The Bridge Over the Neroch by Leonid Tsypkin

Author:Leonid Tsypkin [NA]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2061-3
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2013-04-26T04:00:00+00:00

IV

EXILE

That day they were particularly lucky. When they arrived at the tour office the bus was already there, freshly washed and completely empty; the driver let them in, and they almost choked from the abundance of empty seats. Pushing and bickering with each other—Tanya kept nodding meaningfully in the direction of the driver who had his nose in a newspaper—and changing seats two or three times, they settled on the shady side, and that side remained shady during the whole trip. The window was lowered slightly, so that there wasn’t a draft, but at the same time they could breathe fresh air. When they left the city, low mountains stretched out on their side, overgrown with grass or small bushes; probably nothing grew at that height because even though the city where they were staying was in a basin, the basin itself was much higher than sea level, and now they were driving to some very high, mountainous place, and the highway was supposedly rising slowly and steadily, although to the eye it wasn’t really noticeable. The valleys and plateaus stretching out between the bus and the mountains were strewn with rocks—round and polished, ranging in size from a cobblestone to a boulder—sometimes the rocks also lay on the mountains, especially on the foothills, and the tour guide, a young guy who was also olive-skinned, told them that according to legend, when God created the world, he began to throw rocks, but he didn’t simply throw them one at a time, he strewed them like a farmer sowing seeds or a card dealer tossing cards—that is, a few at a time, with an expansive gesture, turning around as he did it. As a result, the small rocks, including these boulders, fell here, because here was where he threw them from, and the larger ones fell on the territory of the neighboring republic, which is why huge mountains formed there; but this contradicted the laws of physics, and so perhaps Boris Lvovich hadn’t understood correctly and it was the other way around, but anyway, nature in the neighboring republic turned out to be more fruitful and beautiful, while here it was starker, but grander. The tour guide mentioned this as if in passing, as though he didn’t really expect anyone to understand, or didn’t want to profane his own feelings. During one of the stops, Boris Lvovich walked over to him—the guide stood next to the open bus door, shading himself from the sun while the tourists wandered a bit from the bus, for some reason testing the soil with their feet; yes, of course he knew the works of that filmmaker very well, and even named one of his films that Boris Lvovich hadn’t heard of; the director wasn’t allowed to work in Moscow, and now he was going to move here, to his home town. “You hear that, Tanya?” She stood nearby. “I told you from the start that he understands everything,” Tanya said, when they walked off a bit.

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