grave
illness, she and mother had taken turns at my bedside for a whole month. For
some reason I experienced no feelings of gratitude towards Auntie Sonya for
saving me from certain death, but my sense of decorum, when they talked
about it, made me glad I was still alive.
She would often come round to sit with us of an evening and tell us her
life story, particularly the part about her first husband, who had been
killed in the civil war. I had heard this story many times before and yet I
always froze with horror at her description of how she had roamed about
among the dead, looking for the body of the man she loved. At this point she
would usually begin to cry, and my mother and elder sister would cry with
her, then begin comforting her, bring her a glass of water or persuade her
to have some tea.
It always astonished me how quickly the women would recover their
spirits and soon be able to chatter merrily and even with renewed interest
about all kinds of trivial matters. After this she would go home because her
husband would be back from work. He was called Uncle Shura.
I was very fond of Uncle Shura. I liked the wild tangle of black hair
that hung down over his forehead, his muscular arms with their neatly rolled
up sleeves, and even his stoop. It was not the stoop of an office clerk, but
the sound, sturdy kind of stance that one finds in some old workmen although
he was neither old nor a workman.
When he came home in the evening he would always set about mending
something--table lamps, electric irons radios and even clocks. All these
things were brought to him by neighbours and he repaired them, as a matter
of course free of charge.
Auntie Sonya would sit on the other side of the table, smoke and make
gentle fun of him for doing something that was not his business, wasting his
time, and so on.
'We'll see whether I'm wasting my time or not," Uncle Shura would
mutter indistinctly because he, too, had a cigarette between his teeth. He
would turn his next mending job this way and that in his deft, confident
hands blowing off the dust as he did so, and all of a sudden he would look
at it from quite a new, unexpected angle.
"Wasting your time and making a fool of yourself," Auntie Sonya would
reply and, releasing a haughty stream of smoke from her lips, gloomily wrap
her dressing-gown round her.
In the end he would manage to get the clock going, or the radio would
start giving out crackles and snatches of music and he would wink at me and
say:
"Well? Was I wasting my time or not?"
I would always rejoice in his success and smile to show that, although
it had nothing to do with me, I appreciated being included in his company.
"All right, enough of your boasting," Auntie Sonya would say. "Clear
the table and we'll have some tea."
Even in her gruff tone, however, I could detect a secret deeply hidden
note of pride, and I felt glad for Uncle Shura and decided that he was
probably just as good as that hero of the civil war whom Auntie Sonya would
never forget.
One evening, when I was sitting with them as usual, my sister dropped
in and was invited to stay for tea. Auntie Sonya laid the table, cut some
pieces of tender pink bacon fat, put some mustard on the table, and poured
out the tea. They had often eaten bacon fat before this, and offered it to
me as well, but I had always firmly refused, which for some reason rather
amused Uncle Shura. They offered me some now, not very insistently. Uncle
Shura placed a few cubes of fat on a piece of bread and held it out to my
sister. Aver a mincing refusal, she accepted this shameful offering and
began to eat it. In my indignation I felt the tea that I had begun to drink
freeze in my throat, and experienced some difficulty in swallowing it.
"That's the way!" said Uncle Shura. "She's not like you, you little
monk!"
I felt how much my sister was enjoying what she ate. I could see it
from the way she delicately licked her lips clean of the crumbs of bread
defiled by this infidel savoury, and the way she swallowed each piece,
sitting foolishly still and pausing as if to listen to what was going on in
her mouth and throat. She had started the slice on the side where the
thinner pieces of fat lay, and this was a sure sign that she was relishing
every morsel, because all normal children, when eating something they like,
leave the best piece till last. Clearly she was experiencing enormous
pleasure.
Now she was approaching the edge of the slice with the thickest piece
of fat on it, systematically intensifying her delight. At the same time,
with purely feminine guile she was relating how my brother had jumped out of
the window when his form mistress had come round to complain of his conduct.
Her story served the dual purpose of distracting attention from what she
herself was doing, while subtly flattering me, because everyone knew that my
teacher had never been round to complain about me and I certainly had no
reason to flee from her through the window.
In the course of her story my sister glanced at me from time to time,
trying to discover whether I was still watching her or whether I was so
carried away by her tale that I had forgotten what she was doing. But my
glance stated quite clearly that I was still keeping her under the most
vigilant observation. In reply she opened her eyes very wide as if
expressing surprise that I could pay so much attention to a mere trifle. I
leered back, alluding vaguely to the retribution that awaited her.
At one moment I thought the time of retribution had already arrived. My
sister choked, then cautiously began to clear her throat. I watched with
interest to see what would happen next. Uncle Shura patted her on the back.
She blushed and then stopped coughing, indicating that the cure had worked;
her embarrassment appeared to be equally short-lived. But I felt that the
piece that had stuck in her throat was still there. Pretending to have
recovered, she took another bite of bread and bacon fat.
Chew away, I thought to myself. We'll see how you manage to get it
down.
But apparently the gods had decided to postpone their vengeance. My
sister swallowed this piece safely. In fact, it must also have pushed down
the previous piece, because she breathed with relief and became quite
cheerful again. Now she ate with redoubled concentration and after each bite
licked her lips for so long that it looked almost as if she were showing her
tongue at me.
At last she reached the edge of the slice with the thickest piece of
fat on it and, before putting it in her mouth, she nibbled away the bread
round it, thus building up the pleasure to be gained from the last piece.
Eventually she swallowed this, too, and licked her lips as though
reliving the pleasure she had received, and also to show that all evidence
of her fall from grace had been destroyed.
The whole thing occupied less time than it takes to tell and could
scarcely have been noticed by a casual onlooker. Anyway I am sure neither
Uncle Shura nor Auntie Sonya noticed anything.
Having finished her slice, my sister started on her tea, still
pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As soon as she put
the cup to her lips I drank my own down very quickly, so that there should
be nothing in common between us. Before this I had refused a biscuit because
I was determined to make my martyrdom complete and deny myself every
possible joy while in her presence. Besides I was slightly offended with
Uncle Shura for pressing his food on me less persistently than on my sister.
I should not have accepted it, of course, but for her it would have been a
good lesson in principle.
In short, my mood was utterly spoiled and, as soon as I ad drunk my
tea, I got up to go. They asked me to stay but I was inexorable.
"I must do my homework," I said with the air of the lonely saint
granting everyone else complete freedom to indulge in sin.
My sister begged me to stay. She was sure I would denounce her as soon
as I got home and she was also afraid of crossing the yard at night by
herself.
At home I quickly undressed and got into bed. I was absorbed in envious
and gloating contemplation of my sister's apostasy. Strange visions passed
through my brain. Now I was a Red partisan captured by the Whites and they
were trying to make me eat pork. They tortured me but still I refused. The
officers shook their heads in amazement. What a boy! I was amazed at myself
but not a morsel passed my lips. They could kill me if they liked, but they
wouldn't make me eat.
The door creaked and my sister came in. She at once asked about me.
"He's gone to bed," my mother said. "He seemed rather glum when he came
home. Did something happen to him?"
"Oh no, nothing," my sister replied, and came over to my bed. I was
afraid she would start arguing and pleading with me and all that kind of
thing. Forgiveness was out of the question but I didn't even want her to
whittle down the condition I was in. So I pretended to be asleep. She stood
over me for a while, then stroked my head gently. But I turned over on to my
other side, showing that even while asleep I could tell the hand of a
traitor. She stood there a little longer, then withdrew. It seemed to me
that she felt some repentance but knew no way of expiating her guilt.
I pitied her a little, but apparently this was a mistake, for only a
minute later she began telling mother something in a low voice and they both
burst into little fits of laughter, carefully restrained to make it appear
that they were afraid of disturbing me. Gradually they calmed down and began
to prepare for bed.
Clearly she had enjoyed her evening. She had guzzled bacon fat and I
hadn't said anything and, to crown it all, she had made mother laugh. Never
mind, I thought, my hour will strike.
Next day the whole family was seated at table, waiting for father to
come home for dinner. He arrived late and got angry with mother for making
us wait for him. He had been having trouble at work lately and was often
gloomy and preoccupied.
It had been my intention to describe my sister's misdeed during the
meal, but now I realised this was the wrong time to speak. Nevertheless I
glanced at my sister now and then, giving the impression that I was about to
launch into an account of her crime. I would actually open my mouth, then
say something quite different. As soon as my lips parted she would drop her
eyes and lower her head in anticipation of the blow. It was even more
enjoyable to keep her on the brink of exposure than actually expose her.
One moment her face was pale, the next she would be blushing furiously.
Sometimes she would toss her head haughtily, then immediately her imploring
eyes would beg forgiveness for this rebellious gesture. She had no appetite
and pushed away the plate of soup almost untouched. Mother urged her to
finish it.
"Of course, she doesn't want it," I said. "She ate so much yesterday at
Uncle Shura's."
"So much what?" my brother asked, missing everything as usual.
Mother looked at me anxiously and shook her head without letting father
see. My sister took the plate back and began eating her soup in silence. Now
I was really enjoying myself. I transferred a boiled onion from my plate to
hers. Boiled onion was the bugbear of our childhood. We all hated it. Mother
gave me a severe glance of inquiry.
"She likes onions," I said. "You do, don't you?" I added fondly to my
sister.
Her only response was to bow her head even lower over the plate.
"If you like them, you can have mine as well," said my brother,
scooping one up in his spoon. He was just about to put it on her plate, but
my father gave him such a look that the spoon stopped in midair and beat a
cowardly retreat.
Between the first and second courses I devised a fresh amusement. I
dressed a slice of bread with little rings of cucumber from the salad and
began nibbling delicately at my vegetarian sandwich, pretending now and then
to dissolve with pleasure. This, I thought, was a very clever way of
reconstructing the scene of my sister's shameful fall. She stared at me in
astonishment, as though the pantomime meant nothing to her or, at least,
nothing shameful. Further than this, however, her protest did not go.
In other words, dinner was a tremendous success. Virtue blackmailed
ruthlessly and wickedness hung its head. After dinner we drank tea. Father
became noticeably more cheerful, and so, accordingly, did we. My sister was
particularly gay. The colour flooded into her cheeks and her eyes sparkled.
She started relating some incident that had occurred at school, constantly
appealing to me as a witness, as though nothing had happened between us. I
felt slightly disgusted by this familiarity. It struck me that a person with
her past could have behaved with a little more modesty instead of jumping
into the limelight. She could have waited until other, more worthy people
thought fit to relate that story. I was about to administer a moderate dose
of punishment, but father unwrapped a newspaper and took out a packet of new
exercise books.
In those pre-war years exercise books were as hard to come by as
textiles and certain foods. These were the best, glossy kind, with margins,
clearly marked in red, and heavy, cool pages of a bluish white colour, like
milk.
There were nine of these exercise books altogether and father gave us
three each. I at once felt my high spirits begin to wane. Such
egalitarianism seemed to me the limit of injustice.
I was doing well at school, and sometimes came top in one subject or
another. In fact, our relatives and friends were told that I was getting
excellent marks in all subjects, perhaps in order to balance the impression
created by my brother's unfortunate notoriety.
He was considered a very energetic slacker. As his teacher put it, his
ability to judge his own actions lagged far behind his temperament. I
imagined that temperament of his in the shape of a mischievous little imp
that was always running on ahead of my brother and that he could never catch
up with. Perhaps, it was to help him in this chase that ever since the age
of eleven he had dreamed of becoming a driver. On every available scrap of
paper he would scribble an application he had read somewhere:
To the Director of Transport
I request you to employ me in the organisation of which you are in
charge because I am a qualified driver, 3rd grade.
Later he succeeded in realising this fervent ambition. The organisation
of which a certain director was in charge entrusted him with a vehicle, but
it turned out that catching up with his temperament entailed exceeding the
speed limit, and in the end he had to change his profession.
And here was I, almost an outstanding pupil, being reduced to the same
level as my brother, who, starting from the back page as usual, would fill
up these beautiful exercise books with his idiotic applications.
And to the same level as my sister, who only the day before had been
guzzling bacon fat and was today receiving a present which she had done
nothing whatever to deserve.
I pushed aside the exercise books and sat scowling at the table,
painfully aware of the humiliating tears of resentment welling up in my
throat. My father tried to talk me round and promised to take me fishing in
the mountains, but it was no use. The more they tried to console me the more
strongly I felt that I had been unjustly passed over.
"Look! I've got two blotters!" my sister sang out all of a sudden, as
she opened one of the exercise books. This was the last straw. Perhaps, if
fate had not granted her that extra sheet of blotting paper, what did happen
might never have happened.
I stood up and in a trembling voice said to my father:
"Yesterday she was eating bacon fat...."
An indecent silence descended on the room. With a sense of fear I
realised that I had done something wrong. Either I had not expressed myself
quite clearly or else there was too close a connection between Mahomet's
great laws and the sneaking desire to lay hands on someone else's exercise
books.
Father stared at me gravely from under his slightly swollen lids.
Slowly his eyes filled with fury. I realised that his gaze held nothing for
me to look forward to. I made one more pitiful attempt to correct the
situation and channel his fury in the right direction.
"She ate bacon fat yesterday at Uncle Shura's," I said desperately,
feeling that my whole case was collapsing.
The next moment father seized me by the ears, shook my head and, as
though realising it would not come off, lifted me up and threw me to the
floor. In the brief seconds before I landed I felt a stab of pain and heard
the creak of my ears stretching.
"Son of a bitch!" he cried. "On top of everything else am I to have
traitors in my own house!"
He grabbed his leather jacket and swung out of the room, giving the
door such a slam that plaster fell off the walls. I remember being shaken
not so much by the pain or by what he said, but by the expression of utter
repugnance with which he had seized my ears. It was the expression of
someone about to kill a snake.
Stunned by what had happened, I remained lying on the floor for a long
time. My mother tried to lift me up while my brother, in a state of wild
excitement, ran round me in circles, pointing at my ears and roaring
delightedly,
"Our top boy!"
I was very fond of my father and this was the first time he had
punished me.
Many years have passed since then. For a long time now I have been
eating the pork that is available to all, though I don't think I am any the
happier for it. But the lesson was not wasted. It taught me for the rest of
my life that no lofty principle can justify meanness and treachery, and that
all treachery is the hairy caterpillar that grows from a small envy, no
matter under what high principles it may be concealed.
--------
Through the night
It was 1942. I was living at my uncle's house in the village of
Napskal, in the mountains. Fear of the bombing and, above all, the wartime
food shortage had driven us away from town to this peaceful and relatively
well-provided corner of Abkhazia.
Our little town had, in fact, been bombed only twice, and the bombs the
Germans had dropped there had probably been intended for other, more
important targets, which they had been prevented from reaching. My theory is
that those pilots raided us out of fear of the punishment that awaited them
if they returned to base with a full load of bombs. I have two reasons for
thinking so. First, their aircraft approached the town not from behind their
lines but from behind ours and, secondly, there had never been anything
military in our town except the militia.
After the first air-raid the town became deserted. The table orators
and amateur strategists of the seaside coffee shops wisely adjourned their
unending discussions on current affairs and quietly withdrew to the
surrounding villages to eat Abkhazian hominy, whose prestige accordingly
mounted by leaps and bounds.
Only the most essential people and those who had nowhere else to go
remained in town. We were not essential and we had somewhere to go. So we
went. Our country relatives consulted each other and shared us out among
themselves, taking into account our respective potentialities. My elder
brother, as one already polluted by urban civilisation, remained in the
village nearest town and was afterwards recruited into the army. My sister
was sent off to live with a distant relative, who, being rich, seemed much
closer related than he really was. I, as the youngest and most useless, was
given to my uncle in the mountains. Mother remained somewhere near the
middle, in the house of her elder sister, whence she tried to stretch out to
us her warm and ageing wings.
My uncle turned out to be quite a big cattle-breeder; he had twenty
goats and three sheep. While I was trying to make up my mind where family
assistance ended and exploitation began, he quietly and painlessly put me in
charge of them. I soon took a liking to the job and learned how to exert my
will over this small but rebellious herd.
We were bound together by two ancient magical calls: Kheit! and Iiyo!
They had many meanings and shades of meaning depending on how they were
spoken. The goats understood these meanings perfectly but sometimes, when it
suited them, pretended to miss certain subtleties.
The various meanings were numerous enough. For instance, if I let my
voice ring out freely: "Kheit! Kheit!" it meant, "Graze on calmly, you've
nothing to worry about." If I called out in a tone of pedagogical reproach,
the meaning would be, "I can see you! I know where you're off to." And if I
let out a very sharp and rapid, "Iiyo! Iiyo!" they were supposed to
understand it as "Danger! Come back!"
Skillful mingling of both calls yielded a great number of variations of
an educative nature-orders, advice, warnings, reproach and so on.
At the sound of my voice the goats would usually raise their heads, as
if trying to make out what exactly was required of them this time. They
always grazed with a certain air of fastidiousness, tearing leaves off the
bushes and reaching up for the freshest and furthest away. There was
something indecent about them standing on their hind legs, and later on
when, as a young man, I saw the goat-legged human figures in a reproduction
of El Greco I was reminded of that impression.
The goats liked to graze on steep, craggy slopes near a mountain
stream. I think the sound of the water awakened their appetite, like the
sizzling of spitted meat before dinner. Their beards shook and they bared
their small, even teeth as they nibbled. It irritated me to see them abandon
one branch and with careless greed start on another before they had finished
the first.
At dinner we had to save every crumb, and they could afford to be
fussy. It was unjust.
The sheep usually followed in the wake of the goats recognising their
precedence but maintaining a modest dignity.
They kept their heads low to the ground, as though smelling out the
grass. For choice they preferred open level patches. But if they were
frightened by something and bolted, there was no stopping them. Their tails
would whack their hindquarters as they ran and each whack increased their
terror, making them rocket ahead in a kind of multi-stage panic.
As a resting place the goats would choose the highest and rockiest crag
they could find. They liked a clean spot to lie on. The oldest goat would
usually occupy the summit. He had terrifying horns and tufts of matted hair
that was yellow with age hung from his sides. You could feel he understood
his role in life. He moved slowly, with a dignified swaying of his
snow-white, wise old astrologer's beard. If a young goat was so unmindful as
to occupy his place he would walk up calmly and knock him down with a
sideways thrust of his horns, not even looking in his direction.
One day a goat disappeared from the herd. I wore myself out, running
from bush to bush, tearing my clothes to shreds and shouting till I was
hoarse. But still I couldn't find her. On my way back I happened to look up
and there she was, perched on a thick branch of a wild persimmon tree. She
had climbed up the twisted trunk. Our eyes met. She surveyed me with a
jaundiced glance of haughty non-recognition and obviously had no intention
of climbing down. Only when I let fly with a stone did she spring lightly to
the ground and run to rejoin the herd.
I think goats are the craftiest of all quadrupeds. I had only to let my
mind wander for a minute and they would melt away into the white rocks, the
hazel thickets and the ferns.
It was a hot, worrying job to look for them, running up and down the
narrow, heat-cracked paths with lizards darting to and fro like flashes of
green lightning. Sometimes a snake would wriggle away from just under my
feet and I would jump sky-high, the sole of the foot that had nearly trodden
on it tingling from its resilient chill, and go on running and running with
a sense of the insuperable, almost joyful lightness of fear.
And how strange it was to stop and listen to the rustle of the bushes,
wondering whether your quarry was there and listening to the swish of the
grasshoppers, to the distant song of the larks in the majestic blue above,
or perhaps to a human voice from the road, on to the steady thudding of your
own heart, and to breathe in the fleshy smell of the sun-drenched foliage,
all the sweet languor of the summer stillness.
But the worst thing of all was when the goats were trying to get into a
field of maize. No hedge could stop them.
I would race towards the field, shouting from a distance and throwing
anything that came to hand but, far from taking flight at the sight of me,
they would continue to gobble down the long maize leaves as fast as their
jaws would go.
In good weather I would usually lie on the grass in the shadow of a big
alder bush, listening to the spluttering roar of our U-2 planes patrolling
on the other side of the pass. Fighting was going on over there and every
day the thunder of war reached us as regularly as the sounds of labour in
the busy season.
One day a "hedgehopper", as we used to call those old biplanes, came
shooting over the mountains with a kind of panic-stricken rattle and dropped
like a stone into the lap of the Kodor Valley, then flew on almost at ground
level all the way to the sea. With every fibre in my body I felt the sheer
human terror of the pilot who had skimmed over the ridge, evidently to get
away from a German fighter. The plane's shadow swept across the field quite
near to me at unearthly speed, darkened the tobacco plantation, and a few
moments later was streaking low over the Kodor delta.
Once in a while a German plane would fly over at a great height. We
could tell it by the irregular throb of its engines, rather like the hum of
a malarial mosquito. Usually the anti-aircraft guns would open up when it
got near the town and we would see the shell bursts all round it, like
dandelion tops, but it would cruise along among them as though enchanted.
All through the war I never saw one of them shot down.
One day a villager came back from town, where he had gone to sell his
pigs, with the story that my brother was wounded, had been put in hospital
in Baku and was pining for mother to come and see him. The news startled us
all. Mother had to be told as soon as possible and it turned out that there
was no one else to send but me. I was only too willing.
They gave me a good feed of cheese and hominy grand dad lent me one of
his walking sticks and I set out on my Journey, although the day was near
its close and the sun only a tree's height above the horizon. I had only a
vague idea of the way there, or rather the whereabouts of the house where
mother was living, but I showed no interest in any explanations in case they
changed their minds about sending me.
I should have to go up through the forest and along a mountain ridge,
then make my way down to the road that was used for carting logs, and follow
it all the way to the village.
As soon as I entered the big forest of beeches, mingled with a
sprinkling of chestnuts and hornbeam, everything was cool, as though I had
dived into cold water and the summer day was far away behind me.
I breathed the clean, dank coolness of the forest, listened to the
exciting rustle of the green crowns overhead and made good speed along the
path. The deeper I went into the forest the more persistently and cheerfully
my stick tapped on the springy, rootwoven earth.
I knew that bears sometimes came up here at this time of the year. They
liked the bilberries that grew on the slopes and along the path.
At any other time I should have been frightened, but now I was spurred
on by heroic dreams and a vague anxiety about my brother. My feet seemed to
have wings and I mounted the slopes with ease, thrilling with the importance
of my mission and, above all, the realisation that I was needed. Although my
thoughts were occupied with these exalted feelings, I still had time to
admire the beauty of the mighty dark-silver trunks of the beeches, the
unexpectedly appealing glades with their bright feathery grass the inviting
roots of the big trees covered with the scaly leaves of last year. I would
have liked to lie down in those leaves with my head resting on the great
mossy roots. Sometimes through a gap in the trees I saw a misty green valley
with the sea poised at the end of it between earth and sky, like a mirage.
It was evening.
All of a sudden two girls appeared round a bend, looking frightened and
joyful at the same time. I knew them. They were from our village, but now
there was something strange about them. They were not quite their usual
selves. They spoke very quietly, in almost guilty tones, their heads
lowered. There was something of the woods, something shy and subtle about
them. One had her shoes in a bag and now she stood with one long bare leg
awkwardly scratching the other. I guessed she was trying to conceal at least
one of her legs.
Gradually their embarrassment communicated itself to me. I didn't know
what to say and was glad to bid them good-bye. They said good-bye, too, and
went on quietly, almost furtive in their attitude to the forest.
Presently I saw among the dark trees ahead a reddish-yellow road that
from a distance looked like a mountain torrent. Glad at the thought of
having a smooth road to walk on, I set off at a run down the steep path,
braking with my stick to stop myself plunging into the gloomy rhododendron
bushes.
I almost rolled out on to the road. I was sweating and my legs were
trembling from the strain, but the smell of petrol fumes and warm,
day-wearied roadside dust only increased my excitement. This was the smell
of the city that I had known since childhood. I must have been missing town
and my own home badly and, although it was even further from here to our
house in town than from the little village in the mountains, this woodland
road seemed to lead there.
I walked along it, trying to make out tyre-tracks in the dusk, and was
overjoyed when I spotted any particularly heavy marks. As I went on, the
road gradually grew lighter because a huge reddish moon was rising above the
jagged line of the forest.
At night in the mountains we used to spend a lot of time gazing at the
moon. I had been told you could see a goat-herd and a herd of white goats on
it, but I had never been able to spot them. Evidently you had to have seen
that goat-herd in early childhood. Whenever I watched the cold orb of the
moon I saw the outlines of rocky mountains and was overcome by a kind of
sweet sadness, perhaps because they were so terribly far away and yet so
much like our own mountains.
Now the moon looked like a big round of smoked mountain cheese. How I
would have relished a bite of that pungent smoky cheese, and some steaming
hominy to go with it!
I quickened my pace. The road was bordered on both sides with low alder
thickets, broken here and there by a maize field or a tobacco plantation. It
was very quiet- only the tapping of my stick enlivened the stillness.
Peasant houses with clean little yards and the bright light of fires showing
cosily through half-open kitchen doors began to appear.
I listened eagerly to the faint sounds of voices, which suddenly became
quite distinct.
"Let the dog out," came a man's voice, and a kitchen door flew open and
a dog ran out barking in my direction. I hurried on and, looking back over
my shoulder, noticed in the red rectangle of the open door the dark figure
of a girl standing very still and staring into the darkness.
Frightened by the dogs, I now tried to pass the houses as quietly as
possible.
At length I found myself on a broad green with a large walnut tree in
the middle and benches nailed round its trunk.
With its collective farm management office, village shop and barn this
must have been a noisy, busy place in the daytime, but now everything looked
desolate and deserted and by the light of the moon, rather eerie.
The house I was making for was situated not far from the farm
management office. I knew that after the green I had to take a path to the
left of the road, but there was more than one path leading off to the left
and I couldn't remember which would take me to my destination.
I halted doubtfully at a path that ran off into some hazel-nut
thickets. Was this the one? I could not remember any thickets like these. Or
perhaps there had been some? One minute I thought I saw many familiar
signs--a bend in the path, the ditch dividing it from the road, even the
hazel-nut thickets; but then I looked again and they all seemed different,
the wrong ones, and the path itself looked strange and hostile.
I stood shifting from one foot to another, listening to the buzzing of
the cicadas, staring at the enchantedly still bushes and at the moon, now
high in the sky and dazzling as a mirror.
All of a sudden something black and glossy bounced on to the path and
ran towards me. Before I could move, a large dog was greedily sniffing me
all over, pushing its moist, snuffling nose against my legs.
A few seconds later a man appeared with a small axe over his shoulder.
He called the dog off and I realised why it had been in such a hurry to
smell me; knowing its master, it had been afraid it would not have time. The
dog bounded away, circled round us, whining with the desire to please its
master, then froze by one of the bushes, sniffing at a trace left by some
other animal.
The man had a bridle round his waist and was evidently looking for his
horse. He came up to me and peered at me in surprise.
"Who do you belong to? What are you doing here?" he asked crossly
because he could not recognise me.
I said I was looking for Uncle Meksut's house.
"What do you want him for?" he asked, now exulting in his surprise.
I realised that healthy peasant curiosity was invincible, and told the
whole story.
While doing so, I kept a wary eye on the dog. Its master shook his
head, clicked his tongue and surveyed me sadly, as though regretting that I
should be mixed up in adult affairs at such a tender age.
"Meksut lives quite near here," he said, pointing with his axe along
the path I had been thinking of taking.
He started telling me the way, interrupting himself now and then to
marvel yet again at how close this Meksut fellow lived and how simple it was
to get there. All I gathered in the end was that I had to go down the path.
I was so thankful to have met him and to hear that Uncle Meksut lived so
close, that I didn't ask any further questions. The man called his dog. I
heard its panting in the darkness, then the sleek powerful body shot out of
the bushes. The dog ran up to its master, remembered me in passing and gave
me another quick sniff all over--the way they check a passport when they're
sure it's all in order--and squatted down, with its tail beating on the
grass.
"You're very close here, it's almost within shouting distance," he
said. And he went on his way, still apparently thinking aloud and rejoicing
in my good luck. The dog bounded on ahead, the man's footsteps died in the
stillness and I was left alone.
I set off along the path with its dense thickets of hazel-nut and
blackberry. In places the bushes joined over the path and I had to duck
under them, holding them up with my stick. Even so, the wet branches
sometimes caught me from behind and the chilly dew made me start. After a
time the bushes parted and it grew much lighter. I came out into the open
and found myself in a cemetery, gleaming pallidly in the white light of the
moon.
Cold with fear, I remembered passing this cemetery once before, but
that had been in the daytime and it had made no impression on me whatever. I
recalled an apple tree I had stripped of a few apples. It was still there
and, although it now seemed quite different, I tried to recover the carefree
attitude of the day when I had been knocking down apples. But even this did
not help. The tree stood motionless in the light of the moon with its
dark-blue leaves and pale-blue apples and I crept past it as quietly as I
could.
The cemetery was like a dwarf city with its iron railings, the little
green gardens of the graves, toy-like palaces small benches, and wooden and
iron roofs. It was as though death had only made the people here much
smaller and much more vicious and dangerous, and they were still living here
in their quiet, sinister way.
Beside some of the graves there were stools with wine and food on them.
On one there was even a lighted candle shielded by a glass jar with the
bottom knocked out. I knew it was the custom to place food and drink by a
grave, but this only made me all the more frightened.
The crickets were chirping. The moonlight whitened the already white
gravestones and this made the black shadows even blacker, and they lay on
the ground like heavy motionless boulders.
I tried to pass the graves as quietly as possible but my stick tapped
thunderously on the hard soil. I tucked it under my arm but then there was
no sound at all, and this was even more frightening. All at once I noticed
the lid of a coffin leaning against the cemetery fence and, just beside it,
a freshly dug grave that had not yet been enclosed.
I felt an icy chill creep up my spine, reach the back of my head and
clutch painfully at my scalp, making my hair stand on end. I walked on,
keeping my eyes fixed on the coffin lid which was gleaming reddishly in the
light of the moon.
I was sure that the dead man had climbed out of his grave propped the
coffin lid against the fence and was now walking round somewhere close by
or, perhaps, was hiding behind the coffin lid, waiting for me to turn or run
away.
I therefore walked on without quickening my pace, feeling that the main
thing was not to take my eyes off the coffin lid. Grass rustled round my
feet. I realised that I had left the path but I kept walking, still with my
eyes fixed on the coffin lid. Eventually I might have wrung my own neck if I
had not suddenly felt myself falling into a deep hole.
Now it's started, I thought, as the moon streaked across the sky and I
landed on something white and furry that wriggled out from under me. I lay
on the ground with my eyes closed and awaited my doom. I sensed that the
thing was near and that I was completely at its mercy. Scenes from the tales
of hunters and shepherds about mysterious encounters in the forest or
strange occurrences in cemeteries went flashing through my head.
The thing, however, was in no hurry. My fear became unbearable and with
all the strength I could muster I forced open my eyes.
It was as if I had suddenly switched on a light. At first I could see
nothing, then I made out in the darkness something white and unsteady. I
felt that it was watching me closely. The most frightening thing about it
was the way it swayed. Icy shivers kept racing up my spine, bristling the
hair on the back of my head and ricochetting into the tips of my ears.
I don't know how much time passed. Gradually I began to recognise the
smell of freshly dug earth, still warm from the day's sunshine, and another
very familiar, encouraging, almost homely smell. The white thing was still
swaying in the corner, but terror that goes on endlessly ceases to be
terror.
I became aware of a pain in my leg. I had twisted it badly when I fell
and now I wanted to stretch it.
I stared hard at the thing in the corner. Gradually the blurred white
shape began to acquire familiar outlines and eventually I realised that the
ghost had turned into a goat. I could make out in the darkness its beard and
horns. But since I had long been aware that the devil sometimes took the
form of a goat, I was somewhat comforted; clearly this was what had
happened. What I hadn't known was that he could also smell of goat.
I cautiously stretched out my leg and noticed that the thing was also
showing signs of caution. At least it had stopped chewing and was only
swaying.
I kept very still and it began chewing again. I raised my head and saw
the edge of the hole into which I had fallen rimmed with moonlight, and a
transparent strip of sky with a small star in the middle. A tree rustled
overhead and it was strange to think of the breeze that must be stirring up
there. I looked up at the star and that, too, seemed to sway in the breeze.
There was a light thud; an apple had fallen off the tree. I gave a start and
realised that it was getting cold.
A boyish instinct told me that inaction could not be a sign of strength
and since the thing, whatever it was, merely went on chewing and staring
through me, I decided to make an attempt at escape.
I rose cautiously to my feet and realised that even with a jump I could
not reach the edge of the hole. My stick was still up there and it might not
have been much help anyway.
The hole was rather narrow and I tried to climb out by pushing my hands
and feet against opposite walls. Grunting with exertion, I managed to raise
myself a little but the leg I had twisted gave way and I flopped to the
bottom again.
When I fell, the thing scrambled up and jumped aside in terror. That
was an unwise move on its part. I grew bolder and went over to it. It
cowered silently in its corner. I cautiously put out my hand to its face. It
brushed my hand with its lips, breathing warmly over it, smelled it and with
a shake of its head gave out a real goatish snort.
This finally convinced me that it was no devil but simply another
creature in trouble like myself. In my time as a herd-boy I had often known
goats to climb into places from which they could not find a way out.
I sat down on the ground beside the goat, put my arms round its neck
and tried to get warm by pressing against its warm belly. I tried to make it
sit down but it stubbornly insisted on standing. Eventually, however, it
began to lick my hand, at first cautiously, then with increasing confidence,
and its firm, springy tongue scraped roughly at my wrist, licking off the
salt. The rough, ticklish sensation was pleasant and I did not draw my hand
away. My goat began to enjoy itself and soon started plucking at the cuff of
my shirt with its sharp teeth, but I rolled up my sleeve and gave it a fresh
place to graze.
It took a long time, licking the salt off my arm, and I huddled against
its warm body and felt that even if the blue, moonlit face of a corpse were
to appear over the edge of the pit I would merely cuddle up closer to my
goat and not feel too frightened. For the first time in my life I really
appreciated what it meant to have another living creature for company.
In the end the goat grew tired of licking my arm and unexpectedly sat
down beside me and resumed its chewing.
It was still as quiet as ever but the moonlight had become even more
transparent and the star had moved to the edge of the strip of sky. It was
even cooler now.
Suddenly I heard the sound of hoofbeats approaching and my heart began
to race madly.
The hoofbeats grew more and more distinct and sometimes I caught the
clink of a metal shoe on a stone. I was afraid the horseman would turn aside
but the noise grew steadily louder and I could soon hear the laboured
breathing of the horse and the creak of the saddle. Suspense rooted me to
the spot but, when the hoofbeats were almost overhead, I jumped up and began
to shout:
"Hi! Hi! I'm here!"
The horse stopped and in the stillness I could detect the bony click of
its teeth as it champed at the bit. Then a man's voice called hesitantly:
"Who's there?"
I strained upward and shouted, "It's me! A boy!"
The man was silent for a time, then I heard, "What boy?"
The man's voice was firm and suspicious. He was afraid of a trap.
"I'm a boy from the town," I said, trying to speak in a living and not
a corpse-like voice with the result that my voice sounded repulsively
unnatural.
"How did you get down there?" the man asked harshly, still fearing a
trap.
"I fell in. I was on my way to Uncle Meksut's," I said hastily, afraid
that he would go on without listening to any more.
"To Meksut? Why didn't you say so before?"
I heard him dismount and throw the reins over the fence. The sound of
his footsteps came nearer but before he got to the edge of the hole he
stopped.
"Grab hold of this!" I heard, and a rope swished through the air and
dangled in front of me.
I took hold of it, then remembered the goat. It was standing all by
itself in the corner. Without a second thought I wound the rope round its
neck, quickly tied a double knot and shouted, "Pull!"
As the rope grew taut, the goat shook its head and reared on its hind
legs. I grabbed its hindquarters and heaved for all I was worth because the
rope was cutting into its neck. But as soon as its horned head, bathed in
moonlight, appeared over the edge of the hole, the man cried out in what
seemed to me a goat-like voice, dropped the rope and ran. The goat crashed
down beside me, bleating plaintively and I let out a yell of pain because in
falling it had trodden on my foot with its hoof. What with the pain, the
disappointment and weariness I burst into tears. Tears had been close enough
already, almost on a level with my eyes. Now they streamed forth so
abundantly that in the end I was frightened by them and stopped crying. I
raged at myself for not telling the man about the goat, but then I
remembered his horse and decided that he was bound to come back for it
sooner or later.
After about ten minutes I heard his stealthy footsteps. I knew he
wanted to unhitch his horse and make off.
"That was a goat," I said loudly and calmly.
Silence.
"That was a goat," I repeated, trying not to change my tone.
I felt he had stopped and was listening.
"Whose goat?" he asked suspiciously.
"I don't know. It fell in before me," I replied, realising that this
did not sound very convincing.
"You don't seem to know anything," he said. Then he asked, "What
relation are you to Meksut?"
Somewhat incoherently I began to explain our relationship (everyone is
related in Abkhazia). I felt that he was beginning to trust me and tried not
to reawaken his suspicions. Shouting up to him from below, I explained why I
was visiting Uncle Meksut.
It made me realise just how difficult it is to offer excuses for your
behaviour when you have both feet in a freshly dug grave.
In the end he came up to the grave and peered cautiously over the edge.
His unshaven face wore an expression of disgust, strangely intensified by
the moonlight. It was obvious that he disliked both the place where he was
and the place where he was looking. I had the impression he was trying to
hold his breath.
I tossed him the rope, which was still attached to the goat. He gripped
it and heaved. I tried to help from below. The goat resisted foolishly, but
as soon as we had lifted it a little the man seized its horn and, expressing
violent disgust in every movement, dragged the animal out of the grave.
Obviously he was still finding the whole incident very unpleasant.
"You Godforsaken creature," he said, and I heard him put his boot into
the goat. The goat gulped and probably tried to run away because the man
grabbed the rope and tugged.
Then he leaned right into the grave, keeping one hand on the edge,
seized my wrist with the other and heaved me crossly to the surface. As he
heaved I tried to make myself lighter because I was afraid of getting some
of the same medicine as the goat. He planted me on the ground beside him. He
was a big, heavily built man, and my wrist felt sore from his grip.
For a moment he surveyed me in silence, then his face broke into a
sudden smile and his big hand came out and ruffled my hair.
"You gave me a proper scare with that goat of yours. I thought I was
pulling out a human being, and then that horned devil appears!"
My spirits rose at once. We went over to the horse, which was still
standing patiently by the fence.
The goat followed us on the end of the rope. When we reached the horse,
it stamped nervously and squinted at the goat.
A tasty smell of horse sweat, saddle leather and maize struck my
nostrils. He must have been taking his maize to the mill, I thought, and
remembered that the rope had also smelled of maize. He helped me or rather
hoisted me into the saddle. I remembered my stick but dared not go back for
it. Besides, the moment I tried to get into the saddle the horse turned its
head and snapped at my leg. I just managed to draw it away in time.
Its master led it away from the fence, gathered up the reins and,
without letting go of the rope attached to the goat, heaved his massive body
into the saddle. I felt the horse's back sag under him and he crushed me
against the saddle bow as he settled himself in the saddle and flicked the
reins.
The thought of the goat behind us made me rather ashamed. In the grave
we had been on equal terms, but now I was in a privileged position.
The horse trotted along at a lively pace, trying to break into a
canter, stamping its feet with pent-up energy and irritation at having a
goat trailing behind it.
Lulled by the muffled clip-clop of hoofs and the gentle rocking of the
saddle, I fell into a doze, awakening only when the path led down a slope
and the weight of the rider behind crushed me against the saddle bow, so
that I had to push for all I was worth to protect my stomach. When we were
climbing, however, I would nestle back comfortably on his chest, drowsily
aware of the horse's quivering forelock, sensitive ears and monotonously
swaying neck.
The horse halted and I became fully awake again. We were standing by a
fence beyond which I glimpsed a broad, tidy yard and a large house, built on
high wooden piles. There were lights in the windows. It was Uncle Meksut's
house.
"Hi there, where's the master?" the owner of the horse shouted and lit
a cigarette. He looped the goat's tether round a stake in the fence without
knotting it.
In answer to his shout a door opened and we heard a voice call, "Who's
there?"
The voice was firm and sharp. People in our parts usually answer an
unfamiliar shout at night like that, to show they are ready for any
encounter.
Uncle Meksut--I recognised his stocky, broadshouldered figure at
once--came down the steps and walked in our direction, shoving away the
dogs, and peering at us keenly from a distance.
I remember his surprise and fright when he recognised me.
"Wait till you hear it all," said my rescuer, plucking me out of the
saddle and trying to pass me straight across the fence to Uncle Meksut.
But I resisted and, clutching a stake in the fence, slid down into the
yard by myself. He unwound the goat's tether.
"Where's the goat from?" Uncle Meksut asked, looking even more
surprised.
"Quite a miracle, eh!" said the horseman cheerfully and mysteriously,
and glanced at me as if we were equals.
"Get off your horse and come inside!" Uncle Meksut urged, taking his
bridle.
"Thanks, Meksut, but I just can't manage it," the horseman replied with
an air of haste, though up to now he had shown no sign of being in a hurry.
In accordance with Abkhazian custom Uncle Meksut urged him at great
length to partake of his hospitality, now showing offence, now pleading, now
making fun of the allegedly urgent business that was preventing him from
staying. All the time he kept glancing now at me, now at the goat, sensing
that there was some connection between my arrival and the goat but unable to
grasp what.
At length the horseman rode away with the goat behind him and Uncle
Meksut took me into the house, clicking his tongue in astonishment and
shouting at the dogs.
In a room lighted not so much by the lamp as by the brightly blazing
fire, there were both men and women seated round a table laid with snacks
and fruit. I spotted my mother at once and saw her face turn slowly pale
despite the crimson reflection of the flames. The guests jumped to their
feet with gasps and exclamations of alarm.
One of my aunts from town, on hearing of the purpose of my visit, began
to fall slowly backwards as if in a faint. But since no one in the country
understood such things and no one showed any intention of saving her, she
checked herself halfway and pretended she had a crick in the back. Uncle
Meksut did all he could to reassure the women, proposed a toast to victory,
to their sons, and to everyone's safe return home. He was a man of great
hospitality and his house was always full of guests. Down here in the valley
they had already brought in the grape harvest and the season of long toasts
was just beginning.
Mother sat in silence, without touching any of the food or drink. I
felt sorry for her and wanted to comfort her, but the role I had chosen for
myself would allow no such display of weakness.
I was given a plate of steaming hominy and chicken, and a glass of wine
was poured for me. Mother shook her head reproachfully but Uncle Meksut said
that the wine was too young to be real wine yet and I wasn't a baby any
longer.
I related my adventures and, as I sucked the last of the chicken bones,
felt a delicious drowsiness creeping over me, sweet and golden as the young
wine itself. I fell asleep at the table.
The next day I learned that it was the Moslem custom to bury a man
without any lid on his coffin, presumably to facilitate his resurrection.
The stray goat turned out to be one of the collective farm's. The freshly
dug grave into which we had fallen had been dug by mistake.
Mother returned from Baku about ten days later. My brother, it turned
out, had not been wounded at all. He had just been feeling homesick and
wanted to see one of the family before being sent to the front. And, of
course, he got what he wanted. Always up to some trick was my brother.
--------
My idol
He used to sit in front of me in class, so during lessons I would
admire the manly shape of the back of his head and his broad shoulders. I
think it was that indomitable back of his head that I liked first, before I
liked him.
When he turned to dip his pen in our inkwell, I was able to study his
profile with its high-bridged nose, thick, close-knit eyebrows and cold grey
eyes.
He always turned slowly, as a warrior in the saddle turns to observe
any lagging members of his troop. Sometimes he would grant me an
understanding smile, as though he had felt my gaze and wanted me to know
that he appreciated my devotion and yet would prefer me to exercise a little
moderation, a little restraint in admiring the back of his head,
particularly as he had other merits besides his massive cranium.
In his movements in general I felt a solidity not usually found in
thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds. But it was not the fake solidity affected
by the swots and the beginners of the bootlicking tribe. It was the real
thing that was to be found only in grown-up people.
True solidity, I would say, is the feeling of distinction a man
acquires from being aware of a certain overabundance of physical weight in
his every movement.
Now, if such a person enters a room and, let us say, sits down at your
festive table and, having seated himself, casually motions the suddenly
agitated guests to be seated as well, what, dear comrades, is the
characteristic feature of this situation?
Its characteristic feature is that this superabundance of physical
weight imparts to his gesture such gravity that he restores your guests to
their places almost without looking at them at all, from which it follows
that they were quite right to have become agitated in the first place.
Because how could they have failed to become agitated on realising how
morally lightweight and insecure they were in face of this extra weighty but
indubitably pacifying gesture.
So, during the movement of this hand which, though not too sweeping,
is, happily, sufficiently prolonged, those at table who for one reason or
another were not alerted in time manage to rouse themselves and now with a
certain belated jubilance (like everything belated, exaggerated) jump to
their feet and join in the general agitation so that they can subside with
everyone else in obedience to the movement of the hand, which seems to say,
"It's quite all right, comrades, I'll just squeeze into a corner
somewhere..."
"What a man!" the assembled guests intimate with a delighted murmur
and, having murmured, relax into a state of exhausted happiness.
That is what true solidity is!
And he, my idol, possessed such true solidity, that is to say, he was
constantly aware of this extra physical weight in every movement.
Admittedly, this weight was the direct result of a muscle development far
beyond his years and not an expression of the burdens of authority, as in
adults.
Yes, my idol was stronger than anyone not only in our class, but in
what for us at that age was the whole conceivable world. And yet at first
glance there was nothing special about him--just a stocky lad, by no means
tall even for our class.
"That's for smoking, I don't grow because I smoke," he would say in the
break, pulling at the home-made cigarette concealed in his fist, and it
sounded rather as if this was divine punishment for his self-indulgence,
although since the punishment atoned for the sin he was still able to speak
of it calmly and go on smoking.
We lived in the same street. His name was Yura Stavrakidi and he was
the youngest son in the large family of a house painter. He was always
helping his father, particularly in summer. The painter's eldest son was by
that time in the process of becoming an intellectual. Already a full-grown
lad, he was in his last year at an industrial technical school, wore a
neck-tie and could talk for hours about international politics. Yura and his
father, one might say, were helping him to hold on to his intellectual
laurels. But even he would now and then discard the neck-tie, change his
clothes, take a paint brush and go off to work with his father and brother.
When they returned from work in the evening he would spend a long time
washing in the yard. Yura would pour the water for him and, as I would be
waiting for Yura, I had to put up with this lengthy procedure, which was not
so easy.
It was the usual thing at this time for all those who liked discussing
international events to gather in a corner of the yard.
Yura's brother, instead of getting on with washing himself, having his
supper and going out to sit with them--if he couldn't do without this thing
of his--would start bandying all kinds of ideas back and forth while
washing, which endlessly prolonged the business and made me wild with
impatience. Apparently in the course of the day's work he had grown hungry
for this kind of talk because it certainly did not go down with his father,
whose constant contact with bare walls during his long life as a painter had
almost deprived him of the ability to converse.
All his life he had been busy silently daubing paint on walls and
presumably had produced his children in the same silent fashion. And the
more children he produced, the more walls he had to paint, so there had been
no time left for talking; he had to get on with mixing his paints and
obtaining enough whitewash. What was there to talk about anyhow! I think if
he could have had his way he would have taken all those ranting and raving
politicians and puttied up their mouths, ears and eyes, painted them from
head to foot and left them standing deaf, dumb and blind, like those plaster
statues we have in our parks. Or he might even have walled them up
somewhere, and he would certainly have painted that wall so well that if you
scraped it for a lifetime you would never discover the place where they were
hidden. Because no matter how many children you brought into the world there
would never be enough for their filthy meat-grinder, and no matter how many
walls you painted your work would all be wasted because one air-raid would
knock down so many, paint and all, that thousands of builders working all
the year round still would not be able to restore them.
All this was written on his toil-worn, gloomy face, the face of an old
workman, and it had taken a tremendous war with all its disasters and
hardships for this thought to emerge so that it could be seen by all, to
make it show through his gloominess, just as a great fresco shows through on
a neglected monastery wall.
Unfortunately, neither we children, nor Yura's brother, nor any of the
other devotees of international affairs had any notion of this at the time.
Yura's brother would go without bread as long as you let him hold forth on
the subject of collective security, the machinations of the Vatican or
something of that kind.
It always seemed to me unfair that he should start holding forth about
all this even before he had finished washing and changing.
Besides, while he was slapping water on his face he would sometimes
fail to hear what other people were saying and, having got everything wrong,
have to ask them all over again. Or else he would scoop up some water in his
hands and, instead of splashing it on his face, suddenly stop half way and
listen while the water trickled through his fingers without his noticing it,
and then he would slap his cheeks with empty hands and look suspiciously at
Yura as though Yura was to blame for what had happened and for gathering all
these talkers round him.
Sometimes, with his face all soapy, he would open his eyes, and then
get into a temper because he thought he was being misunderstood whereas, in
fact, as I could see perfectly well, it was simply the soap stinging his
eyes. Or perhaps he would be asked a question just when he had given himself
a silent slap on the back of the head indicating the spot where Yura was to
pour next and while Yura was pouring, the others would stand round like
stuffed dummies, waiting for the brother to raise his dripping head and
regale them with his answer.
He went on talking while towelling himself, and even while pulling on
his shirt he never stopped asking questions and giving answers.
Sometimes it was simply ridiculous. Before he got his head out of the
shirt he would start muttering away inside it, as though we could understand
what he was muttering about. And sometimes he couldn't get his head out at
all because he had forgotten to unbutton the collar. But would he unbutton
it himself? Oh no, this darling of the family would wait like a baby to be
unbuttoned by Yura and meanwhile go on jabbering in this strange
head-in-a-tent attitude.
He was just like the mad photographer who came to take pictures of us
at school. Having pulled his black hood over his head, he would start
muttering remarks that we couldn't understand, or at least we pretended we
couldn't because we felt we had a right not to. Who likes being talked at
from under a hood anyway? In the end he would flap out from under its folds
and, having recovered his breath, issue all kinds of instructions about who
should sit where, then take another gulp of air and dive under the hood
again.
Similarly Yura's brother would in the end--admittedly only with Yura's
help--get his head through the shirt and go off to his friends, tucking his
shirt-tails in as he went. That, thank goodness, he did himself.
But then Yura's mother would appear on the porch and call out in Greek
that supper was ready and he would ignore her and so persistently that she
would begin to scold him and shout at him to finish his "jabber-jabber
conference".
Who knows, perhaps this expression was coined by her, but to this day
that is what the people of our town call any long spell of talking. At one
time this expression used to irritate me. It struck me as inaccurate and
incomplete. Its meaning seemed to flop about in a much too large envelope of
sound. But later I realised that this flopping about is indeed the highest
form of accuracy, because even in the actual phenomena of life the concept
an expression implies flops about just as uselessly. Luckily, as time went
on, Yura's brother returned less and less frequently to his father's
profession and I seldom had to suffer their joint washing operation while
waiting for Yura.
I can still see the long shrivelled figure of Yura's father, his face
overgrown with whitewash-like stubble, and Yura beside him, stripped to the
waist and spattered with whitewash, a long brush over his shoulder. In the
light of the setting sun he looked as magnificent as a young Hercules
walking home from work beside his old father.
When he had washed and eaten his supper, he would come out into the
street, still stripped to the waist as before, and we would all sit together
on the sun-warmed steps of the porch and Yura would tell us about the people
he and his father had been working for that day. His hands would be lying
limply on his knees, his face would be a little pale from fatigue, and I
would relish the pleasure he himself and his every muscle felt from being
still.
If he and his father had been working for a generous employer who knew
how to feed his men well, Yura would go on about what dishes they had been
given and how much he personally had eaten, and how he and his father had
tried to do as good a job as possible just to please their employer.
In summer Yura often visited his Greek relatives in the country. On his
return he would tell us what the life was like there, what they ate and how
much.
"I carried a hundredweight sack all the way from Tsebelda in six
hours," would be his next bit of information. That was his sports news.
"All the way from Tsebelda on foot?" a surprised voice would say. In
such cases there would always be one voice expressing the general surprise.
"Of course," Yura would reply, and then add, "I did eat a loaf of bread
and a kilo of butter on the road."
"How could you eat a kilo of butter, Yura?" the expresser of the
general surprise would ask.
"It's country butter, Greek butter," Yura would explain. "You can eat
it without bread if you like."
But besides his physical strength, what I would now call his games
sense was amazingly well developed too, and showed itself in most unexpected
ways.
There is no need to relate here the well-known case when he got on a
bicycle for the first time and after a push from someone and a couple of
wobbles with the handle bars rode away quite calmly.
The same kind of thing once happened at sea. For some reason Yura
hardly ever swam. Despite his incredible daring I believe he never trusted
the water. He knew how to stay afloat and would swim out a little way in
country style, but then turn back, find the bottom with his feet and walk
ashore. Either it was because he had grown up in a mountain village and not
on the coast, or because, like his ancient compatriot, he could do nothing
without a good foothold, but it was very hard to tempt him out of his depth;
he would swim out a mere five or six metres and then turn back to the shore.
As a person already much inclined to indulge in the simple forms of
pleasure, I could stay in the water for hours and I was, of course,
disappointed by his restrained attitude towards the sea. One day after much
persuasion I got him to go with me to the swimming pool. We undressed and
went up on to the board over the fifty-meter lanes. Among the foppish,
though almost naked, denizens of the pool he looked decidedly out of place
in a pair of shorts that came down to his knees.
He tried to climb down into the water, but I persuaded him to dive. We
decided to swim along together so that I could study his movements, get him
used to swimming out of his depth and in the end teach him something like a
proper modern style.
Yura jumped into the water--feet first, of course. I shall never forget
the expression of confusion combined with a readiness to resist that was
written on his face when he came up. It was the kind of expression a hunted
man might have when leaping out of bed in the middle of the night and
grabbing his gun.
However, having convinced himself that no one was going to pull him
under, he swam off to the opposite end. He swam his usual stern overarm
stroke, turning his head after every thrust, as though guarding his rear.
After waiting a few seconds I dived in after him. I had to tell him not
to turn his head like that.
I had decided to go straight into the crawl after my dive and overtake
him all in one breath, so to speak, without coming up for air.
When I did raise my head out of the water I looked at the lane beside
me, but Yura was not there. He was still in front. The distance between us
had scarcely lessened. He was still turning his head at every stroke and
making good progress.
Working hard with my legs, I switched to the breast stroke but, try as
I would, the gap between us remained the same. I was baffled. His head went
on turning at every sweep of his arm and his eyes gave a grim stare now over
the right shoulder, now over the left.
When I finally reached him he was already resting, or rather waiting
for me, holding on to the bars at the other end of the pool.
"Well, how did I swim?" he asked.
I looked into his grey eyes but found no mockery there.
"Pretty good, but don't keep turning your head," I replied, trying not
to show my heavy breathing, and also clutched the bars for support.
In answer to this he rubbed his neck a little and silently swam away to
the other end. I watched him. The funny way he had of turning his head to
right and left and throwing his arm out too straight diverted attention from
the powerful underwater work of his arms and legs.
He swam like a powerful animal in a strange but manageable environment.
That straight neck and indomitable head jutted proudly out of the water. I
realised that I should never catch up with him on land or sea.
I think my liking for the simple forms of pleasure helped me to
overcome a mean-spirited envy. Anyway, I decided his victory at sea only
proved once again how right I was in my choice of an object of worship.
Not far from our street there was a large and ancient park. In recent
times some sports facilities had been set up there, including a huge
cross-beam on posts to which was fixed a whole system of gymnastic
equipment: a pole, rings ropes and a set of wall-bars. Naturally Yura was
way ahead of us all on every piece of this equipment.
But he, my idol, was not only strong and agile, he was also the boldest
of us all, and this caused me a vague feeling of anxiety.
He would climb up the wall-bars on to the cross-beam itself, sit
astride it for a while, then let go with his hands and carefully stand up.
And then came the miracle of daring.
As we watched with bated breath he would sway gently until the
cross-beam was swaying with him. The posts that held it had been weakened by
the constant pull of the rope, which was used as a swing, so the whole
structure was soon in motion.
When he had got it moving like this, he would suddenly with well timed
steps run quickly along the beam from one end to the other. In the few
seconds it took him to reach the other end the beam would sway so violently
that it looked as if he would lose his balance and fall right off. But he
made it every time.
The top of the cross-beam was no wider than a man's hand and there were
bolts sticking out it, so in addition to everything else he had to be
careful not to trip over them as he ran.
We all breathed with relief when he finally lowered his hands to the
beam and climbed down by way of the wall-bars. This star turn by my idol
never failed to astound the spectators and he always performed it with
maximum risk--always swaying the beam first and always running, never
walking.
I don't know why, but I conceived a desperate desire to try myself out
at this high-altitude trick. I chose a time when none of our crowd were in
the park and climbed the wall-bars. While I still had a foothold on them,
the beam did not seem so terribly high. But as soon as my feet were on the
beam itself, I felt very high-up and unprotected.
I squatted on my haunches, gripping the beam with both hands, and tried
to gauge the quiet oscillation of the whole system. It was like being on the
back of a sleeping animal. I could feel its breathing and was afraid of
waking it.
At last I let go and straightened up. Trying not to look down, I took
one step and without lifting my other foot from the beam dragged it up to
the first. The whole structure was swaying gently under me. Ahead lay a
narrow green path studded with protruding bolts that I should have to be
careful of as well.
I took another step forward and cautiously drew up the other foot, but
not quite cautiously enough apparently, because the structure came to life
and heaved under me. Trying to keep my balance, I froze to the spot and
looked down.
The ground, red with fallen pine needles and reinforced with exposed
roots, swam beneath me.
"Go back before it's too late," I told myself and gingerly turned my
head. The end of the beam I had just left was quite close, but I realised at
once that I should not be able to turn round. Turning round on such a narrow
ledge would be worse than going forward.
I felt trapped. Either I must sit down astride the beam and ease myself
backwards, or I must continue on my way. Frightened though I was, some inner
force prevented me from making so shameful a retreat. I went forward.
Sometimes, as I began to lose my balance, I thought I had better jump rather
than fall off but somehow I managed to steady myself and go on. I walked
right to the other end and, now afraid that sheer joy might topple me, bent
down and put my arms right round the beam, hugging it and appreciating its
no longer dangerous swaying. It goes without saying that I did not keep my
little exploit a secret from the others. Yura himself looked hard at me,
then offered his congratulations. I repeated the trick several times
afterwards, but my fear grew hardly any less, it was simply that I got used
to the idea of mastering a fear of a certain intensity and mastered it.
It seems to me that in any kind of action the initial fear is so
powerful because it comes as a sensation of stepping into a yawning abyss,
into endless horror. When we overcome this fear, we do not remove the sense
of danger, but find a measure for that which we used to regard as infinite.
The man who finds a measure for non-being will provide us all with the best
antidote for the fear of death.
Some of the others also learned to walk the swaying beam but neither
they nor I ever tried to run along it. We sensed that this was only for the
chosen few, and only in our secret dreams did we ever repeat his exploit.
...In the vision of Christ walking across the water there is something
of the charlatanism of the Grand Inquisitor. What we see is people being
lured into religion by means of a miracle. But the operation would have been
equally successful if Christ had turned the pebbles on the shore into gold
coins before the eyes of those fishermen.
There was nothing spiritual in his walking the waters because he had
nothing to overcome. He could walk on water because he was incorporeal or
because he was held up with an invisible thread by the Chief Designer. So
all he had to do was walk the waters in a Worthy Way, with the kind of
modest dignity with which those elected to the presidium mount the platform
at meetings.
Our Yura was quite a different case. There he stands on that
cross-beam. He is preparing himself for an heroic exploit, for a man-made
miracle. His whole figure, the aggressive thrust of his body, the bunching
of his limbs as if for a spring, the concentration in his face, all express
the fierce contest between courage and fear. He takes off and for a few
seconds of Olympian victory spirit conquers flesh!
Before our eyes he drove his body from one end of the beam to the other
like an audacious rider forcing his unwilling steed across a foaming
mountain torrent. It was beautiful and we all felt it, although none of us
could have explained why, at the time.
One day Yura suggested to me that we should rob the school cafeteria,
and although we had never done anything of the kind before I agreed without
a second thought. Neither of us felt any pangs of conscience because this
was not our school and because it was also very convenient for burglary,
being next door to our house. The temptation arose from the sausages that,
according to reliable rumours, had been brought to the cafeteria that day.
The plan was simple. We were to break in, eat all the sausages, take
all the change out of the cash-desk and make our getaway. We were not going
to steel any paper money because we knew that it was never left in the till.
Curiously enough, we never considered taking any of the sausages with us; we
simply couldn't imagine that there might be too many. This was not because
in an operation run by my idol with his Tsebelda experience there was no
need to worry on that score, but because our general experience told us that
no one anywhere ever left sausages uneaten. Neither of us had ever heard of
such a thing.
In the afternoon we strolled into the cafeteria to spy out the lie of
the land.
A large bowl festooned with sausages was standing on the windowsill. It
was bathed in a pink radiance from the slanting rays of the evening sun.
Yura stared at this apparition with such sentimental candour that in
the end I had to steer him away because his curiosity was beginning to look
indecent and dangerous.
"It's too much for me," he said, taking a deep breath when we stopped
in the corridor by the window.
"What's too much?" I asked quietly.
"When they're burst like that," he replied drawing breath with a
whistling sound, as if he had taken a sausage that was too hot for him.
I felt my mouth watering too.
"Wait till this evening," I whispered, appealing for fortitude.
We left the building.
The best way of entering the school at night was through the
permanently locked back-door. The door had glass panels, but one of them was
broken and the opening was wide enough to climb through.
There was a store-keeper who lived on the premises and in addition to
his other duties performed that of watchman. We had been at war with him for
many years because we liked to use the school yard for football and he tried
to keep us out.
He was, unfortunately, a hale and hearty old man.
As soon as it grew properly dark we climbed into the school yard and
crept over to the locked door. It showed up faintly in the dim light from
the street and the black hole left by the missing pane looked menacing. From
the street came the voices of our lads. They sounded remote, like distant
echoes of a peaceful life that we had left irrevocably behind us. A large
puddle glistened oilily just in front of the door. I stepped round it
carefully and looked in through the hole.
"In you go," said Yura, and I climbed in.
With one hand I found a hold on the wall and with the other gripped the
door handle, pulled my legs up and pushed them through the hole, trying to
feel the floor inside with my feet. In this position of moral and physical
suspense I dangled for a time, wiggling my toes and slipping gradually until
I felt the floor and was able to pull the upper part of my body inside.
Overhanging the corridor was the first flight of the stairs leading to
the attic. We had to go along the corridor, then turn down another corridor
at the end of which was the cafeteria.
Yura climbed in quickly after me and we advanced along the corridor,
stopping every now and then and listening to the eerie silence of the locked
classrooms and the dark deserted school.
My heart beat so hard that with every step I had to overcome its
recoil. When we passed a window my friend's stern profile would appear in
the darkness and I would feel less frightened. I have forgotten to say that
for some reason I was wearing a white shirt. More suitable for a ghost than
a burglar, it loomed a ghastly white in the darkness, as though I were
dressed in my own fear. I tried not to look at it to keep my anxiety at bay.
We reached the door of the cafeteria. A faint ray of light shone
through the crack. Yura pressed on the door; the crack widened and he put
his eye to it.
He kept his eye to that crack for a long time, as though trying to get
a glimpse of the night life of the sausages or the other inhabitants of the
cafeteria. Finally he turned a more cheerful face towards me and signalled
me to look through the crack as well, as if offering me a portion of good
cheer before engaging in the most dangerous part of our enterprise. I peeped
in and again saw our sausages. They were still in the same place, but now,
covered with a piece of cheesecloth, they looked even more tempting.
Yura took a pair of pincers that we had obtained beforehand and set to
work on the pad lock. It was a matter of pulling out one of the rings to
which the lock was attached. But this was not so easy.
Excited by the sight of the sausages, he began to hurry and the pincers
slipped off the ring several times with a rather loud clank.
And suddenly I heard quite distinctly the sound of footsteps on the
floor above us. Whoever it was walked on for a few more steps, and then
stopped, as if listening.
"Let's run for it!" I whispered in panic. but at once felt his fingers
gripping my forearm.
We stood stiff and silent in the long stillness of the corridor.
"You imagined it," Yura whispered at last.
I shook my head. We stiffened again.
I don't know how long we stood like this. In the end Yura turned back
to the door, as though comparing the degree of risk with the degree of
temptation. He listened again peeped through the crack, listened, and then
set about the lock in real earnest.
And suddenly those footsteps came again! Once more Yura's hand,
forestalling my reflex of desertion, gripped my arm.
But the footsteps did not stop. Now they were clearly approaching down
the stairs. They hesitated for a moment and suddenly a beam of light,
reaching us sooner than the click of the switch descended, from the upper
floor like the blast of an explosion and the footsteps started again.
Yura's hand relaxed its grip on my arm. The wild and unerring horse of
fear carried me off and threw me out of the school building. I didn't stop
for a second at the hole in the door. I shot straight through it and opened
my eyes when I landed in the puddle. Only when I had scrambled over the
fence did I notice that Yura was not with me. I did not know what to think.
Surely the watchman hadn't caught him? If he had, why hadn't I heard
anything?
I observed the school through the fence, waiting for a flashing of
lights and buzzing of angry little alarm bells, and then for the militia to
arrive... But time passed and all was quiet and I began to notice how dirty
my white shirt was. I should be in trouble for that at home and would have
to slip in quietly, throw the shirt in with the dirty linen and put on
something else.
Lost in these depressing thoughts, I noticed Yura only when he swung
himself over the fence and landed beside me.
What had happened? Apparently, when we were running away from the
watchman, he had sensed that we should not be able to get out of the
building together and had had the presence of mind to run up the attic
staircase and wait there for the danger to pass. And he had thought of that
in the few seconds while we were running away!
I could never have thought of such a thing so quickly. I had darted
like an animal back through the hole I had come in by, but Yura... Well,
that was what he was like, my old friend Yura Stavrakidi.
Reading over what I have written I recall that according to the best
literary formulas one should also say a few words about shortcomings of
one's hero. They were, of course insignificant and did nothing to darken his
shining aspect, they merely shaded it in a little. The existence of such
defects--only small ones, I must repeat--should bring him nearer to us, make
him more human and even, perhaps, evoke an understanding smile. People are
only human, after all.
I must admit that Yura liked a fight. In those days we all liked
fighting, but Yura for quite natural reasons was particularly fond of this
pastime.
He would fight to defend his own honour, or Greek honour, or simply
that of the weak and defenceless, or the honour of painters, quite often the
honour of our street and, less often, that of our class. And sometimes he
would fight for no particular reason, when the two sides merely wanted to
measure their strength so that they could afterwards jump to a higher branch
of the genealogical tree of chivalry, or yield their own branch, as the case
might be.
"I want to fight him," Yura would say to me quietly, nodding at some
boy or other. Usually this was a newcomer who had only just appeared at our
school or in the neighbourhood of our street. Or sometimes this was one of
our old acquaintances who had suddenly grown much bigger or filled out
during the summer and now required--though he might not wish it himself--a
reassessment of his potential.
So Yura would nod in his direction and there was such ardour and secret
happiness in his face that I could not help admiring him. Such probably is
the admiration of the gardener who finds a prematurely ripened fruit in his
orchard and carefully bends the branch to examine it, or perhaps of a Don
Juan viewing from afar a new beloved with a similar significant tenderness.
Usually the boy would sooner or later become aware of Yura's secret
passion and a shy embarrassment would appear in his movements that would
eventually break out into arrogance.
"He feels it too," Yura would say, nodding joyfully in his direction
and his eyes would glow with the goat-like cunning of a little satyr.
One day Yura and I were standing at the entrance to what was at the
time I am writing of our best cinema, the Apsny. There was some fabulous
film on and the street around us was surging with youngsters. Many were
looking for tickets and would peer into our eyes, trying to spot someone who
had bought a ticket for the purpose of reselling it.
How pleasant it was to be able to stand in the crowd before the show
began and feel the ticket in your pocket, knowing there were so many
yearning to get one but you had yours so you had nothing to fear. And when
the doors opened you would also be able to stroll round the foyer,
inspecting for the hundredth time the delightful daubs of a local artist on
themes from Pushkin's fairy-tales, relishing the knowledge that these little
pleasures were all for free and the main pleasure was yet to come. And after
that, when they let you into the hall, which would be positively steaming
from the previous show and redolent of the pleasure that had just been
experienced by others and was still in store for you, there would be the
newsreel, a feeble one perhaps but also in the nature of a free gift with
the real pleasure yet to come, and perhaps the sweetest thing in life was to
keep putting it off and putting it off since happiness, once begun, could
not be stretched for ever, because it might break, like the film itself.
And this was the state of blissful suspense in which I was standing
when a boy came up to Yura.
"Got a ticket?"
Yura looked at the lad, such a puny, such a ticket-less little fellow,
and paused as if to let him feel the full depth of his nothingness, and
said, "Yes, I have, but I'm going myself."
"I see you're trying to be funny," the boy retorted cheekily,
emboldened by disappointment.
"Yes, I was," Yura agreed. He seemed unable to believe his ears, unable
to comprehend that from this depth of nothingness anyone could possibly
answer him back, and was now testing his own senses to see if he had not
perhaps imagined this impudent voice.
"But it didn't come off, did it?" the boy said and with a vengeful nod
turned to go away.
"Wait a minute," Yura started forward.
The boy halted fearlessly.
"So I'm a speculator, am I?" Yura asked unexpectedly and, seizing him
by the lapels of his jacket, shook him. "I'm a speculator, am I?" he
repeated.
I felt a sour taste in my mouth. This was my body's as yet unconscious
reaction to what was dishonourable and unfair.
I sensed that Yura wanted to fight the boy, but that would have been
beyond all borings. The boy obviously did not want to fight, he was
obviously the weaker of the two, he had not said that Yura was a speculator,
and he wasn't even a ginger-head.
"So I'm a speculator, am I?" Yura repeated, and tried to shake him into
fighting form.
"I didn't say that," the boy's voice began to quaver, and he looked
round in search of friends or protectors.
"Yes, you did!" Yura shook him again, striving to elicit some further
insult, so that he could let fly. But the boy would not be provoked and this
annoyed Yura even more because he might have to take the final step himself.
And it looked as if he was going to.
But at that moment half a dozen Greek boys appeared from nowhere and
surrounded us, chanting in one voice, "Aren't you ashamed, Greek? ...
Kendrepeso..." came the familiar words out of the din.
Apparently they knew both Yura and the other boy well and Yura for some
reason had to reckon with them. And this boy, so obviously Russian in
appearance, suddenly, as if from sheer fright, also began to babble in Greek
so fluently that even Yura was confused. Apparently the boy lived in the
same yard as these lads.
They went on like this for some time, raising and lowering their
voices, going over from Russian to Greek and back to Russian. Yura
maintained that although the boy had not actually called him a speculator,
he had asked how much he would sell his ticket for, which obviously meant
... and so on.
"I didn't say that. It's not true," the boy argued, boldly now that he
was surrounded by his Greek friends.
"Aren't you ashamed, Greek?" again the Greeks appealed to Yura's
conscience in their own language.
"Ask him, if you don't believe me," Yura said, and turned towards me.
I had been expecting this. I hated him at that moment. I would have
liked to tread on his handsome, lying face, but he was my friend and by some
ancient law of comradeship, fellow-countrymanship, kinship or whatever, I
was bound to defend him, while another, stronger but for some reason
illegitimate feeling prompted me to take the side of the other boy.
Everyone looked at me, confident that I would take Yura's side, if only
because he had appealed to me. But for the first second I hesitated and by
so doing at once roused intense curiosity, because if I was his friend and
had not leapt to his defence I must be going to say something unusual or
perhaps even tell the whole truth.
They all stared at me in hushed expectation and I felt that every
moment of my silence was lifting me to intrepid heights in their eyes.
Indeed, I myself felt how high I was rising in my silence, how fruitful it
was in itself, and yet at the same time, knowing in advance that I should
fail them as soon as I opened my mouth, I waited for the moment when it
would be simply too dangerous to go any higher in view of the inevitable
subsequent fall.
"I didn't hear," I said, and acid spurted into my mouth as if I had
bitten into the crabbiest of all crab apples.
Both sides instantly lost interest in me and returned to their
argument, now relying only on their own forces. The bell rang.
We sat together watching the film. Sometimes from the corner of my eye
I caught a glimpse of my friend's stern face that was becoming more and more
estranged.
On the way home I tried to explain something, but he was unresponsive.
"Let's not start a jabber-jabber conference," he said as we reached his
house and he turned into the courtyard.
That was the beginning of the end of our friendship. We did not
quarrel. We simply lost our common aim. Gradually we left the childhood we
had shared and entered a youth that we could not share because youth was the
beginning of specialisation of the soul. And in purely physical terms,
through circumstances beyond our control we lost touch with each other.
It was only many years later that we met again in our town on the upper
floor of the off-shore restaurant Amra I had dropped in for a cup of coffee.
He was sitting with a group of local lads. We recognised each other from a
distance and he rose, smiling broadly, from his table.
I sat down with him and, as custom required, we recalled our schooldays
and old friends.
Yura was now a naval officer, serving somewhere up north. He was on a
long leave. He had come here for a holiday and a good time and was then
going to spend the rest of his leave in Kazakhstan, where his parents were
now living.
I reminded him of his running along the beam and confessed that this
feat of his had remained for me a great and never-to-be-fulfilled ambition.
"I could never have walked it," Yura said, with a shrug.
"Couldn't you?"
"I was far too scared to take it slowly," he said, and a ghost of the
old fearlessness appeared in his eye for a moment.
"You don't mean it!" I exclaimed, feeling that his confession imposed
some sort of obligation on me, though I did not know yet what it was.
"Do you know why I used to make it sway?" he asked and, without waiting
for my answer, replied, "I thought a steady rolling would be better than
sudden plunges... Like at sea," he added, consoling me with a more universal
application of his discovery.
No, I had no regrets about my adolescent enthusiasm for his feat. I
merely felt that courage, like cowardice, too, probably, was of a more
complex nature than I had previously suspected, and much of what I had once
believed to be clearly solved after all had probably not been solved so
exactly.
It made me sad. Scraps of half-formed thoughts prevented me from
enjoying myself, as exams still waiting to be taken had done when I was a
student.
I wanted to go home at once and form a final opinion at least about
something. But I had to stay because the waitress arrived with what had been
ordered. She had brought a bottle of brandy and a skillfully cut water
melon, which as soon as the plate was on the table opened out trickling with
juice, like a huge lotus with blood-stained petals.
Yura's hand went out to the bottle. No, of course, I couldn't leave.
--------
Old Crooked Arm
I have told the story of how in my childhood, when finding my way at
night to the house of a relative of ours, I fell into a freshly dug grave,
where I spent several hours in the company of a stray goat, until I and the
goat were rescued by a passing peasant. That was during the war.
Some time after this nocturnal adventure, we, that is, my mother,
sister and I, went to live in that very village. At first we stayed with my
mother's sister, then we found a room in another house and moved.
The house had been occupied before the war by three brothers. They were
all in the army. One of them had married before enlisting and now his young,
blooming and not too grief-stricken wife was all alone in the house.
Remembering her now, I am drawn to the conclusion that a grass widow is
called a grass widow because she catches fire as easily as dry grass.
While we were living there, one of the brothers came home. Yes, the one
that was married. He came home a little too quietly somehow. We noticed him
in the kitchen one morning. He was sitting in front of the fire roasting a
corncob on a spit, as though to remind himself of his pre-war childhood.
There was something about him that made one think he ought not to have come
home just yet. Or perhaps, he ought not to have married quite so soon;
because I think it was missing his wife so badly that brought him home too
early.
He pottered about in the garden with a kind of desperate eagerness for
a week or so, then he was arrested; and shortly afterwards we heard that he
was a deserter. He was arrested just as quietly as he had arrived.
We gradually settled down in the new place. My sister obtained work at
the local collective farm as a time-keeper; we were allotted a patch of
land, on which we grew melons and maize. We also grew pumpkins on it, and
cucumbers and tomatoes, too. In those days we used to grow everything.
Well, it so happened that not far from our house there lived the very
man whose grave I had fallen into. Incidentally, people in the village used
to say that everyone had fallen into that grave except the man it was meant
for. The story turned out to be long and complex. The grave's future owner,
if one may so describe him, old Shchaaban Larba, nicknamed Crooked Arm, had
been in hospital with either appendicitis or rupture. (In Russian, it would
probably be more correct to call him Withered Arm, but Crooked Arm
corresponds more closely to the spirit and, hence, the meaning of the
nickname.) Well, as I was saying, Crooked Arm had had an operation, and he
was still in hospital, calmly recovering his health, when someone telephoned
from the hospital to our village Soviet to say that the patient had died and
would have to be collected and taken home immediately because he had been
lying dead for more than a day already.
None of the sick man's relatives had been visiting the hospital just
then because he had been about to be discharged.
True, a fellow villager, Mustafa, had been in town at the time on
business of his own and had, incidentally, been asked to call at the
hospital and find out why Crooked Arm was still there, and whether he had
not perhaps decided to have his crooked arm put right as well as the
appendicitis or rupture. And then, all of a sudden, such unexpe