The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - стр. 95
But that time after one rain there came another, and my second dancing was not as enthusiastic as the previous. The additional rain also let up after all, and I prepared to stay overnight in a shallow hollow to hide from the cold night wind.
About midnight the drops of one more rain tap-tapped on my sleeping bag and made me realize that I was kaput. A raging stream of rainwater ran down the hollow, I struggled out of the sleeping bag put it on my back and stood with my legs wide apart giving way to the running spate. That’s when I guessed that my sleepover spot was just a gulch, but I could not leave it either because of the squally wind joining the fun. There was nothing to do but wait for the dawn in the posture of the letter Z, clutching my knees with my hands, under the sleeping bag on my back, drenched thru and thru, and the rivulet running between my feet. The uncontrollable inside shudder mingled with the lashing by outside chilly rains, which that night I lost count of…
The morning started thru a thick mist, yet with no rain, except for random drizzling, and the wind also began to abate… Jerking like an epileptic, I squeezed the water out of my clothes and the sleeping bag, as much as my cold-stiffened hands could manage to. I had not the slightest desire to go any farther, hearth and home were all I craved for. So, I went back, yet even walking did not warm me up, I was too busy being trembling all the time.
Normally, going downhill is easier than going uphill, but for me that difference was somehow gone and at times I was sort of floating, while to the hearths of civilization there still remained at least a day of normal walking. That’s when I remembered the slate— it was much closer if only I could find it. It’s somewhere along the edge of the wood. For which reason, down that toomb, I was descending in zigzags so as not miss the slate pieces in the tall grass.
And I did find the place.
Seized by the sticky shivering tremor on one hand and overwhelming stiffness on the other, I started to restore the shed and the work warmed me better than walking… The thing I accomplished looked like a crude tent of fire-smeared slate pieces. Inside, it was tall enough for sitting on the ground and more than enough to stretch for the whole body length.
Then I built a fire at the entrance with the wreckage of poles and deadwood which I dragged from the nearby coppice. I warmed my sides by the fire and began to dry up the sleeping bag. When the color of its fabric turned lighter and stopped issuing any steam, I believed in the probable survival.
All next day the sun was glaring blindingly, but I had a slanted roof of slates over my head supported by the charred poles—used as the promenade by the soundless lizards as lazy as I was, because in all that day I went out just once— to collect an armful of grass and spread it under the sleeping bag on the ground…
And so it went on, day after day, without any changes, if not for the growing company—cautious dormice joined me and the lizards. They did not dare step over the fire ashes, so I left a piece of baked potato outside, but the rest, together with bread and cheese, hung in the haversack up the rafter poles under the slate.