Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/159



WAS riding with a soldier. It was one of those summer days when one would fight his best friend who had said that the hottest summer is preferable to the coldest winter. The sun poured down heat in a way to burst one's brain.

Across the fields of ripening wheat heat vibrated and trembled, and rose in waves toward the sun. The trees with their dry and withered leaves looked like sick people who were longing for a drink of water. The cattle in the fields were suffering and seeking the shade of the old apple trees. Not a bird moved; exhaustion lay upon nature, which seemed herself to have lost consciousness.

In the brain there was a hideous emptiness—a Sahara! One felt heavy and weary. It was not easy to breathe. I began to fear that I should never reach the little village alive.

But when at length I did get there I was like a