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224
Sergei Lebedev
too heavy, too ripe, and the
straw did not sof ten the
blow completely; apples
fell, during the day the
sound was muf f led, but
at night it seemed that a
chronometer was beating in
the garden, that a different
time was beginning, the
t ime of r ipeness . And
when I later read about the
Transfiguration of the Lord,
this incident helped me to
understand it as much as
I could: that old image of
the apple orchard in August
on the threshold between
summer and autumn; the
Transf iguration occurred
when His time had come.
The apple is the fruit of
time; and even though it
is not said that Adam and
Eve had eaten of the apple,
what other fruit could have
embodied the unknown fruit
of the tree of knowledge in a
painting? Human time began
with the apple—Seth begat
Enos, Enos begat Cainan.
So the old peasant ordered
them to send the apple to
the exile village in order that
apples would grow there, he
was trying to spark the time
of the new village, the way
you start a motor, the village
that arose on carted-in soil,
to put down roots in the
place where it appeared by
accident, by the will of those
who sent the exiles; some
settlements, even though a
hundred years old, stand on
bare earth, as if the huts had
just been knocked together,
while others accumulate
time, grow into it.
And now the three old men
told me: we had a reason for
sharpening the axe today.
We’ve decided to chop
down three old apple trees:
they no longer give fruit, we
have no firewood, and we