Dr. Zhivago – Excerpt (Chapter 1)

The funeral procession continued to move forward while singing "Eternal Rest". When the song occasionally stopped, their footsteps, horses' hooves, and gusts of wind still seemed to be singing.

At night, the weather became unusually cold. The two windows of the house opened very close to the ground. Looking out through the window, there is a corner of a deserted vegetable garden, a road with ice puddles and a corner of the cemetery where Maria Nikolaevna is buried. There was nothing in the garden except for a few dwarf locusts next to the wall and a few frozen cabbages that had shrunk and turned blue. With each gust of wind, the dwarf locusts, whose leaves had peeled off and gone, flew like magic, and then crouched down on the side of the road.

The snow seemed to be deliberately unleashing its power on Yura, roaring and roaring, trying to scare him as hard as it could. The vast white cloth tumbled in the air and fell straight down to the earth, covering everything. The wind and snow dominated the whole world, and everything else disappeared.

Under the high-flaming umbrella, those fields that had been half harvested were like half-shaved prisoners' heads. Birds hovered in the air, and wheat bent by heavy ears stood still in the hot sun. In the distance, on the harvested wheat fields, there were neat bundles of wheat poles. If you stare at them for a long time, you will have the illusion that they can move, like a land surveyor who walks along the horizon.

Flocks of sparrows constantly flew up from the path between the trees and landed in the black plum bushes, accompanied by a cheerful chirping sound, like a stream flowing in the ditch beside them.

The surface of the river is like a piece of white iron pressed against the folds, reflecting a dazzling eye, which makes people dare not force it to look.

The yellow oriole chirped, stopping for a moment with each three cries, as if deliberately giving the vast field enough time to absorb its silver flute-like clear singing voice. The rich fragrance condensed over the flower furrows, as if lost in the air, unable to stay.

The setting sun behind the slanted platform kissed the hurried footsteps of these people, shining on the wheels of the train.

A tiny trail of blood straddled his forehead, and since the blood had coagulated, it looked as if it were a hook, and sentenced him to "write off" it. In particular, the blood didn't look like it was coming out of his body, but it was like something attached, like a rubber paste/a splash of mud, or a wet and sticky birch leaf.

The sun rises, and the slender and dewy shadows of the trees are snaking on the forest floor, and the shadows are not pitch black, but gray and black like a soaked blanket. The intoxicating fragrance of the morning seemed to rise from this wet shadow, and the light on the shadow was like the fingertips of a girl.