{"id":10589,"date":"2025-12-01T18:15:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T18:15:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vidgop.co.il\/?page_id=10589"},"modified":"2025-12-25T10:55:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T10:55:46","slug":"the-rains","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vidgop.co.il\/en\/books-2\/the-rains\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rains"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Rains<\/h3>\n

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in\u00a0Luxury Literarure\u00a0Magazine<\/strong><\/p>\nGo ahead, try stepping outside. It\u2019s not hard. Nothing\u2019s going to jump out at you. Even your enemies take a break now and then. Well, yes, there is<\/em> the question of the elements\u2026 But the wind hasn\u2019t kicked up yet, the clouds haven\u2019t quite smothered the sun, and the rain? Barely a drizzle, scarcely a mizzle, a casual, frivolous kind of rain. Pop your collar and you\u2019ll be fine\u2014those driblets won\u2019t sneak down your neck. I mean, who\u2019s afraid of a little sky-water! Let it do its thing. This is hardly Bad Weather, is it. This is hardly the time to seal your windows and batten down your hatches.\n\nSquint skyward, though, and unease is sure to creep in: the sun\u2019s all but vanished, and the clouds are darkening and threatening to swallow the whole firmament. And what\u2019s this? The celestial floodgates burst open, and the meek little drizzle morphs into a monstrous torrent. Quick\u2014find a roof, seek shelter!\n\nThey\u2019re relentless, these rains. Relentless and life-changing. Does weather change lives? But of course it does. You forget the sun exists, you pull on your boots, you don your hooded mac; you drink grog of an evening, you stretch out before the fire, you watch with melancholic eye the dancing of the flames; most importantly of all, you feel every inch an Englishman, an old-timer whiling away the hours with a manservant you\u2019ve inherited from your grandfather.\n\nOr perhaps, like a character from some Russian drama, you listen to the drum of the rain and lament the meaninglessness of your existence, an existence as interminable as the deluge outside your windows.\n\nBut now you stop conjuring visions of melancholic Englishmen and anguished Russians; now you press your forehead to the window-glass and watch the rains descend in endless sheets, implacable and unforgiving, rains that herald the end of your patient little life, the vanishing of \u00a0all the living and the dead, the fall of the civilization we created.\n\nRain floods land and sea. The oceans swell and burst their bounds, drowning the earth. \u00a0The planet, now a great sphere of unbroken water, drifts from its orbit, dissolves into the universe, vanishes into vast, cosmic indifference.\n\nHere we are, the last witnesses to the approaching horror; here we are, mute, transfixed, beating our foreheads against window-glass as if hellbent on tearing through the veil of our own existence, outrunning the catastrophe, and becoming the first to vanish into nothingness.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\u00a9 Jonathan Vidgop\u00a0 | Artist A. Gorenstein<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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