The Lovers - стр. 4
Dina listened to the voice, gathered up all her inner strength and drew level with the pack, neither slowing down nor speeding up.
The pack flowed around her, without forgetting to utter a few yelps in her direction. Perhaps it was a greeting, or maybe a warning, like, do not even think of provoking us, we won’t care that you are small and helpless.
“Don’t run, just don’t run,” Dina kept repeating the advice of the Inner Voice. But her back went numb from the thought that a whole pack of semi-wild dogs was ambling behind her right now, and who knew what they might decide to do…
Something snapped inside her, the fear became impossible to control, it blanketed her eyes and mind, and drowned out the voice. She ran. She did not understand or feel anything. She was vaguely aware of the dogs, who had immediately caught up with her, surrounded her and were running alongside her, barking loudly and snapping at her tights and the edge of her coat.
They fell back only where the country road became the town pavement.
Dina ran into a shop on the corner of the nearest building – it was the biggest food store at the time in their small town – and then finally came to her senses.
She stood in the entryway between the two glass doors, one leading into the shop and the other one leading onto the street, and leaned against the wall.
The dogs were gone, she was safe, her coat was not torn, so they hadn’t bitten her, only scared her, and her face wasn’t wet, so she hadn’t been crying. It was good that she had not screamed or cried. She did not know why she thought this was good.
It was very bright in the shop from the many hanging metal ceiling lamps, and it always smelled of milk and fresh bread, which was lying on wooden latticed shelves on wheels.
Every section in this shop had its own sound.
The glass sounds lived to the right of the doors: it was the bottles knocking dully against each other in their wooden pallets, while the glasses jingled merrily on their enameled trays. There was also the babbling turning fountain, which the saleswoman Valya used to wash the dirty dishes. One could drink some juice here, tomato, for example, which poured thickly from a large glass container with a lid into a faceted glass, and foamed in its own special way, not like the grape or apple juice. Or soda water, for example, cream soda, which flowed with a hiss from the long-necked green bottle, and one had to quickly bring the glass up to one’s lips so that the nose and lips were sprayed with tiny bursting bubbles and their wonderful sweetly-sour smell of cream soda.