A very short story
PICTURES
by
Evgeny Zamyatinpresented by SovLit.com
"If you don't leave
this very moment,
I'm going to throw you
out the window."
A very short story
PICTURES
by
Evgeny Zamyatinpresented by SovLit.com
"If you don't leave
this very moment,
I'm going to throw you
out the window."
I went over to my friend’s place - to ask him if I could borrow some money. Neither he nor his wife were in. I was met in the hall by an immaculate little boy.
"Just wait a bit, Dad and Mom will be back."
The boy began to show me pictures, so that I wouldn’t be bored.
"Well, what’s this?"
"A wolf," I said.
"A wolf, that’s right. You know a wolf doesn’t eat grass, he eats lambs..."
And he explained all the pictures to me in such meticulous detail. I grew sick of it. He showed me a rooster.
"And what’s this?" he asks.
"That, that’s a hut."
My boy was stunned, he grew bug-eyed. In a moment he figured out a way to deal with the situation; he found me a picture of a real hut.
"Well, what’s this?"
"That, that is a birch branch, that’s what that is."
The boy smiled warmly and began to explain: "A hut doesn’t peck at grain, but a rooster does. You can’t live inside a rooster, but you can live inside a hut...A birch branch doesn’t have any doors and a rooster..."
"Listen my dear boy," I said, "if you don’t leave this very moment, I’m going to toss you out the window"”
The boy looked me in the eyes and saw that I would indeed toss him. He charged off to complain to his grandmother.
The grandmother came out into the hall and began to scold me:
"Have you no conscience young man? What are you threatening the dear boy for? After all he’s only telling you the honest to God truth."
Translated by: Andrew Glikin-Gusinsky
See Also: The Lion by Evgeny Zamyatin
and Biography of Evgeny Zamyatin
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