Boris Pasternak

The rain was the first detail in the sketch to stop Serezha. He transferred this detail from an octavo to a quarto-sized sheet, and begin to amend and erase in an attempt to arive at the desired lucidity. In places, he penned words that did not exist in the language. He allowed them to stay temporarily on the paper in the hope that they might, later, guide him through more immediate torrents of rainwater into that sort of colloquial speech, which originated from the intercourse of enthusiasm and usage. He believed that these runnels, recognised and accepted by all, would flow into his memory; and their anticipation dimmed his eyes with tears as if he wore a pair of incorrectly fitted spectacles.

If he had not been sitting, like every writer, at an angle to the table, with his back to both the entrances into the room, or if he had turned his head for the moment to the right, he would have died from fright. Anna stood in the doorway. She vanished, but not at once. Retiring a step or two from the theshold, she lingered in sight and close proximity just as long as she judged it neccesary to preserve a balance between faith and superstition. She did not wish to tempt fate either by deliberate delay or blind haste. She was dressed in her outdoor clothes. In her hand she held a tightly furled umbrella because, in the interval, she had not severed her connexion with the outside world and had a window in her room. Moreover, when she was about to descend to Serezha, she very sensibly glanced at the barometer which indicated stormy weather. Forming like a cloud behind Serezha's back, she glittered whitely and smokily in a sunset beam of dazzling intensity, which shot out beneath the grey and lilac storm cloud that pressed down on the neighbouring garden. The torrents of light dissolved Anna as well as the parquet floor, which curled corrosively beneath her like vapour. From two or three movements by Serezha, Anna, as in the Game of Kings, guessed both his trouble and its lifelong incorrigibility. After seeing him move the cushion of his fist across his eye, she turned away, gathered her skirt and, crouching as she walked, in a few long and powerful strides tiptoed out of the classroom. Once in the corridor, she increased her pace a little and dropped her skirt, and this she did while biting her lips and as noiselessly as before.

- The Last Summer