The Crushed Flower

From "The Crushed Flower": His name was Yura. He was six years old, and the world was to him enormous, alive and bewitchingly mysterious. He knew the sky quite well. He knew its deep azure by day, and the white-breasted, half silvery, half golden clouds slowly floating by. He often watched them as he lay on his back upon the grass or upon the roof. But he did not know the stars so well, for he went to bed early. He knew well and remembered only one star -- the green, bright and very attentive star that rises in the pale sky just before you go to bed, and that seemed to be the only star so large in the whole sky. * Also included in this volume are "A Story Which Will Never Be Finished," "On the Day of the Crucifixion," "The Serpent's Story," "Love, Faith and Hope," "The Ocean," "Judas Iscariot and Others," and "'The Man Who Found the Truth.'"