Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

Sergei Lebedev

somewhere into the grass; the official was insulted, he had believed with childlike sincerity that he was in a polar paradise where trees bear fruit twelve months a year, and while he was used to human trickery, and an expert on faking reports himself, he was unpleasantly surprised to see that even nature can be involved in deceit. He walked around a few more trees, muttering “I didn’t expect this,” “I didn’t expect this,” as if the trees had pinned the fruit on themselves like false medals in order to greet him; one of the exiles assigned to the garden later picked up the apple the guest had tossed. They wanted to eat the apple, it was the first fruit the exiles had held in their hands in many years; they were not trusted to hang the fruits on the trees. The very

shape of it—the rounded ripeness—sated their hungry palms that had forgotten everything but tools; the exiles passed around the apple, as if it had just been born in the straw, passed it around and consumed it with their eyes—a case when a metaphor becomes the literal description of what happens: the apple was spiritual nourishment, food for the eyes, and there was enough for all of them. One of the peasants, who was considered a sage, though this word is imprecise, was a reader and interpreter of the Scriptures, the kind of man who becomes a leader of a small peasant sect of somewhat twisted fanatics. If any of the educated prisoners talked to him about paleontological finds, about animals from other eras whose remains allow

222