All Flesh is Grass

And as I took her hand, she turned and ran lightly up the hill and I went running with her. We reached the top of the ridge and continued running, hand in hand, down the other slope, a wild, ecstatic running that was sheer youth and craziness—a running into nothing, for the utter joy of being alive in that heady moonlight.

We were young and drunk with a strange happiness for which there seemed no reason or accounting—drunk with, at least for me, a wild exuberance.

Она протянута руку, сделала несколько быстрых шагов мне навстречу, и я взял протянутую руку.

Мы были молоды и пьяны от странного, беспричинного счастья, от какого-то неистового восторга,  — по крайней мере, так пьян был я.

Her grip upon my hand was hard, with a lithe, young strength, and we ran together as if we were one person running—and it seemed to me, indeed, that in some awesome manner I had become a part of her, and that somehow I knew where we were going and why we were going there, but my brain was so seething with this strange happiness that it could not translate the knowledge into terms I understood.

We came down to the creek and splashed across, then ran around the mound where I had found the skulls and on up the second ridge and there, atthe top of it, we came upon the picnic.

Сильная, гибкая рука крепко сжимает мою руку, мы бежим так дружно, так согласно, мы двое  — одно; мне даже чудится, что каким-то странным, пугающим образом я и вправду стал лишь частицей ее и знаю, куда мы бежим и зачем, но все мысли путает та же неукротимая, ликующая радость, и я не могу перевести это неведомо откуда взявшееся знание на язык ясных мне самому понятий.

Добежали до ручья, пересекли его, взметнув фонтаны брызг, обогнули насыпь, где я днем нашел черепа, взбежали на новый холм  — и на вершине его застали целую компанию.

There were other people there, at this midnight picnic, a half a dozen of them, all like this alien girl who had run with me. Scattered on the ground were hampers, or things that looked like hampers, and bottles, and these bottles and the hampers were arranged in a sort of circle.