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

The tomato and grape season was then at its height. The loading went on
and on tediously.
Several times Petya stepped out on deck to see whether they would ever
be ready to cast off. Each time it seemed to him that no progress was being
made. The stevedores were following one another up the gangway in an endless
file, carrying crates and baskets on their shoulders, and still the cargo on
the wharf did not diminish.
The boy walked over to the mate, who was in charge of the loading, and
hovered about beside him. He went to the hatchway and looked down it to see
how wine barrels were carefully lowered into the hold on chains, three or
four at a time, tied together.
Every now and then he went so far as to brush his elbow against the
mate. "Accidentally on purpose", to attract attention to himself.
"Don't get in the way, my lad," the mate said, annoyed but indifferent.
Petya took no offence. The main thing was to strike up a conversation
by hook or by crook.
"I say there, tell me please, are we starting soon?"
"We are."
"How soon?"
"As soon as we're loaded we'll start."
"But when will we be loaded?"
"When we start."
Petya gave a loud laugh, to flatter the mate.
"But tell me really-when?"
"Get out of the way, I said!"
Petya walked off with a lively, independent air, as though no
unpleasantness had occurred between them; it was simply that they had
chatted and then parted.
He rested his chin on the rail and again looked at the wharf. Now he
was bored to death by it.
Besides the Turgenev, a great many barges were being loaded.
The whole wharf was crowded with wagons of wheat.
The wheat made a dry, silken rustle as it flowed down the wooden chutes
into the square hatchways of the holds.
A fierce white sun reigned with merciless monotony over that dusty
square which had not the slightest trace of beauty or poetry.
Everything, absolutely everything, seemed dreary and ugly.
Those wonderful tomatoes which had such a warm and delicious gleam in
the shade of wilted leaves in the vegetable gardens now lay packed in
thousands of crates all alike.
Those tender-tender grapes, each cluster of which, in the vineyard,
seemed a work of art, had been squeezed greedily into coarse willow baskets
and hastily sewn round with sacking; and on each basket there was a label
besmeared with paste.
The wheat that had been grown and harvested with such labour-the large
amber wheat fragrant with all the odours of the hot fields-lay there on a
dirty tarpaulin, and men in boots walked over it.
Among the sacks, crates and barrels strode an Akkerman policeman in a
white uniform jacket, with an orange revolver-cord round his sunburned neck
and a long sword at his side.