دانلود رمان انگلیسی “آخرین نمونه از نوع خود”

FROM A DISTANCE, ONLY THE PATCH OF WHITE ON their bellies stood out against the rock face, then a glinting beak, hooked like that of a bird of prey but much longer. They moved forward wobbling to the right and left, almost as though they were taking their time, testing every step for solidity, and with every step recentring their gravity with a pelvic tilt. The men, too, struggled as they approached, searching for purchase on the small island’s soaked, heavy ground, backs nearly perpendicular to the beach, arms and legs spread wide like giant crabs in a row, facing the penguins that kept edging toward the shore with a precautious manner much unsuited to the situation. It was fair weather on Eldey, the isle of sheer rock from which, in the distance, the coasts of Iceland can be seen, at least today better than most days, when there were enormous waves, though even without rain something damp and cold always stagnates in the air and clouds the view. Today the sky was a uniform grey, and you could see, in the still light, the crisp silhouettes of humans and animals as they approached each other on the shore, and then, suddenly, the men tackling the seabirds, some clubbing them, others crushing them under their weight, wringing their necks as the birds fought to break free. When the murderers rose again, they took the limp bodies with them, clutching the heads in their fists, tossing the corpses in a heap, and you could still make out the two white spots between the beak and the eye, like butter flies resting on a carcass. The scene was short-lived, a few minutes at most. As always when something unusual happens, the birds that could fly, those whose wings had not been stunted by centuries of happiness and tranquility, circled the cliff calling out. The ground seemed to soak up the blood—from afar no red stains could be seen—but the eggs the men had carelessly crushed on the volcanic black scree of the beach left a gleaming and certainly slippery residue. More often the men gathered the eggs and set them down, unbroken, near the pile of remains of those who had been, and would have been, their parents. The longer you looked at the scene from the fishing boat or second rowboat waiting halfway out, the more the movements grew abstract: dots of various sizes followed repetitive geometric lines under the gauzy curtain of grey light. And you forgot that these were living things, men and great auks. The scene was no longer hypnotic, just a touch dull. Then the eye refocused on some detail: a leg, a beak, a seabird being dragged to the boat like the corpse of a child. And the faces of the mariners came back to mind, the pulse that no one had ever before felt of an animal no one had ever before touched vibrated in its chest before ceasing, palpitated under its elastic skin between the thumb and index of a hand holding the railing of the rowboat or fishing vessel.