Sister Pelagia And The Red Cockerel - Plot & Excerpts
After that they set off by land, through the Forest.It didn’t have a name—just “the Forest,” that was all. At first deciduous, then mixed, then almost entirely coniferous, the Forest extended for a hundred miles as far as the Urals Crest, crept over the mountains, and, on emerging into the wide open space beyond them, swept all the way to the Pacific Ocean across an unimaginably vast expanse of land, its immense mass seamed with dark, broad rivers, many of which also had no name, for how could anyone think up such a great number of names, and who was there to do it?At its western extremity, in Zavolzhie, the Forest was still far from mature, but even at its margins it differed from its European counterparts in the same way as an ocean wave differs from a wave on a lake—by virtue of the distinctive leisurely might of its breath, and also an absolute contempt for any human presence.On first acquaintance, the road posed as a decent country track, but by the tenth mile it had already abandoned any pretense of carrying regular traffic and shriveled to the dimensions of an ordinary forest path.After an hour or two of rattling and shaking along a rutted surface on which black water gleamed dully through an overgrowth of spring grass, it was hard to believe that cities, broad steppes, deserts, open sky, and bright sunlight really existed in the world.
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