Redemption by Friedrich Gorenstein

Author:Friedrich Gorenstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000, Fiction/Literary, LCO014000, Literary Collections/Russian & Former Soviet Union
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2018-10-22T16:00:00+00:00

Sashenka ran fearfully through the dark vegetable plots, which went on endlessly, and it wasn’t especially her face that she felt afraid with—she could touch that with her hands—but she felt afraid with her back, which was completely unprotected, exposed to the chilly, snowy wind. Not only mustn’t Sashenka touch her back, she mustn’t even think about what was happening behind her, where the infinite darkness of night began immediately beyond her fur coat. She caught a sudden glimpse of something white to her right, either the wall of a little house or a snowdrift, but quite a high one, so that even a grown, strong man could easily hide behind it. Sashenka realized that, and ran around the snowdrift in a wide semicircle, peering hard into the darkness, but not a single familiar form emerged ahead of her or on either side, and Sashenka was afraid to look back to where she had probably passed the hospital, from which she knew the way. Something like frozen tussocks started skipping about under Sashenka’s feet, and it gotbrighter, but it wasn’t because the moon had sailed out from behind the clouds, it had simply run into a cloud that was thinner and more tattered by the wind and was shining through it as a white patch. By this light Sashenka saw a ditch close by, evidently dug just recently, after the snowfall during the afternoon, because the clay along the parapet of the trench was fresh and only slightly frozen. Sashenka decided to go around the ditch, since it was deep enough for a man to hide in, if not at full height then by squatting down on his haunches. However, the curiosity that had been aroused together with Sashenka’s fear drove her to approach the ditch, instead of recoiling from it, and glance inside. It was strange that if the clay parapet was fresh, the lumps of clay hadn’t actually frozen to each other yet, as if they had really been extracted the day before. The bottom of the ditch was covered with hoarfrost and seemed to be strewn with a thick layer of snow. The snow was soft and clean, slightly blued, as if it had been starched, and lying there stretched out at full length on the snow was a young Jewish girl, the dentist’s daughter, wearing the light frock in which Sashenka had seen her in the photograph. She was a girl of rare beauty, and she clearly knew that she was beautiful, because she had flirtatiously exposed her beautiful arms, rounded shoulders, and pure, graceful neck. Except that the head, smashed with a brick, had been artfully covered over with colored ribbons woven into the hair, and the skin beside one little ear had been lightly powdered with hoarfrost, in the same way that Sashenka concealed the scar from her operation on the back of her neck. Sashenka didn’t know how long she stood there, leaning over the ditch without breathing. All she remembered was suddenly

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