[Ostrovsky Nikolai]How the steel was tempered [钢铁是怎样炼成的（上）].doc

PROGRESS SOVIET AUTHORS LIBRARY NIKOLAI OSTROVSKY HOW THE STEEL WAS TEMPERED  A Novel in Two Parts Translated from the Russian by R. Prokofieva  PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW OCR: /russica2/  INTRODUCTION The balcony door stood open, and the curtain stirred in the wind, filling out, rising reluctantly, and shrinking like a dipped sail. A crumpled towel left by someone on the radio made a white blur in the dusk. It looked like a white rabbit who had laid down its long ears preparing to jump. I remembered that bright September morning in Sochi two years ago, the small house in Orekhovaya Street, the ripe, orange persimmons in the sunlit garden, the pleasant whitewashed room, and the dear face on the piled-up pillows. The white rabbit nestled happily in the folds of the blanket as Nikolais nervous fingers caressed its long, silky ears. Nikolai was laughing softly, and his gleaming teeth were as white as sugar. On the bedside table lay several big red apples, and their lovely smell filled the whole house. The white rabbit, comically twitching its soft ears, licked the gentle human hand with its small pink tongue. * I wanted to shut my eyes tight and see that hot September morning again, and the house filled with sunlight and apple fragrance. My thoughts refused to take a melancholy course, and my mind was still unable to grasp what had happened and tell itself that this was the irrevocable. . . . But reality asserted itself, and my eyes saw with ruthless clarity the face that had forever grown still. The last struggle for survival had sapped all his life juices, and dried him as a leaf is dried in a hot wind. It only spared his tall, handsome forehead, and his soft dark chestnut hair. This clear, dome-like brow rose above a small, wizened face. And one fancied that his creative imagination, infused with revolutionary ardour and an irrepressible interest in and love of life, was still working busily. . . . I placed my hand on his forehead. It was stil