“Can’t sleep, sonny?”
“Like a nightingale in spring.”
“Your spring’s probably come.”
“At forty odd years?”
“Whenever destiny decrees it.”
Throwing a coat over his shoulders (the Apple Feast of the Saviour had already passed and the nights were cold), Hryhoriy stepped out of the hut. A mist hung over the apiary and in the valley along the entire length of the forest edge. Thick and white, like milk. The dew had bent the grasses and they responded to each touch with a shower of heavy cold drops. The old shaggy lindens stood in sleepy delirium...
Hryhoriy left the apiary and wandered off to the forest along a path which he had himself beaten during the summer. Holding up the vaults of their crowns, the gangly trees stretched straight up like columns, making it seem as if one was walking
