The White Ship Read Online Free PDF Page B

just beneath the snowy caps— forested, with dark pinewoods above and leafy trees below. Beneath these were the Kungey Mountains, facing the sun, on which nothing grew but grass. And on the opposite side, where the lake was, there were still lower ones, with barren, rocky slopes descending to the valley that bordered on the lake. On that side he could also see fields, meadows, orchards, villages. . . . The green fields were already touched with streaks of yellow: harvest time was near. Like mice, little cars and trucks were scuttling up and down the roads, followed by winding trails of dust. And at the very edge of the land, as far as the eye could see, beyond the sandy line of shore, was the dense blue curve of the lake. It was Issyk-Kul. There, the water met the sky, with nothing beyond them. The lake lay shining, deserted, and motionless, save for the faint stirring of white foam along the bank.
    The boy looked that way for a long time.
    "The white ship has not come yet," he said to the schoolbag. "Let's take another look at our school."
    The neighboring valley, on the other side of Outlook Mountain, was clearly visible from here. Through the binoculars, the boy could even see the thread in the hands of an old woman who sat spinning near the window, outside her house.
    The Dzhelesai valley was treeless, except for a few remaining solitary old pines. Once there were woods there. Now there were rows of slate-roofed barns, and large dark piles of straw and manure. The pedigreed calves from the dairy farm were kept there. And a short distance from the barns there was a small double row of houses—the cattle breeders' village. The little street climbed down a sloping mound. At the very end of it stood a small building. It was the four-year primary school. The older children were sent to the boarding school at the Soviet farm; the younger ones attended this school.
    The boy had visited the village with his grandfather to see the medic when he had a sore throat. Now he looked intently through his binoculars at the little school covered with a reddish tile roof, with a single, crooked chimney and a handmade plywood sign: MEKTEP. He did not know how to read, but he guessed that this was the word. Everything, even the slightest, unbelievably small details, could be seen through the field glass. Some words scraped out on the plaster wall, the broken, pasted glass in the window frame, the warped, rough boards of the porch. He imagined himself going there with his schoolbag and stepping into the door on which a large padlock was now hanging. What would he find behind that door?
    When he finished examining the school, the boy turned his binoculars to the lake. But everything was still the same. The white ship had not yet appeared. The boy turned his back to the lake and looked down, putting his binoculars aside. Below, right at the foot of the mountain, the seething, silvery river rushed over rocks and rapids along the bottom of the valley. The winding road followed the riverbank and disappeared together with the river behind a turn in the gorge. The opposite bank was steep and wooded—the beginning of the forest sanctuary that climbed high into the mountains, to the very snowcaps. The pines climbed farther than the rest. They raised their dark little brushes along the crests of the mountain ranges, amidst the rocks and snow.
    The boy looked mockingly at the houses, barns, and sheds in the yard of the forest station. They seemed small and fragile from above. Beyond the station he could distinguish his familiar rocks, the camel, the wolf, the saddle, the tank. He had first seen them from here, through his binoculars, and it was then that he had named them.
    With a mischievous grin, the boy stood up and threw a stone in the direction of the yard. The stone fell some distance below, on the mountain. The boy sat down and began to study the settlement through his binoculars. First through the larger lenses. The houses ran farther and