday suit, which he had quite outgrown during the
summer: a navy-blue woollen sailor blouse with a white-edged collar, short
trousers, long lisle stockings, button-shoes, and a broad-brimmed straw hat.
Shivering from the cold, he walked slowly round the farm, saying
good-bye to the places where he had spent such a wonderful summer.
All summer long Petya had run about practically naked. He was now as
brown as an Indian and could walk barefoot over burrs and thorns. He had
gone swimming three times a day. At the beach he used to smear himself from
head to foot with the red marine clay and then scratch out designs on his
chest. That made him really look like a Red Indian, especially when he stuck
into his hair the blue feathers of those marvellously beautiful birds-real
fairy-tale birds-which built their nests in the bluff. And now, after all
that wealth and freedom, to have to walk about in a tight woollen sailor
blouse, in prickly stockings, in shoes that pinched, and in a big straw hat
with an elastic that rubbed against his ears and pressed into his neck!
Petya lifted his hat and pushed it back so that it dangled on his
shoulders like a basket.
Two fat ducks waddled past, quacking busily. They threw a look of scorn
at this foppish boy, as though he were a stranger, and then dived under the
fence one after the other.
Whether they had deliberately snubbed him or simply failed to recognise
him, Petya could not be sure, yet all of a sudden he felt so sad and
heavy-hearted that he wanted to cry.
Straight to his heart cut the feeling that he was a complete stranger
in this cold and deserted world of early morning. Even the pit in the corner
of the garden-the deep, wonderful pit where it was such thrilling fun to
bake potatoes in a camp-fire-even that seemed unbelievably strange,
unfamiliar.
The sun was rising higher.
The farmyard and orchard still lay in the shade, but the bright, cold,
early rays were already gilding the pink, yellow, and blue pumpkins set out
on the reed roof of the clay hut where the watchman lived.
The sleepy-eyed cook, in a homespun chequered skirt and a blouse of
unbleached linen embroidered in black and red cross-stitch, with an iron
comb in her dishevelled hair, was knocking yesterday's dead coals out of the
samovar, against the doorstep.
Petya stood in front of the cook watching the string of beads jump up
and down on her old, wrinkled neck.
"Going away?" she asked indifferently.
"Yes," the boy replied. His voice shook.
"Good luck to you."
She went over to the water-barrel, wrapped the hem of her chequered
skirt round her hand, and pulled out the spigot.
A thick stream of water arched out and struck the ground. Sparkling
round drops scattered, enveloping themselves in powdery grey dust.
The cook set the samovar under the stream. It moaned as the fresh,
heavy water poured into it. No, not a particle of sympathy from anybody!
There was the same unfriendly silence and the same air of desolation
everywhere-on the croquet square, in the meadow, in the arbour.
Yet how gay and merry it had been here such a short while ago! How many
pretty girls and naughty boys! How many pranks, scenes, games, fights,
quarrels, peacemakings, kisses, friendships!
What a wonderful party the owner of the farm, Rudolf Karlovich, had
given for the summer residents on the birthday of his wife, Luiza
Frantsevna! Petya would never forget that celebration. In the morning a huge
table with bouquets of wild flowers on it was set under the apricot trees.
In the centre lay a cake as big as a bicycle wheel.
Thirty-five lighted candles, by which one could tell Luiza Frantsevna's
age, had been stuck into that rich, thickly frosted cake.
All the summer residents were invited to morning tea under the apricot
trees.
The day continued as merrily as it had begun. It ended in the evening
with a costume ball for the children, with music and fireworks.
All the children put on the fancy dress that had been made for them.
The girls turned into mermaids and Gipsies, the boys into Red Indians,
robbers, Chinese mandarins, sailors. They all wore splendid, bright-coloured
cotton or paper costumes.
There were rustling tissue-paper skirts and cloaks, artificial roses
swaying on wire stems, and tambourines with floating silk ribbons.
Naturally-how could it be otherwise!-the very best costume was Petya's.
Father himself had spent two days making it. His pince-nez kept falling off
his nose while he worked; he was nearsighted, and every time he upset the
bottle of glue he muttered into his beard frightful curses at the people who
had arranged "this outrage" and generally expressed his disgust with "this
nonsensical idea".
But of course, he was simply playing safe. He was afraid the costume
might turn out a failure, he was afraid of disgracing himself. How he tried!
But then the costume-say what you will!-was a remarkable one.
It was a real knight's suit of armour, made of strips of gold and
silver Christmas tree paper cleverly pasted together and stretched over a
wire frame. The helmet was decorated with a flowing plume and looked exactly
like the helmet of a knight out of Sir Walter Scott. What is more, the visor
could be raised and lowered.
In short, it was so magnificent that Petya was placed beside Zoya to
make up the second couple. Zoya was the prettiest girl at the farm, and she
wore the pink costume of a Good Fairy.
Arm in arm they walked round the garden, which was hung with Chinese
lanterns. Here and there in the mysterious darkness loomed trees and bushes
unbelievably bright in the flare of red and green Bengal lights.
In the arbour, by the light of candles under glass shades, the
grown-ups had their supper. Moths flew to the light from all sides and fell,
singed, to the table-cloth.
Four hissing rockets rose out of the thick smoke of the Bengal lights
and climbed slowly into the sky.
There was a moon, too. Petya and Zoya discovered this fact only when
they found themselves in the very farthest part of the garden. Moonlight so
bright and magic shone through the leaves that even the whites of the girl's
eyes were a luminous blue-the same blue that danced in the tub of dark water
under the old apricot tree, in which a toy boat floated.
Here, before they knew it, the boy and girl kissed. Then they were so
embarrassed that they dashed off headlong with wild shouts, and they ran and
ran until they landed in the backyard. There the farm labourers who had come
to congratulate the mistress were having their own party.
On a pine table brought from the servants' kitchen stood a keg of beer,
two jugs of vodka, a bowl of fried fish, and a wheaten loaf. The drunken
cook, in a new print blouse with frills, was angrily serving the
merry-makers portions of fish and filling their mugs. A concertina-player,
his coat unbuttoned and his knees spread apart, swayed from side to side on
a stool as his fingers rambled over the bass keys of the wheezing
instrument.
Two straight-backed fellows with impassive faces had taken each other
by the waist and were stamping out a polka, with much flourishing of the
heels. Several women labourers in brand-new kerchiefs and tight kid pumps,
their cheeks smeared with the juice of pickled tomatoes- for coquetry and to
soften the skin-stood with their arms round one another.
Rudolf Karlovich and Luiza Frantsevna were backing away from one of the
labourers.
He was as drunk as a lord. Several men were holding him back. He
strained to get free. Blood spurted from his nose on his Sunday shirt, which
was ripped down the middle. He was swearing furiously.
Sobbing and choking over his frenzied words, and grinding his teeth the
way people do in their sleep, he shouted: "Three rubles and fifty kopeks for
two months of slaving! Miser! Let me get at the bastard! Just let me get at
him! I'll choke the life out of him! Matches, somebody! Let me get at the
straw! I'll give them a birthday party! If only Grishka Kotovsky was here,
you rat!"
(Grigori Kotovsky (1887-1925) was active in the agrarian movement in
Bessarabia in 1905-1906; he was a leader of the Bessarabian peasants'
partisan actions against the landowners. In 1918-1920 this son of the people
was an army leader and Civil War hero.-Tr.)
The moonlight gleamed in his rolling eyes.
"Now, now," muttered the master, backing away. "You look out, Gavrila.
Don't go too far. You can be hanged nowadays for that sort of talk."
"Go ahead, hang me!" the labourer shouted, panting. "Why don't you? Go
ahead, bloodsucker!"
This was so terrifying, so puzzling, and, above all, so out of keeping
with the spirit of the wonderful party, that the children ran back,
screaming that Gavrila wanted to cut Rudolf Karlovich's throat and set fire
to the farm.
The panic that broke out is difficult to imagine.
The parents led the children to their rooms. They locked all the doors
and closed all the windows, as though a storm were brewing. The rural
prefect Chuvyakov, who had come to spend a few days with his family, marched
across the croquet square, kicking out the hoops and scattering the balls
and mallets.
He carried a double-barrelled gun at the ready.
In vain did Rudolf Karlovich plead with the summer residents to be
calm. In vain did he assure them that there was no danger, that Gavrila was
now bound and locked up in the cellar, and that tomorrow the constable would
come for him.
Once, in the night, a red glow lit up the sky far over the steppe. The
next morning it was rumoured that a neighbouring farm had been burned down.
Labourers had set it on fire, it was said.
People coming from Odessa reported disturbances in the city. There were
rumours that the trestle bridge in the port was on fire.
The constable arrived at dawn the next morning. He led Gavrila away. In
his sleep Petya heard the bells of the constable's troika.
The summer residents began to leave for home.
Soon the farm was deserted.
Petya lingered under the old apricot tree, beside the tub of such fond
memory, and struck the water with a twig. No, the tub wasn't the same, the
water wasn't the same, and even the old apricot tree was not the same!
Everything, absolutely everything, had become different. Everything had
lost its magic. Everything looked at Petya as out of the remote past.
Would the sea also be so cold and heartless to him this last time?
Petya ran to the bluff.
2
THE SEA
The low sun beat blindingly into his eyes. Below, the entire sweep of
the sea was like burning magnesium. Here the steppe ended suddenly.
Silvery bushes of wild olive quivered in the shimmering air at the edge
of the bluff.
A steep path zigzagged downwards. Petya was used to running down the
path barefoot. His shoes bothered him; the soles were slippery. His feet ran
of themselves. It was impossible to stop them.
Until the first turn he still managed to resist the pull of gravity. He
dug in his heels and clutched at the dry roots hanging over the path. But
the roots were rotten and they broke. The clay crumbled beneath his heels. A
cloud of dust as fine and brown as cocoa enveloped him.
The dust got into his nose; it tickled his throat. Petya very soon had
enough of that. Oh, he'd risk it!
He cried out at the top of his lungs, and, with a wave of his arms,
plunged headlong.
His hat filled with air and bobbed up and down behind him. His collar
fluttered in the wind. Burrs stuck to his stockings. After frightful leaps
down the huge steps of the natural stairway, the boy suddenly flew out on
the dry sand of the shore. The sand felt cold; it had not yet been warmed by
the sun. This sand was amazingly white and fine. It was deep, soft, marked
all over with the shapeless holes of yesterday's footprints, and looked like
semolina of the very best quality.
The beach slanted almost imperceptibly towards the water. The last
strip of sand, lapped by broad tongues of snow-white foam, was damp, dark,
and smooth; it was firm, easy to walk on.
This was the most wonderful beach in the world, stretching for about a
hundred miles under the bluffs from Karolino-Bugaz to the mouth of the
Danube, then the border of Rumania. At that early hour it seemed wild and
desolate.
The sensation of loneliness gripped Petya with new force. But this time
it was quite different; it was a proud and manly kind of loneliness. He was
Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.
The first thing Petya did was to study the footprints. He had the
experienced, penetrating eye of a seeker after adventures.
He was surrounded by footprints. He read them as though he were reading
Mayne Reid.
The black spot on the face of the bluff and the grey ashes meant that
natives had landed from a canoe the night before and had cooked a meal over
a camp-fire. The fan-like tracks of gulls meant a dead calm at sea and lots
of small fish near the shore.
The long cork with a French trademark and the bleached slice of lemon
thrown up on the sand by the waves left no doubt that a foreign ship had
sailed by far out at sea several days before.
Meanwhile the sun had climbed a bit higher above the horizon. Now the
sea no longer shone all over but only in two places: in a long strip at the
very horizon and in another near the shore, where a dozen blinding stars
flashed in the mirror of the waves as they stretched themselves out neatly
on the sand.
Over the rest of its vast expanse the sea shone in the August calm with
such a tender and such a melancholy blue that Petya could not help
recalling:
A white sail gleams, so far and lonely,
Through the blue haze above the foam. . .
although there was no sail in -sight and the sea wasn't the least
misty.
He gazed spellbound at the sea.
. . . No matter how long you look at the sea, you never tire of it. The
sea is always different, always new.
It changes from hour to hour, before your very eyes.
Now it is pale-blue and quiet, streaked here and there with the whitish
paths you see during a calm. Or a vivid dark-blue, flaming and glistening.
Or covered with dancing white horses. Or, if the wind is fresh, suddenly
dark indigo and looking like wool when you run your hand against the nap.
When a storm breaks, it changes threateningly. The wind whips up a great
swell. Screaming gulls dart across the slate-coloured sky. The churning
waves roll and toss the shiny carcass of a dead dolphin along the shore. The
sharp green of the horizon stands out like a jagged wall over the
mud-coloured storm clouds. The malachite panels of the breakers, veined with
sweeping zigzag lines, crash against the shore with the thunder of cannon.
Amid the roar, the echoes reverberate with a brassy ring. The spray hangs in
a fine mist, like a muslin veil, all the way to the top of the shaken
bluffs.
But the supreme spell of the sea lies in the eternal mystery hidden in
its expanses.
Is not its phosphorescence a mystery-when you dip your arm into the
warm black water on a moonless July night and see it suddenly gleam all over
with blue dots? Or the moving lights of unseen ships and the slow faint
flashes pf an unknown beacon? Or the grains of sand, too many for the human
mind to grasp?
. . . And finally, was not the sight of the revolutionary battleship
which once appeared far out at sea, full of mystery?
Its appearance was preceded by a fire in the port of Odessa. The glow
could be seen forty miles away. At once rumours spread that the trestle
bridge was burning.
Then the word Potemkin was spoken.
(A battleship of the Black Sea Fleet whose sailors mounted a heroic
revolt in 1905 and went over to the side of the revolution. Warships were
dispatched to put down the revolt, but the sailors of these vessels refused
to fire on the insurgents. However, the red flag did not wave from the mast
of the Potemkin for long. The absence of a united leadership of the revolt,
and the shortage of provisions and coal compelled the sailors to surrender.
The revolt of the battleship Potemkin played a role of immense
importance in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement.-Tr.)
Several times the revolutionary battleship, solitary and mysterious,
appeared on the horizon in sight of the Bessarabian shore.
The farm labourers would drop their work and come out to the bluff to
catch a glimpse of the distant thread of smoke. Sometimes they thought they
saw it. They would snatch off their caps and shirts and wave them furiously,
greeting the insurgents.
But Petya, to tell the truth, could not make out a thing in the desert
vastness of the sea, no matter how much he screwed up his eyes.
Except once. Through a spyglass which he had begged for a minute from
another boy, he made out the light-green silhouette of the three-funnelled
battleship flying a red flag at its mast.
The ship was speeding westward, in the direction of Rumania.
The next day a lowering cloud of smoke spread out along the horizon.
That was the whole of the Black Sea squadron in pursuit of the Potemkin.
Fishermen who sailed up in their big black boats from the mouth of the
Danube brought the rumour that the Potemkin had reached Constantsa, where
she had to surrender to the Rumanian government. Her crew went ashore and
scattered in all directions.
At dawn one morning, after several more days of alarm, a line of smoke
again covered the horizon.
That was the Black Sea squadron returning from Constantsa to Sevastopol
with the captured insurgent in tow, as if on a lariat.
Deserted, without her crew, her engines flooded, her flag of revolt
lowered, the Potemkin, surrounded by a close convoy of smoke, moved slowly
ahead, dipping ponderously in the swell. It took the ship a long time to
pass the high bluffs of Bessarabia, where her progress was followed in
silence by the farmhands, border guards, fishermen. . . . They stood there
looking until the entire squadron disappeared from view.
Again the sea became as calm and gentle as though blue oil had been
poured over it.
Meanwhile details of mounted police had appeared on the steppe roads.
They had been sent to the Rumanian border to capture the runaway sailors
from the Potemkin.
. . . Petya decided to have a last quick swim.
But no sooner had he taken a running dive into the sea and begun to
swim on his side, cleaving the cool water with his smooth brown shoulder,
than he forgot everything in the world.
First he swam across the deep spot near the shore to the sand-bank.
There he stood up and began to walk about knee-deep in the transparent
water, examining the sandy bottom with its distinct fish-scale pattern.
At first glance the bottom seemed uninhabited. But a good close look
revealed living things. Moving across the wrinkles of the sand, now
appearing, now burying themselves, were tiny hermit crabs. Petya picked one
up from the bottom and skilfully pulled the crab-it even had tiny
nippers!-out of its shell.
Girls liked to string those little shells on twine. They made fine
necklaces. But men didn't go in for that sort of thing.
Then Petya caught sight of a jellyfish and went after it. The jellyfish
hung like a transparent lamp-shade, with a fringe of tentacles just as
transparent. It seemed to hang motionless-but that was not really so. The
thin blue gelatinous margin of the thick cupola was breathing and rippling,
like the edge of a parachute. The tentacles stirred too. The jellyfish moved
slantwise towards the bottom, as though sensing danger.
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Сидит мужик на рыбалке и пристально смотрит на поплавок, мимо проплывает крокодил. Увидев рыбака, смотрит на него. Спустя минуту крокодил спрашивает:
- Что, мужик, не клюет?
Мужик отвечает:
- Нет.
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