“Behind the bird cherry tree, which had already bloomed, something scarlet flashed and disappeared, swallowed up by a green trembling mass. The whole ground under the bush turned white with petals, and from the depths, from where the rough torsos of the splayed trunks bent in the nettles, it was like from the basement, last year’s cold. Lifeless, bare branches stuck out along the edge like a frame, and flowing foliage fell on them, and all this rose in the middle of the hayfield in a restless heap, humming in the wind. Engineer Apenov suffered under the sun, twitching in his padded jacket from the insolent heavy webs...”