Mikhail Bulgakov. The Fateful Eggs -
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shimmering over the fields. But the nights were wonderful, green and
deceptive. The moon made the former estate of the Sheremetevs look too
beautiful for words. The palace-cum-state farm glistened as if it were made
of sugar, shadows quivered in the park, and the ponds had two different
halves, one a slanting column of light, the other fathomless darkness. In
the patches of moonlight you could easily read Izvestia, except for the
chess section which was in small nonpareil. But on nights like these no one
read Izvestia, of course. Dunya the cleaner was in the woods behind the
state farm and as coincidence would have it, the ginger-moustached driver of
the farm's battered truck happened to be there too. What they were doing
there no one knows. They were sheltering in the unreliable shade of an elm
tree, on the driver leather coat which was spread out on the ground. A lamp
shone in the kitchen, where the two market-gardeners were having supper, -
and Madame Feight was sitting in a white neglige on the columned veranda,
gazing at the beautiful moon and dreaming.
At ten o'clock in the evening when the sounds had died down in the
village of Kontsovka behind the state farm, the idyllic landscape was filled
with the charming gentle playing of a flute. This fitted in with the groves
and former columns of the Sheremetev palace more than words can say. In the
duet the voice of the delicate Liza from The Queen of Spades blended with
that of the passionate Polina and soared up into. the moonlit heights like a
vision of the old and yet infinitely dear, heartbreakingly entrancing
regime.
Do fade away... Fade away...
piped the flute, trilling and sighing.
The copses were hushed, and Dunya, fatal as a wood nymph, listened, her
cheek pressed against the rough, ginger and manly cheek of the driver.
"He don't play bad, the bastard," said the driver, putting a manly arm