Status Updates From İvan Bunin - Seçilmiş Əsərləri

The closer evening came, the more frequently hese fits of shuddering passed through him. Footsteps, voices in the house, people talking in the courtyard, where a tarantass had already been harnessed for the trip to the station -- these sounds came o him the way they do when you are sick in bed and ordinary life continues all around you....

"This is when the night grows strict and cruel."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because this is a secret time, when only the rooster and the owl can keep awake. This is when the Lord himself listens to the earth, and the most important stars begin to play, and the ice holes freeze in the rivers and the oceans."

Then the days began to pass steadily and slowly, like the pilgrims who walked and walked on the highway past the farm and often carried long conversations with her as they rested. They taught her patience and reliance on God, whose name they pronounced with dull despondency. Above all else, they taught her one rule: don't think.