The Stripe of Changeability
Некоторые знают, что я занимаюсь английским. И вот недавно мы учились писать на английском художественный текст. Мне, конечно, стало интересно перевести своё. Жду отзывов от англоязычных друзей: как оно получилось?
The Stripe of Changeability
By Natalya Lebedeva
The sea stopped two steps from his house. It could have moved further, tried if the old wooden walls were durable enough, licked the high roof covered with slate. It could have pressed out glasses from windows and broken open squeaky stairs… But the sea changed its mind and didn't do it.
Igor was grateful.
When the sea came onto the place of the orchard, life became not so empty. Earlier Igor felt nothing, now he started feeling fear. The sea was scaring. It seemed to be unpredictable, sometimes being smooth, sometimes - rough. After a few days of calmness waves started hitting the wall and the old wooden house was shaking as an ancient ship. The sea hissed and crashed and roared behind the walls. Large salty splashes settled on the windows.
Igor was intimidated because these days he could see how things changed. Other changes in the Stripe of Changeability were frequent but imperceptible. Igor saw one state of thing, then another and never - the moment of transition. Now he could observe how the storm was coming. Clouds were getting thicker, a lightning flashed, thunder roared, wind gained strength. Waves were raising their white backs.
In the evenings Igor stayed on the porch and contemplated clouds that laid on the skyline. Clouds were reflected in the deep water. It seemed as if the whole world was tightened in a giant vise. Igor was gasping for breath.
He saw long stalks of grass that were swaying slowly by the plunge line. Round smooth sides of apples glanced under the water and little gray fishes touched them by toothless tender mouths. Igor stared at blue flaked bar of swing that sake up the water and struggled to remember whether it was him who had set this swing this way, whether his wife had watched from the kitchen window how the girls were playing? Whether it was true? Had they really lived before The Changeability started? Igor struggled to remember what was happening with him those days and couldn’t. He didn’t remember his wife’s face or the faces of daughters.
Sometimes he doubted they really existed.