Chapter 55 blizzards of yesteryear

"When you hear someone say that it used to snow harder, that his youth was different, etc., etc., you will echo what he said in order to quickly end the conversation, but you feel that you are facing is a man who is beginning to age. His only yardstick for judging things lies in the distant past, which means that he does not even have such an ancient instrument at hand. In fact, he is a man who has lost his way. You What do you think?" "What can I say." I said to my friend.I'm spending winter vacation at his house. "What can I say, these are mediocre trifles, let's not waste time on trifles."

"You can't say that," said my friend. "If you start to get bored and don't take interest in these ordinary things, it's called mediocrity. You know, they have their value. For example, what was the snowstorm like in the past?" ,do you know?" "Come on," I said to my friend with a smile, "it seems that you are beginning to age too, and you have become a lost person. The snowstorm of the past!" "Yes, the old blizzards. Why don't we admit that blizzards aren't all the same? The old blizzards, my dear, started on Monday afternoon and ended on Saturday morning . . . Once, when I was very young When the blizzard came..."

"You want to tell a joke." I tried to stop my friend, for fear that he would tell me some corny story. "Oh," went on my friend unhurriedly, "when I was very young, a snowstorm came, my God, what a snowstorm it was! That's it, from Monday afternoon I checked my watch on purpose to keep a close eye on the blizzard, as if, let me see, it was ten minutes to six on a Monday afternoon. I waited. The wind was howling, the snow was flying, and the drifting white snow fell to the ground After a while, they flew up in a circle again, and the day suddenly turned into a glaring white night, covered with thorns, making people unable to tell the difference between south, east and north. The stove in the house was no longer burning, only the smoke filled the air, and the lights and When the candles go out, there is only one feeling in your heart, and that is terror. I have no sense of time, the watch has stopped, I think not long after the blizzard started, I heard a violent knock on the door. It was the knock of the desperate The sound of the door. A lost man, perhaps, I thought—as in countless folktales. But I was in no hurry to open the door. You don't know who you're dealing with in such a situation. Yet, There was another violent knock on the door."

"Who are you?" I asked. "One of your brothers." A strange voice came from outside the door. "Nonsense," I said to the man outside the door, "you better say who you are." "One of your brothers." The strange voice repeated. "Even if you are," I said as I opened the door, "if you are a wolf eaten by sheep, please come in." Into the room was a burly man in a suede fur coat with icicles the size of nails all over his fur coat, eyebrows, chin, and beard.I helped him undress, or, to be more precise, I took off his fur coat, because he was as weak as a log.In the end, I did everything in my power to restore his energy, warm his body, and make him feel human again.He also really recovered.After recovering, it seems that it is not as tall as when it first entered the door, and it has regained its normal proportions.

"Hey," I asked, seeing him regain his strength, "now you can tell me who you really are, although, to be honest, I'm not interested in anything else. Welcome and peace forever! " "I," said the stranger stubbornly, "is your brother." I laughed out loud and said to him: "Well, even if you are my brother, but which one, because I have many brothers. To help you, so that you will not be confused, I can tell you, indeed, there are four of my brothers, that is, I I haven't seen my four brothers for a long time. Suppose you are one of my four brothers, but, look, you don't look like me at all. I really can't think of you as my brother, and, according to me As far as I know, you are not like them. Although I haven't seen each other for a long time, I still remember their noses, Adam's apple, eyes, walking posture, and the way their hands and heads move very clearly."

"I am not one of the four older brothers you have not seen for a long time," said the stranger, "I am the other." "Then you are nobody." I almost yelled. "No," the stranger replied, shaking his head this time, and immediately a veritable rain fell on his hair, eyebrows, chin, and beard, with ice in it. "No, I'm your brother." "How can you be my brother? My brother just went out and went to the yard to get a bundle of firewood. He went out wearing a fur coat, but you are not my brother." "Yes, I am your brother, and it was from this very room that I went out to fetch a bundle of firewood, but I did not just go out, as you say, but Monday afternoon, at the beginning of the blizzard .”

"Well, hell," I said, "isn't it Monday afternoon?" "No, it's Friday morning," replied the stranger.I still think he's a stranger, pretending to be my brother. "It's Friday morning," he repeated, "and I did go out on Monday afternoon, but before I could get wood from the woodpile, I heard a strange clatter of horses' hooves in the street, mixed with I heard the voices of women and men. I went up the street, followed the sound of hooves, and at last got lost, and what happened next was so hard that I can hardly tell. At last, lo and behold, I was back Home, though not home until today, Friday morning."

It was a bit cold in the room, and I thought the fire must have gone out, somehow, so I asked him angrily: "Well, you're lost, even if you're lost, but at least you've come to fetch firewood from the yard, didn't you just go to fetch firewood?" "I didn't fetch any firewood," he said shamefully. "All right," I said bitterly to him, and then I put on my clothes and went out to get some firewood.I picked up a bundle of firewood and hurried back to the house, neither getting lost nor encountering any unusual story, as my brother had.I lighted the stove and made some red wine with pepper and cinnamon for a few glasses with my brother.When the wine was ready, I poured two glasses and walked to the bed where my brother slept.

"Come on, brother," I shook him.He was fast asleep while I went out to fetch wood, and while I was trying to light the stove and make the wine.The fur coat flipped and fell to one side, but a complete stranger stood up, not my brother at all, but someone else. "What are you doing in my house?" I asked the new stranger aggressively. "It should be my brother sleeping under the fur coat, but you appear instead." "Oh," the stranger stammered drowsily, "my brother was waiting for you to come back from the yard to get firewood, but wait, wait, I didn't see you back, so I went out to look for you, afraid that you would get lost. When you were here, I, your eldest brother, came. I was the eldest brother you hadn’t seen for a long time. When I entered the door, I was really hungry and cold, so I said to our younger brother: “Get me something hot to drink and eat first.” , and then went to our brother, which is you, because I couldn't move at all. So he went out to find you, and I lay down under this fur coat."

"When did he come to see me?" "Well," said my brother after a moment's thought, "you went to the yard on Friday morning to fetch firewood, and he waited from Friday until Monday night; he wanted to find you on Monday night, and at this moment I came and so put it off until Tuesday morning. Yes, Tuesday morning, I said to him, 'Go, it's time to find our brother.'" "Then what day is it today?" I asked my elder brother. "I don't know," he said with a yawn, "I don't know, because after my little brother went out to find you, I drank and ate enough, and then fell asleep, sleeping very hard."

My friend finished the story with a smile, handed me a mulled wine with spices, and concluded: "That's the old blizzard, my dear. You might sneer and say it's mediocre. But here's a blizzard, as it was before, and I'll go out to the yard for firewood, and I'll leave you in the house to drink mulled wine with spices, you wait until I don’t come, wait until I don’t come, then go out and find me. When I come back, I don’t see you, only the wine that is about the same, and under your fur coat , on the bed where I made you lie down, a stranger, a total stranger, claimed to me that he was none other than our mutual friend Sternaforo... yes," said the friend, sipping a savory, hot, sweet Wine, saying wistfully, "Yeah, how is Stenaforo going at this moment? I haven't seen him for twenty years. Stenaforo, poor fellow, do you remember him? This fellow , yes, this guy understands what the blizzard meant in the past, my God, the more he understands, the more beautiful and beautiful it is when he tells it..."