The morning started thru a thick mist, yet with no rain, except for random drizzling, and the wind also began to abate… Jerking like an epileptic, I squeezed the water out of my clothes and the sleeping bag, as much as my cold-stiffened hands could manage to. I had not the slightest desire to go any farther, hearth and home were all I craved for. So, I went back, yet even walking did not warm me up, I was too busy being trembling all the time.

Normally, going downhill is easier than going uphill, but for me that difference was somehow gone and at times I was sort of floating, while to the hearths of civilization there still remained at least a day of normal walking. That’s when I remembered the slate— it was much closer if only I could find it. It’s somewhere along the edge of the wood. For which reason, down that toomb, I was descending in zigzags so as not miss the slate pieces in the tall grass.

And I did find the place.

Seized by the sticky shivering tremor on one hand and overwhelming stiffness on the other, I started to restore the shed and the work warmed me better than walking… The thing I accomplished looked like a crude tent of fire-smeared slate pieces. Inside, it was tall enough for sitting on the ground and more than enough to stretch for the whole body length.

Then I built a fire at the entrance with the wreckage of poles and deadwood which I dragged from the nearby coppice. I warmed my sides by the fire and began to dry up the sleeping bag. When the color of its fabric turned lighter and stopped issuing any steam, I believed in the probable survival.

All next day the sun was glaring blindingly, but I had a slanted roof of slates over my head supported by the charred poles—used as the promenade by the soundless lizards as lazy as I was, because in all that day I went out just once— to collect an armful of grass and spread it under the sleeping bag on the ground…

And so it went on, day after day, without any changes, if not for the growing company—cautious dormice joined me and the lizards. They did not dare step over the fire ashes, so I left a piece of baked potato outside, but the rest, together with bread and cheese, hung in the haversack up the rafter poles under the slate.

At nights, the full moon rose to fill the world with clear-cut shadows. On one of those well-illuminated nights, I went out to take a leak, and on the way thru the tall grass, from under my feet there burst a brood of quail with the loud flutter of wings and shrill outcry, “Damn sleepwalker! Watch your step! We’re sleeping here!” As if I was not scared stiff by them!

In the light of day, over the wide expanse of the valleys, the vultures glided without ever moving their wings. Watching them from the depths of valleys you turn your face up to see their circling so high above, but now, lying on my sleeping bag, I didn’t even have to stick my head out of the slate tent.

When one of them trespassed the invisible borderline between their hunting grounds, the skylord soared higher and, folding his wings, fell down upon the brazen prowler like a stone. I heard the wheezing sound of the air cut by his dive next to the slate tent entrance. He missed, however, or maybe was not keen on hitting but only wanted to warn and shoo off the sneaking bastard. All of us are blood kin, after all.

And so it went on…

All my business was to roll over from one side to the other, from the belly to the back, having no desires, neither ambitions nor plans. Sometimes, I was falling asleep with no regard to the time of day because it made no difference…

Well, and I also watched, of course. I watched how beautiful and perfect the world is…

Sometimes I think, maybe the purpose of man’s existence is just seeing this beauty and perfection. Man is merely a mirror for the world to look into, otherwise, it would not know its own beauty…

Six days later, I returned to civilization, just for the sake of righteousness.

On coming back, to all the questions I responded in quite a laconic way because my vocal cords, after being idle for so long, became too lazy and I could only speak in a hoarse whisper.

(…all I want to say is that both times—in that winter forest, and among the summer toombs—I had the same feeling that I was not alone and someone else was watching that ski-riding kid and the supine lazybones in the shade of burned slate pieces and, more strangely, I was a part of that someone and watched myself from the twilight of the winter forest and from the tall grass on the toomb slope because we all are involved…

Well, on the whole, some weird stuff, a folly accomplished…)

~ ~ ~

With the spring at hand, we, the fourth-graders, started active preparation for getting enrolled to the ranks of young pioneers to reach which goal we copied and memorized the Solemn Oath of Young Leninists. Then one day after the break, Seraphima Sergeevna entered the classroom with an unknown woman. She introduced her as the new School Pioneer Leader and said that we were going to have a Leninist Lesson and for that purpose we had to go out into the corridor now and keep very quiet there because the other classes were at their regular lessons.