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Sergei Lebedev
I froze; I thought that
cutting their hair would be
preparing them for death;
they also asked for soap,
and imagining its fragrance
of ar t i f i c ial f reshness ,
chemical cleanliness—the
last cleanliness for them—I
felt fear; but then I washed
each of them in the barrel
with rain water, cut off their
long matted hair, and the
old men, changed into white
cotton underwear, started
touching one another, using
one another as mirrors.
I brought them driftwood,
sawed and chopped it into
logs; the old men sat, getting
used to their new selves, and
they couldn’t, the power of
adjusting had waned in them,
so they just listened to the
whine of the saw, the ringing
sound of the axe on the tarry
wood, and those sounds—
the sounds of beginnings,
work, construction—seemed
to reach them less and less.
I did not ask them about
the island; the past seemed
very fragile and unstable to
me; touch something in the
past and there would be a
collapse of honed memory
and the heart that had lived
with pain would grieve again.
The old men were silent,
and I left; words of farewell
would not have reached
them. The dinghy picked up
the bank current and sailed
past quickly, the houses
on the shore vanished in
the twilight, the big apple
moon cast shimmering light
on the water, and I pointed
the dinghy’s nose along the
moonlight path.
I sailed all night; the river
carr ied the boat over
shallows and whirlpools,
over the backs of f ish; in
the morning when a cold fog
rose from the river bays, I
saw the island.