Chapter 13

At the next station he climbed on to the roof of a carriage and travelled a hundred miles further. Then he was thrown off again, But there the main-road passed the railway; by turning aside from it, walking through a field, fording a river, making a way through the woods, skirting the ravines, trudging through river beds, and traversing the marshes he reached the village of Pochinki.

He arrived there with his gramophone at sundown. The red light of the sun was reflected on the windows, the women-folk were milking the cows: it was already autumn and the daylight faded rapidly. The man with the gramophone tapped at the window and Kononov Ivan lifted the shutter.

"Look, comrade, I've a gramophone here, to exchange for flour ... a gramophone, a musical instrument, and records...."

Throwing back his shoulders, Kononov-Ivan stood by the window--then stooped, looked askance at the sunset, at the fields, at the musical instrument. He reflected a moment, then muttered absently:

"Aint wanted.... Go to Poriechie...." and the shutter dropped.

A sombre sky in autumnal lights--and the crossways.... Two wheel- tracks, ripple-grass, a foot-path. Sometimes the wanderer tired, that path seemed interminable, without beginning or ending. He turned aside, went astray, returned on his tracks--evermore to the thickets, forests, marshes....

End of Project Gutenberg's Tales of the Wilderness, by Boris Pilniak