"Valentin Katayev. A White Sail Gleams (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

their raised patternwork of curving veins and their turquoise spots of
copper sulphate, looked like fresh greenery.
The young shoots of the vines wound sharply round the tall stakes,
while the old ones were bent under the weight of clusters of grapes.
It took a keen eye, though, to spot the clusters hidden among the
leaves. A person without any experience might pass through several acres
without noticing a single one, yet every vine was hung with them, and they
cried out, "Why, here we are, you strange creature, bushels and bushels of
us, all about you! Pick us and eat, simpleton that you are!" Then, all of a
sudden, the simpleton would notice a cluster under his very nose, then
another, then a third-until, as if by magic, the entire vineyard glowed with
them.
Petya was an expert in these matters. His eye caught the clusters at
once. More, he could even tell the different varieties as they drove past.
And there were a great many varieties. The large light-green Chaus had
cloudy pits visible through their thick skin and hung in long triangular
clusters weighing two or three pounds. The experienced eye would never
confuse them with, say, the Ladies' Fingers, which were also light-green but
longer and shinier. The tender medicinal Shashla might appear to be the twin
of the Pink Muscatel, yet what a world of a difference between them! The
round Shashla grapes, pressed so tightly together in their graceful little
clusters that they lost their shape and almost became cubes, brightly
reflected the sun in their honey-pink bubbles. The Pink Muscatels, however,
were covered with a dull purplish film and did not reflect the sun.
All of them-the blue-black Isabella, the Chaus, the Shashla and the
Muscatel-were so wonderfully ripe and beautiful that even the critical
butterflies alighted on them as if they were flowers, and the feelers of the
butterflies intertwined with the green tendrils of the vines.
From time to time a straw hut could be seen among the vines. Beside it,
in the lacy blue shade of an apple tree or apricot tree, always stood a tub
of copper sulphate.
Petya gazed with longing at those cosy little straw huts.
Well did he know the delight of sitting on the hot dry straw inside
such a hut, in the sultry after-dinner shade.
The oppressive, motionless air would be filled with the aroma of
savoury and fennel. Pods of chick-peas would be drying with a faint crackle.
It was wonderful! What bliss!
The grape-vines would tremble and ripple in the glassy waves of heat.
And over it all would stretch the dusty, pale-blue sky of the steppe, a
sky nearly drained of colour by the heat.
How wonderful!
Suddenly something so extraordinary happened, and with such
breath-taking swiftness, that it was difficult to say what came first and
what after.
At any rate, first a shot rang out. Not the familiar hollow shot from a
fowling-piece which you so often heard in vineyards and inspired no fears.
No. This was the ominous and terrifying crack of an army rifle.
At that same instant a mounted policeman holding a carbine appeared in
the road.
He raised his carbine again and aimed into the depths of the vineyard.