Read The Adolescence of Zhenya Luvers for Free Online Page B

garden, which recalled a knobby potato or a swollen gray-green pumpkin, but Mama ... Zhenya smiled at the mere thought of the comparison.
    But it was Aksinya who gave the tone to this pressing comparison. It was she who had the superiority. The peasant woman lost nothing by it, but the lady lost something. For a second Zhenya had a crazy thought. It seemed to her that something simple and rural had entered into the essence of her mother, and she imagined her saying “ap‘l” instead of “apple” and “wo’k” for “work.” Maybe the day will come, she thought, when she wears her new beltless silk morning dress and sails in like a ship and greets us with peasant words. The corridor smelt of medicine. Zhenya went in search of her father.

2
    New furniture was bought. Luxury came into the house. The Luvers bought a coach and kept horses. The coachman’s name was Davlecha.
    Rubber-tired wheels were quite a novelty at the time. When they went for a ride, everything turned and stared after the coach: people, fences, chapels and roosters.
    When the coach, out of respect for Mrs. Luvers, started off at a walking speed, she shouted after them: “Don’t go too far, only to the turnpike and back. And look out when you go down the mountain!” The pale sun, which reached her on the doctor’s veranda, glided further along the street, till it reached the nape of Davlecha’s freckled neck and warmed him so that his skin contracted pleasantly.
    They drove over the bridge. The conversation of the planks sang out, cunning, full and clear; it was fixed for all time, forever locked in the chasm below and always in her memory, at noon and in her sleep.
    Vykormish stamped up the mountain and tried his strength on the steep, unyielding pavement. He stretched and pulled and heaved; he looked like a wriggling locust and, humbled by his unnatural effort, he suddenly became beautiful, like the creature that by its very nature is meant to jump and fly. It seemed as if he couldn’t bear it any longer, his wings flashed angrily, he soared. Really! The horse pulled in, then threw his forelegs high and dashed in a brief gallop through a fallow field. Davlecha shortened the reins and curbed the horse. A thin, shaggy dog barked at them stupidly. The dust was the color of gunpowder. The road turned sharply to the left.
    The black road ended at the fence of a railway warehouse. The air felt restless. The sun came slantingly through the bushes and veiled a group of strange small shapes in feminine clothes. The sun bathed them in a white light which appeared suddenly, pouring like liquid lime from a pail overturned by a shoe and ran like a wave over the ground. Bands of sunlight covered the road. The horse moved at a walking pace.
    â€œTurn left,” Zhenya ordered. “There is no road there,” Davlecha replied and pointed out a red fence with his whip. “A dead end.”
    â€œThen stop. I want to look around.”
    â€œThere are our Chinese.”
    â€œYes, I see.” Davlecha noticed that the young lady no longer wanted to converse with him. He sang out a long-drawn “prrrrrr” and the horse, its whole body shaking, stopped as if it had taken root. Davlecha whistled softly and encouragingly to help the horse do what was necessary.
    The Chinese ran across the street, giant loaves of rye bread in their hands. They were dressed in blue and looked like women. Their naked heads were crowned by knots on top, which seemed to be twisted in place by handkerchiefs. Some of them hesitated, and one could study them closely. Their faces were dark with dirt, like copper oxidized by poverty. Davlecha took his tobacco pouch from his pocket and began to roll a cigarette. At that moment several women appeared on the corner toward which the Chinese were moving. Probably they also were going to fetch bread. The Chinese who stood in the road guffawed and walked toward the women. They