Brezine šume

Drugog jutra, vlak je već bio četiri stotine kilometara istočno od Moskve. Polly se probudila na malom sklopivom stolu. Svjetlo kroz prozor bilo je nježno sivo, kao ljetno jutro na sjeveru. Galina, starija žena, već je pila čaj iz čaše u metalnom držaču.

On the second morning, the train was already four hundred kilometres east of Moscow. Polly woke up on the small folding table. The light through the window was the soft grey of a northern summer morning. Galina, the older woman, was already drinking tea from a glass in a metal holder.

"Breze," rekla je.

"Birches," she said.

Polly je pogledala. Vani su stabla s bijelim deblima jurila pokraj njih brzinom od šezdeset kilometara na sat. Bile su posvuda. Nisu bile u gajevima ili čistinama. One su bile cijeli krajolik.

Polly looked. Outside, white-trunked trees were running past at sixty kilometres an hour. They were everywhere. They went on. They were not in groves or clearings. They were the entire landscape.

Ovo je bio zapadni rub ruskog pojasa breza. Bijela breza ima najšire prirodno područje od svih listopadnih stabala na Zemlji. Raste tamo gdje gotovo ništa drugo neće. To je drvo koje kaže: ovdje je bio požar, ili, ovdje će biti šuma, ali ja sam ovdje prva.

This was the western edge of the Russian birch belt. White birch has the widest natural range of any deciduous tree on Earth. It grows where almost nothing else will. It is the tree that says: there has been a fire here, or, there will be a forest here, but I am here first.

Mladić s prijenosnim računalom, čije se ime pokazalo da je Pavel, podigao je pogled. "Ti si papiga," rekao je ravnim engleskim. "Primijetio sam." Vratio se tipkanju.

The young man with the laptop, whose name turned out to be Pavel, looked up. "You are the parrot," he said in flat English. "I noticed." He went back to typing.

Galina je natočila drugu čašu čaja i ponudila je Polly. Bio je boje jantara. Tanka kriška limuna plutala je na vrhu. Samovar na kraju vagona radio je neprekidno dvanaest sati.

Galina poured a second glass of tea and offered it to Polly. It was the colour of amber. A thin slice of lemon floated on top. The samovar at the end of the carriage had been running for twelve hours straight.

Polly je pažljivo otpila gutljaj s ruba čaše. Bio je vrlo vruć i vrlo sladak.

Polly drank a sip carefully off the edge of the glass. It was very hot and very sweet.

"Najduži dio ovog putovanja su stabla," rekla je Galina. "Ljudi to ne razumiju dok ne krenu na putovanje. Sjediš u vlaku šest dana i gledaš u stabla. Nema im kraja."

"The longest part of this trip is the trees," Galina said. "People do not understand this until they ride it. You sit in a train for six days and you look out at trees. There is no end to them."

Tajga počinje iza Volge. Oko četrdeset posto ruskog kopnenog područja je tajga. Zemlja sadrži otprilike dvadeset posto svih svjetskih šuma.

The taiga begins past the Volga. About forty percent of Russia's land area is taiga. The country contains roughly twenty percent of all the world's standing forest.

Polly je popila drugi gutljaj. Pavel je tipkao. Galina se vratila svojoj knjizi. Vani je četiri stotine kilometara prolazilo kao da je jedna neprekidna breza.

Polly drank a second sip. Pavel typed. Galina returned to her book. Outside, four hundred kilometres slid past as if it were one continuous birch.