At the Point

“It was a stuffy May afternoon. Along a narrow dusty street, where little one-story houses clung to both sides, there were no sidewalks, and in places thick grass grew. About thirteen years old boy in a gymnasium uniform was walking.

It was one of the far outskirts of the southern city of Pylsk, as shown by the character of the buildings—made entirely of mud-plaster, roofed with tiles and even simply straw. In the very middle of the street, where in rainy weather there was a whole lake of dirty water, and now it shimmered like a piece of shattered mirror, reflecting a sliver of turquoise sky with a tiny unmoving mother-of-pearl cloud—there was a long puddle, sweetly languishing, showing the back of a fat and probably already aged pig—covered in glistening black mud—and snorting languidly. The mud-plaster walls hurt the eyes with their blinding whiteness… The hot air didn’t stir… “Cuckoo-koo-oo!” came from all the courtyards, competing with one another… ”