Page 56 - СКАЗКИ СНЕЖНОГО ЭЛЬФА

house. But her imagination never left her, so Martha could
share the invented dance with snowflakes.
A young couple froze beneath a streetlight, aloof, and kept
silent. They seemed to have just flung insulting words into
each other’s faces; the girl’s shoulders were still heaving and
the man was trying to light cigarette by cigarette, but they
crumbled in his tense fingers. Finally he crumbled the whole
pack and threw it into a snowdrift with a curse. Then, as if he’d
caught a sound of something, he looked up to see that dance
of snowflakes. Some of the snow hustlers instantly landed on
his nose and one of them managed to duck into his angrily
narrowed eye. The man’s eyes blinked, once and again, then
he shook his head and saw his girlfriend, looking up the same
way. She was trying to catch snowflakes with her lips, and
melting water was streaming down her face. The man let out
a hard exhale, then whisked the girl in his arms and started
waltzing her, showering kisses on her eyes, lips and cheeks.
Actually, they had just been about to part for ever. And they
would, if it were not for the snow and Martha, a woman with
greenish-grey eyes who taught snowflakes to dance.’
I opened my eyes. There was no Snezhik in sight, the frost
on the window pane alone reminded of his visit. Today his
mark could be read from a dancing woman.’ Martha,’ I whis-
pered, touching the visible snow image with my fingers. A
sensation of barbed wire in my throat decreased, and the
throbbing ache inside the head stopped its drumbeating.
‘Actually, no need to go listless’. I smiled. ‘For you can dance,
even if your legs don’t agree with you. You have a sore throat?
Then sing! And I started to sing. My voice was strong and
beautiful, and my song was sure to be heard by snowflakes,
even though it was voiceless. Small flakes were involved both
in Martha’s dance and in my song. I got well. No, not that. I
got PERFECT.

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