Nick Uzhov

THUNDERSTORM

Heat outside the window seemed to have become unbearable. The direful Dniapro was hardly moving between languished banks, and the torrent appeared heavy as molten tin. The thunder god was grumbling very close by, dreamily, almost nonstop.

…

Storm-clouds were floating from somewhere and covering the sky. They were boiling incredibly fast and piling one atop the other, inching towards the river, heading for the city, where whitish haze still hung on a tiny patch of blue sky.

…

At once hesitant shimmer of pale silent lightning flooded the expanse of the enraged Dniapro, swift crests of hoary rollers, and the distant dark bank. Gorov’s and Ivan’s oars hit the water that was pink from faraway flashes. And the very same moment the water turned ink-black, and heavy gloom engulfed the trio. Then, as if wanting to help, lightning bolts began to tear the sky apart over and over. Gorov saw the lady’s face; longing and waiting, unaware of the danger, single-mindedly urging forward, to freedom, she was exultantly looking at the other bank, which seemed not a bit nearer.

Their cockleshell was tossed into troughs between waves; lady’s dark shawl was flying in wind like huge impetuous wings.

Every five minutes they had to bail water out; everybody was wet waist-high. The dugout rode the waves, and foam sprayed their eyes – the furious Dniapro was spitting outboard.

It seemed to Gorov that the darkness would last endlessly, that dreadful hammering into the starboard would never cease. The dugout must have been carried away.

Yet the moment came when waves had settled down and the cockleshell was gently rolling in a nook behind a high spit at the opposite bank.

“I thought we’d sink, sir”, Ivan sighed.

“We could not sink”, she said with confidence. “How can we sink, when we carry life?”

…

Without a word, they dried clothes by a fire. Then, after smoothing out the parched, creased fabric, they noticed that grey dawn was breaking above the Dniapro.

In this muddy yellowish-grey light the great river calmed down, as if ashamed of what it had done last night. It was still breezy but the ground wind had given way to the upper wind, which, like a kindly uncle, smoothed out the rough water and cleared the river surface with its breath. It was still drizzling but, clearly, day would soon beam with all its fresh and warm colours. And the rain dripped so thinly that one couldn’t tell whether sparse drops were falling or bumper shoals of hungry bleak were splashing the water.

…

...When Gorov, rowing quite clumsily, got over the Dniapro and went on by the low bank, day was just about to defeat morning. Heavy after rain, unmown grass was steaming on lush withy banks; thick fog was floating from the bosom of the Dniapro, as from a bucket with freshly drawn milk.

“My God”, Gorov thought, “even rivers flow with cream. Why die on such blessed land?”

(translated from Belarusian; excerpt from Ferry on a Stormy River by Uladzimir Karatkevich)

“No mountains. We’re more of a woodland. Virgin forests. Rivers and lakes. Lakes are the loveliest”, he said and could not help but revive memories. “My hamlet of Tsyareshki is just next to two lakes. On a calm late afternoon, water’s flat. Like a mirror. And the forest hangs treetops down. As if painted. Just fish splash. Pikes are huge! It’s head and shoulders above mountains!”

Being an untalkative character, he said too much for one time, felt it at once and stopped speaking. But his stirred thoughts and images were already there, in the distant home land, and at the wild jumble of rocks he was feeling so unbearably lonely as he had not for a long time in captivity.

She must have felt that and, once he was silent, asked: “Speak more. Speak your Belorus.”

Meanwhile, the sun got covered with a grey foggy cloud again.

A swift grey shadow fell down on the bare mountainside and a trail trodden aslant it; wet smoky ragged clouds rapidly moved across the slope. It was bitterly cold and windy.

Clumsily and somewhat reluctantly at first, pausing frequently, living old memories again, he started telling her, as if about something faraway, dear and extraordinary, about oak groves bountiful with large acorns, about beaver huts on lakes, about icy cold, healing birch sap in spring and about the scent of bird-cherry blossom in May.

(translated from Belarusian; excerpt from Alpine Ballad by Vasil Bykau)

STAINED OAKS

The Dniapro flows between high banks gently and confidently, washing sand out from under slopes, at times uncovering for human eyes things it has hidden from them before: spongy limestones, purplish-red iron ore slabs and centuries-old, Viking-age oaks.

They are black like bone, these stained oaks. Like bone char. And when one sees a wet log on a shoal, half-buried with sand, he realizes at once the origin of the folktale of heroes who sleep buried in pebbles and tangled in grassroots, sleep until a time of great peril comes and the people summon them.

...In many times of peril, they never resurrected. Perhaps, were indeed petrified like the oaks?

Who knows?

Yet the great river flows and flows. Long before us it carried its waves past backwaters, virgin forests and storks’ nests. And when none of us is left, it will still be running on and on, to the last, distant sea.

...The village of Azyaryshcha that perched above the Dniapro, on a white sand slope, is engulfed by water in spring, so it stands on an island. The church is nearby, on another island, so on Easter Sunday in some years the priest with clergy have to go around it in dugouts rather than on foot.

The Easter passed; the water dropped a lot. In uplands, they are already done ploughing and sowing. The village, empty, drowsy, is day-dreaming in lazy rays of the May sun. Still, the Dniapro, having almost retired to its summer low flow, can’t calm down and gnaws lazily at the bank’s bottom... Silence. Peace. An odd rooster’s crow above steaming manure.

(translated from Belarusian; excerpt from Ears of Rye under Thy Sickle by Uladzimir Karatkevich)

PEAR TREE

The pear tree was in its last bloom.

All its branches, all great forks, up to the last twig, were thickly powdered with whitish pink blossoms. It was foaming with them, luxuriating and basking in bee humming; it was stretching its boughs sunwards and scattering small delicate fingers of new shoots in the sunshine. And it was so mighty and fresh, so frantically did the bees argue in its pink paradise, that it seemed it would last forever and would have no end.

Still, its last hour was coming.

The Dniapro was approaching it warily, bit by bit, like a robber. In its eternal yearning to shatter the right bank, in freshet it came very close to it, destroyed slopes, carried away withy in order to plant it at another place, instantly tore out bits of the bank, or warily undermined it, to plunge suddenly whole overhangs of land into water. Then it backed up, till next spring, and grass mercifully rushed to heal the wounds inflicted by the Dniapro. And it did come back: here destroyed, there undermined and in the course of time nearly encircled the pear tree.

…

Behind it lay Dniapro Valley slopes, villages, dense forests and boroughs. Behind it stood moss-covered castles, black no-chimney huts and ancient white belfries.

Yet the pear tree was in its last bloom. The Dniapro was approaching it warily, like a robber. This last year the tree stood steadfast by the strength of its roots that had fortified a semicircular outpost.

Another of a million floods that the Dniapro had seen was abating. The next one would throw the tree into waves, along with the blossom. But it didn’t know that. It was blooming in bee humming, and petals were falling down on the rapids.

(translated from Belarusian; excerpt from Ears of Rye under Thy Sickle by Uladzimir Karatkevich)