214 292
214
Sergei Lebedev
human help: suppor ting,
straightening, sawing, lifting.
People here seemed to have
forgotten all the verbs for
creative activity, the sound
of a hammer or the song of
a saw, and had forgotten
about themselves, too: being
there was intolerable. There
is a special color, the color of
old fence boards that have
been splashed all winter with
the snowy mush underfoot,
and in the spring the mud
dries, turning earthy-gray;
the color of carelessness
and indifference. The whole
villagewas speckledwith it, as
if it had been sown over many
years of drizzle; someone
had hung a lantern by the
gate and now its glass cover
was f illed with rainwater
and the canvas wick bore
filigree rust crystals. What
was intolerable was not the
neglect itself but that life
could accommodate itself to
neglect, take on its image,
become identical to it.
One garden was tended:
strangely, it was entirely
planted wi th potatoes,
leaving only a narrow walk
to the house, every bed filled
with potatoes, as if nothing
else grew anywhere in the
village. Someone was inside
the house, smoke came out
of the crumbling chimney
that dropped pieces of brick
onto the mossy roof, but the
windows were shuttered
tight.
Behind the house there was
a creaking, grinding noise,
metal on stone, ringing
and then grinding again;
the blue twilight that made
the air thicken as it grew
colder without losing its
transparency settled on the
village, and each screech
causedgoosebumps,warning
me not to come closer—only