petak, 3. srpnja 2026.
"On the day when this happened the sirocco was blowing—a hot wind from Africa, and a nasty wind, too! It irritates one's nerves and puts one in a bad temper! That is probably the reason why the two carters, Giuseppe Cirotta and Luigi Meta, were quarrelling. No one knew how the quarrel began. No one knew who began it. All that people saw was that Luigi had thrown himself upon Giuseppe and was trying to clutch his throat; while the latter, his shoulders hunched to protect his head and his thick red neck, was making a lusty use of his strong black fists. "They were separated and asked: "'What is the matter?' "Quite purple with anger Luigi exclaimed: "'Let this bull repeat in the presence of everybody what he said about my wife!' "Cirotta tried to get away. His small eyes hidden in the folds of a disdainful grimace, he shook his black bullet head, and stubbornly refused to repeat the offending words. Meta then shouted out in a loud voice: "'He says that he has known the sweetness of my wife's caresses!' "'H'm,' said the people, 'this is no joking matter; this requires serious attention.
Be calm, Luigi. You are a stranger in our parts; your wife belongs here. We all knew her as a child, and if you have been wronged her guilt falls equally on all of us. Let us be outspoken!'
"They all gathered round Cirotta.
"'Did you say it?'
"'Well, yes, I did,' he admitted.
"'And is it the truth?'
"'Who has ever known me tell a lie?'
"Cirotta was a respectable man—a husband and a father; the matter was taking a very serious turn. Those present were perplexed and seemed to be thinking hard. Luigi went home and said to Concetta:
"'I am going away! I don't want you any more unless you can prove that the words of this scoundrel are a calumny.'
"Of course she began to cry, but then tears do not acquit one: Luigi pushed her away. She would be left with a child in her arms without food or money.
"Catherine was the first of the women to intervene. She kept a small greengrocer's shop and was as cunning as a fox; in appearance she resembled an old sack filled unevenly with flesh and bones.
"'Signor,' she said, 'you have already heard that this concerns the honour of us all. It is not a prank prompted by a night when the moon is bright; the fate of two mothers is involved, isn't that so? I will take Concetta to my house and let her live with me till we find out the truth.'
"She was as good as her word; and later she and Luccia, the noisy, shrivelled old witch, whose voice could be heard three miles away, both tackled poor Giuseppe: they asked him to come out and began to pluck at his soul as if it had been an old rag.
"'Well, my good man, tell us how many times you took Concetta to yourself?'
"The fat Giuseppe puffed out his cheeks, thought awhile, and said:
"'Once!'
"'He could have told us that without reflection,' remarked Luccia aloud, as if talking to herself.
"'Did it happen in the evening, in the night, or in the morning?' asked Catherine, after the fashion of a judge.
"Giuseppe chose evening without thinking.
"'Was it still daylight?'
"'Yes,' said the fool.
"'That means that you saw her body?'
"'Yes, of course.'
"'Then tell us what it looked like.'
"He understood at last the drift of the questions, and opened his mouth like a sparrow choking with a grain of barley. He understood, and muttered angrily under his breath; blood rushed to his large ears till they became quite purple.
"'Well, what can I say? I did not examine her like a doctor!'
"'You eat fruit without enjoying the look of it?' asked Luccia. 'But perhaps you noticed one of Concetta's peculiarities?' She went on questioning him, laughing and winking as she did so.
"'It all happened so quickly,' said Giuseppe, 'that, to tell you the truth, I didn't notice anything.'
"'That means that you never had her,' said Catherine.
"She was a kind woman, but, when necessary, she could be quite stern. In the end, they so confused the fellow and made him contradict himself so often that he lost his head—and confessed:
"'Nothing at all happened; I said it simply out of malice.'
"This did not surprise the old women.
"'It is what we thought,' they said; and, letting him go, they left the matter to the decision of the men.
"Two days later our Workers' Society met. Cirotta had to face them, having been accused of libelling a woman. Old Giacomo Fasca, a blacksmith, said in a way that did credit to him:
"'Citizens, comrades and good people! We demand that justice shall be done to us. We on our part must be just to everybody: let everybody understand that we know the high value of what we want, and that justice is not an empty word for us as it is for our masters. Here is a man who has libelled a woman, offended a comrade, disrupted one family and brought sorrow to another, who has made his wife suffer jealousy and shame. Our attitude to this man should be stern. What do you propose to do?'
"Sixty-seven tongues exclaimed in one voice:
"'Drive him out of the commune!'
"Fifteen of the men thought that this was too severe a punishment, and a dispute arose. And the dispute became a very noisy one, for the fate of a man hung on their decision, and not the fate of one man only: the man was married and had three children. What had his wife and children done? He had a house, a vineyard, a pair of horses, four donkeys for the use of foreigners. All these things had been acquired by his own labour and had cost him a deal of pains. Poor Giuseppe was skulking in a corner amongst the children and looked as gloomy as the very devil. He sat doubled up on a chair, his head bowed, fumbling his hat. He had pulled off the ribbon already, and now was slowly tearing off the brim. His fingers jerked as if he were playing the fiddle. When he was asked what he had to say he stood up slowly and, straightening his body, said:
"'I beg you to be lenient! There is no one without sin. To drive me off the land on which I have lived for more than thirty years, and where my ancestors have worked, would not be just.'
"The women were also against his being exiled, so Giacomo Fasca at last made the following proposal:—
"'I think, friends, that he will be sufficiently punished if we saddle him with the duty of keeping Luigi's wife and child—let him pay her half as much as Luigi earned!'
"They discussed the matter at great length and finally settled on that. Giuseppe Cirotta was very pleased to get off so easily. Besides, this decision satisfied all: the matter was not taken into the law courts, it was decided in their own circle and no knives were used.
"We do not like, signor, what they write about our affairs in the papers in a language unfamiliar to us. The words that we can understand occur only here and there, like teeth in an old man's mouth. Besides, we don't like the way the judges talk of us, for they are strangers to us and don't understand our life. They talk of us as if we were savages and they themselves angels of God, who don't know the taste of meat or wine, and don't touch womenkind. We are simple folks and we look on life in a simple way.
"So they decided that Giuseppe Cirotta should keep the wife and child of Luigi Meta.
"The matter however had a different ending.
"When Luigi found out that Cirotta's words were untrue and that his wife was innocent, and when he heard our decision, he wrote her a short note in which he invited her to come home:
*
"'Come to me and we shall live happily again. Do not take a farthing from that man and, if you have taken any, throw it in his face! I am guilty before you. Could I have thought that a man would lie in such a matter as love?'
*
"But he also wrote another letter to Cirotta:
"'I have three brothers and all four of us have sworn to one another that we will kill you like a ram if you ever leave the island and land in Sorrento, Castellamare, Torre, or anywhere else. As soon as we find it out we shall kill you, remember! This is as true as that we belong to your commune and are good honest people. My wife has no need of your help. Even my pig would refuse to eat your bread. Do not leave this island until I tell you you may!'
"That is how it all happened. It is said that Cirotta took this letter to the judge and asked him whether Luigi could not be punished for threatening him, and that the judge said:
"'Of course he can, but then his brothers will certainly kill you; they will come over here and kill you. I advise you to wait. That is better. Anger is not like love: it does not last for ever!'
"The judge may have said it: he is a good and clever man, and makes very good verses; but I don't believe that Cirotta ever went to him or showed him the letter. No, Cirotta is a decent fellow and it is not likely that he would have acted so stupidly. People would have jeered at him.
"We are simple working people, signor. We have our own life, our own ideas and opinions. We have a right to shape our life as we like and as we think best.
"Socialists? Friend, in my opinion a working man is born a socialist; although we don't read books we can smell the truth—truth has a strong smell about it which is always the same—the smell of the sweat of labour!"
četvrtak, 2. srpnja 2026.
It is as if thousands of metallic wires were strung in the thick foliage of the olive-trees. The wind moves the stiff, hard leaves, they touch the strings, and these light, continuous contacts fill the air with a hot, intoxicating sound. It is not yet music, but a sound as if unseen hands were tuning hundreds of invisible harps, and one awaits impatiently the moment of silence before a powerful hymn bursts forth, a hymn to the sun, the sky and the sea, played on numberless stringed instruments. The wind sways the tops of the trees, which seem to be moving down the mountain slope towards the sea. The waves beat in a measured, muffled way against the stones on the shore. The sea is covered with moving white spots, as if numberless flocks of birds had settled on its blue expanse; they all swim in the same direction, disappear, diving into the depths, and reappear, giving forth a faint sound. On the horizon, looking like grey birds, move two ships under full sail, dragging the other birds in their train. All this reminds one of a half-forgotten dream seen long ago; it is so unlike reality. "The wind will freshen towards evening," says an old fisherman, sitting on a little mound of jingling pebbles in the shade of the rocks. The breakers have washed up on to the stones a tangle of smelling seaweed—brown and golden and green; the wrack withers in the sun and on the hot stones, the salt air is saturated with the penetrating odour of iodine. One after another the curling breakers beat upon the heap of shingle. The old fisherman resembles a bird: he has a small pinched face and an aquiline nose; his eyes, which are almost hidden in the folds of the skin, are small and round, though probably keen enough.
His fingers are like crooks, bony and stiff.
"Half-a-century ago, signor," said the old man, in a tone that was in harmony with the beating of the waves and the chirping of the crickets—it was just such another day as this, gladsome and noisy, with everything laughing and singing. My father was forty, I was sixteen, and in love of course—it is inevitable when one is sixteen and the sun is bright.
"'Let us go, Guido, and catch some pezzoni,' said my father to me. Pezzoni, signor, are very thin and tasty fish with pink fins; they are also called coral fish because they live at a great depth where coral is found. To catch them one has to cast anchor, and angle with a hook attached to a heavy weight. It is a pretty fish.
"And we set off, looking forward to naught but a good catch. My father was a strong man, an experienced fisherman, but just then he had been ailing, his chest hurt him, and his fingers were contracted with rheumatism—he had worked on a cold winter's day and caught the fisherman's complaint.
"The wind here is very tricky and mischievous, the kind of wind that sometimes breathes on you from the shore as if gently pushing you into the sea; and at another time will creep up to you unawares and then rush at you as if you had offended it. The boat breaks loose and flies before it, sometimes with keel uppermost, with you yourself in the water. All this happens in a moment, you have no chance either to curse or to mention God's name, as you are whirled and driven far out to sea. A highwayman is more honourable than this kind of wind. But then, signor, human beings are always more honourable than elemental forces.
"Yes, this wind pounced upon us when we were three miles from the shore—quite close, you see, but it struck us as unexpectedly as a coward or a scoundrel. 'Guido,' said my father, clutching at the oars with his crippled hands. 'Hold on, Guido! Be quick—weigh anchor!'
"While I was weighing the anchor my father was struck in the chest by one of the oars and fell stunned into the bottom of the boat. I had no time to help him, signor; every second we might capsize. Events moved quickly: when I got hold of the oars, we were rushing along rapidly, surrounded by the dust-like spray of the water; the wind picked off the tops of the waves and sprinkled us like a priest, only with more zest, signor, and without any desire to wash away our sins.
"'This is a bad look-out!' said my father when he came to, and had taken a look in the direction of the shore. 'It will soon be all over, my son.'
"When one is young one does not readily believe in danger; I tried to row, did all that one can do on the water in such a moment of danger, when the wind, like the breath of wicked devils, amiably digs thousands of graves for you and sings the requiems for nothing.
"'Sit still, Guido,' said my father, grinning and shaking the water off his head. 'What is the use of poking the sea with match-sticks? Save your strength, my son; otherwise they will wait in vain for you at home.'
"The green waves toss out little boat as children toss a ball, peer at us over the boat's sides, rise above our heads, roar, shake, drop us into deep pits. We rise again on the white crests, but the coast runs farther and farther away from us and seems to dance like our boat. Then my father said to me:
"'Maybe you will return to land, but I—never. Listen and I will tell you something about a fisherman's work.'
"And he began to tell me all he knew of the habits of the different kinds of fishes: where, when and how best to catch them.
"'Should we not rather pray, father?' I asked him when I realised that our plight was desperate; we were like a couple of rabbits amidst a pack of white hounds which grinned at us on all sides.
"'God sees everything,' he said. 'If he sees everything He knows that men who were created for the land are now perishing in the sea, and that one of them, hoping to be saved, wishes to tell Him what he, the Father, already knows. It is not prayer but work that the earth and the people need. God understands that.'
"And having told me everything he knew about work my father began to talk about how one should live with others.
"'Is this the proper time to teach me?' said I. 'You did not do it when we were on shore.'
"'On shore I did not feel the proximity of death so.'
"The wind howled like a wild beast and furiously lashed the waves; my father had to shout to make me hear.
"'Always act as if there lived no one better and no one worse than yourself—that will always be right! A landowner and a fisherman, a priest and a soldier, belong to one body; you are needed just as much as any other of its members. Never approach a man with the idea that there is more bad in him than good; get to think that the good outweighs the bad and it will be so. People give what is asked of them.'"
"These things were not said all at once, of course, but intermittently, like words of command. We were tossed from wave to wave, and the words came to me sometimes from below, sometimes from above through the spray. Much of what he said was carried off before it reached my ear, much I could not understand: is it a time to learn, signor, when every minute you are threatened with death! I was in great fear; it was the first time that I had seen the sea in such a rage, and I felt utterly helpless. The sensation is still vivid in my memory, but I cannot tell whether I experienced it then or afterwards when I recalled those hours.
"As if it were now I see my father: he sits at the bottom of the boat, his feeble arms outstretched, his hands gripping the sides of the boat; his hat has been washed away; from right and left, from fore and aft, the waves are breaking over his head and shoulders.... He shook his head, sniffed and shouted to me from time to time. He was wet through and looked very small, and fear, or perhaps it was pain, had made his eyes large. I think it was pain.
"'Listen!' he shouted to me. 'Do you hear?'
"'At times,' I replied to him, 'I hear.'
"'Remember that everything that is good comes from man.'
"'I will remember!' I replied.
"He had never spoken to me in this way on land. He had been jovial and kindly, but it seemed to me that he regarded me with a lack of confidence and a sort of contempt—I was still a child for him; sometimes it offended me, for in youth one's pride is strong.
"His shouts must have lessened my fear, for I remember it all very clearly." The old fisherman remained silent for a while, looking at the white sea and smiling; then with a wink he said:
"As I have observed men, I know that to remember means to understand, and the more you understand the more good you see; that is quite true, believe me.
"Yes, I remember his wet face that was so dear to me, and his big eyes that looked at me so earnestly, so lovingly, and in such a way that somehow I knew at the time that I was not going to perish on that day. I was frightened, but I knew that I should not perish.
"Our boat capsized, of course, and we were in the swirling water, in the blinding foam, hedged in by sharp-crested waves, which tossed our bodies about, and battered them against the keel of the boat. We had fastened ourselves to the boat with everything that could be tied, and were holding on by ropes. As long as our strength lasted we should not be torn away from our boat, but it was difficult to keep afloat. Several times he and I were tossed on to the keel and then washed off again. The worst of it is, signor, that you become dizzy, and deaf and blind—the water gets into your eyes and ears and you swallow a lot of it.
"This lasted long—for full seven hours—and then the wind suddenly changed, blew towards the coast and swept us along with it. I was overjoyed and shouted:
"'Hold on!'
"My father also cried out, but I understood only:
"'They will smash us.'
"He meant the stones, but they were still far off; I did not believe him. But he understood matters better than I: we rushed along amid mountains of water, clinging like snails to our 'mother who fed us.' The waves had battered our bodies, dashed us against the boat and we already felt exhausted and benumbed. So we went on for a long time; but when once the dark mountains came in sight everything moved with lightning speed. The mountains seemed to reel as they came towards us, to bend over the water as if about to tumble on our heads. One, two! The white waves toss up our bodies, our boat crackles like a nut under the heel of a boot; I am torn away from it, I see the broken ribs of the rocks, like sharp knives, like the devil's claws, and I see my father's head high above me. He was found on the rocks two days later, with his back broken and his skull smashed. The wound in the head was large, part of the brain had been washed out. I remember the grey particles intermingled with red sinews in the wound, like marble or foam streaked with blood. He was terribly mutilated, all broken, but his face was uninjured and calm, and his eyes were tightly closed.
"And I? Yes, I also was badly mangled. They dragged me on to the shore unconscious. We were carried to the mainland beyond Amalfi—a place unknown to us, but the people there were also fishermen, our own kith and kin. Cases like ours do not surprise them, but render them kind; people who lead a dangerous life are always kind!
"I fear I have not spoken to you as I feel about my father, and of what I have kept in my heart for fifty-one years. Special words may be required to do that, even a song; but we are simple folk, like fishes, and are unable to speak as prettily and expressively as one would wish! One always feels and knows more than one is able to tell.
"What is most striking about the whole matter is that, although my father knew that the hour of his death had come, he did not get frightened or forget me, his son. He found time and strength to tell me all he considered important. I have lived sixty-seven years and I can say that everything he imparted to me is true!"
The old man took off his knitted cap, which had once been red but had faded, and pulled a pipe out of it. Then, inclining his bald bronzed skull to one side, he said with emphasis:
"It is all true, dear signor! People are just as you like to see them; look at them with kind eyes and all will be well with you, and with them, too; it will make them still better, and you too! It is very simple!"
The wind freshens considerably, the waves become higher, sharper and whiter, birds appear on the sea and fly swiftly away, disappearing in the distance. The two ships with their outspread sails have passed beyond the blue streak of the horizon.
The steep banks of the island are edged with lace-like foam, the blue water splashes angrily, and the crickets chirp on with never a pause.
srijeda, 1. srpnja 2026.
Let us praise Woman-Mother, the inexhaustible source of all-conquering life! Here we shall tell of the Iron Timur-Lenk, the Lame Lynx—of Sahib-Kiran, the lucky conqueror—of Tamerlane, as the Infidels have named him—of the man who sought to destroy the whole world. For fifty years he scoured the earth, his iron heel crushing towns and states as an elephant's foot crushes ant-hills. Red rivers of blood flowed in his tracks wherever he went. He built high towers of the bones of conquered peoples; he destroyed Life, vying with the might of Death, on whom he took revenge for having robbed him of his son Jihangir. He was a terrible man, for he wanted to deprive Death of all his victims; to leave Death to die of hunger and ennui! From the day on which his son Jihangir died and the people of Samarcand, clothed in black and light blue, their heads covered with dust and ashes, met the conqueror of the cruel Getes, from that day until the hour when Death met him in Otrar, and overcame him—for thirty years Timur did not smile. He lived with lips compressed, bowing his head to no one, and his heart was closed to compassion for thirty years. Let us praise Woman-Mother, the only power to which Death humbly submits. Here we shall tell the true tale of a mother, how Iron Tamerlane, the servant and slave of Death, and the bloody scourge of the earth, bowed down before her. This is how it came to pass. Timur-Bek
was feasting in the beautiful valley of Canigula which is covered with clouds of roses and jasmine, in the valley called "Love of Flowers" by the poets of Samarcand, from which one can see the light blue minarets of the great town, and the blue cupolas of the mosques.
Fifteen hundred round tents were spread out fan-wise in the valley, looking like so many tulips. Above them hundreds of silk flags were gently swaying, like living flowers.
In their midst, like a queen among her subjects, was the tent of Gurgan-Timur. The tent had four sides, each measuring one hundred paces, three spears' length in height; its roof rested on twelve golden columns as thick as the body of a man. The tent was made of silk, striped in black, yellow and light blue; five hundred red cords fastened it to the ground. There was a silver eagle at each of the four corners, and under the blue cupola, on a dais in the middle of the tent, was seated a fifth eagle—the all-conquering Timur-Gurgan himself, the King of Kings.
He wore a loose robe of light blue silk covered with no fewer than five thousand large pearls. On his grey head, which was terrible to look upon, was a white cap with a ruby on the sharp point. The ruby swayed backwards and forwards; it glistened like a fiery eye surveying the world.
The face of the Lame One was like a broad knife covered with rust from the blood into which it had been plunged thousands of times. His eyes were narrow and small but they saw everything; their gleam resembled the cold gleam of "Tsaramut," the favourite stone of the Arabs, which the infidels call emerald, and by means of which epilepsy can be cured.
The king wore earrings of rubies from Ceylon which resembled in colour a pretty girl's lips.
On the ground, on carpets that could not be matched, were three hundred golden pitchers of wine and everything needed for the royal banquet. Behind Timur stood the musicians; at his feet were his kindred: kings and princes and the commanders of his troops; by his side was no one. Nearest of all to him was the tipsy poet Kermani, he who once to the question of the destroyer of the world, "Kermani, how much would you give for me if I were to be sold?" replied to the sower of death and terror:
"Twenty-five askers."
"But that is the value of my belt alone!" exclaimed Timur, surprised.
"I was only thinking of the belt," replied Kermani, "only of the belt; because you yourself are not worth a farthing!"
Thus spake the poet Kermani to the King of Kings, to the man of evil and terror. Let us therefore value the fame of the poet, the friend of truth, always higher than the fame of Timur. Let us praise poets who have only one God—the beautifully spoken, fearless word of truth—that which is their god for ever!
It was an hour of mirth, carousal and proud reminiscences of battles and victories. Amid the sounds of music and popular games, warriors were fencing before the tent of the king, and endeavouring to show their prowess in killing. A number of motley-coloured clowns were tumbling about, strong men were wrestling, acrobats were performing as though they had no bones in their bodies. A performance of elephants was also in progress; they were painted red and green, which made some of them look ludicrous, others terrible. At this hour of joy, when Timur's men were intoxicated with fear before him, with pride in his fame, with the fatigue of battles, with wine and koumiss—at this mad hour, suddenly through the noise, like lightning through a cloud, the cry of a woman reached the ears of the conqueror of the Sultan Bayazet, the cry of a proud eagle, a sound familiar and attuned to his afflicted soul—afflicted by Death, and therefore so cruel to mankind and to life.
He gave orders to inquire who had cried out in this voice devoid of joy. He was told that a woman had come, all in rags and covered with dust; she seemed crazy, and speaking Arabic demanded—she demanded—to see the master of three parts of the world.
"Lead her in!" said the king.
Before him stood a woman, barefooted, in rags faded by the sun. Her black hair hung loose, covering her naked breast, and her face was of the colour of bronze. Her eyes expressed command and her tawny hand did not shake as she pointed it at the "Lame One."
"Are you he that defeated Sultan Bayazet?" she asked.
"Yes, I am he. I have conquered many and am not yet tired of victories. What have you to tell me about yourself, woman?"
"Listen," she said. "Whatever you may have done, you are only a man, but I am a mother. You serve Death—I serve Life. You are guilty before me and I am come to demand that you atone for your guilt. They tell me that your watchword is 'Justice is Power.' I do not believe it, but you must be just to me because I am a mother."
The king was wise enough to overlook the insult and felt the force of the words behind it. He said:
"Sit down and speak. I will listen to you."
She settled herself comfortably on a carpet in the narrow circle of kings and related as follows:—
"I have come from near Salerno. It is in far-off Italy—you would not know it. My father was a fisherman, my husband also; he was as handsome as he was happy. It was I who made him happy. I also had a son who was the finest boy in the world——"
"Like my Jihangir," said the old warrior quietly.
"My son was the finest and cleverest boy. He was six years old when Saracen pirates came to our shore. They killed my father and my husband, and many others. They kidnapped my son and for four years I have searched for him all over the earth. He must be with you now; I know it, because Bayazet's warriors captured the pirates; you defeated Bayazet and took away all he had; therefore you must know where my son is, you must give him back to me!"
"She is insane," said the kings and friends of Timur, his princes and marshals; and they all laughed, for kings always account themselves wise.
But Kermani looked seriously at the woman, and Tamerlane seemed greatly astonished.
"She is as insane as a mother," quietly said the poet Kermani; but the king—the enemy of the world—replied:
"Woman, how came you from that unknown country, across the seas, across rivers and mountains, through the forests? How is it that wild beasts, and men, who are often more ferocious than the wildest of beasts, did not harm you? You came even without a weapon, the only friend of the defenceless that does not betray them as long as they have strength in their arms. I must know it all in order that I may believe you and in order that my astonishment may not prevent me from understanding you."
Let us praise Woman-Mother, whose love knows no bounds, by whose breast the whole world has been nourished. Everything that is beautiful in man comes from the rays of the sun and from mother's milk; these are the sources of our love of life.
The woman replied to Timur-Lenk:
"I came across one sea only, a sea with many islands, where I found fishermen's boats. When one is seeking what one loves the wind is always favourable. For one who has been born and bred by the seashore it is easy to swim across rivers. Mountains? I saw no mountains."
"A mountain becomes a valley when one loves!" interjected smilingly the poet Kermani.
"True, there were forests on the way. There were wild boars, bears, lynxes and terrible-looking bulls that lowered their heads threateningly; twice lynxes stared at me with eyes like yours. But every beast has a heart. I talked to them as I talk to you. They believed me that I was a mother and went away sighing. They pitied me. Know you not that beasts also love their young, and will fight for the life and freedom of those they love as valiantly as men?"
"That is true, woman," said Timur. "Very often, I know, their love is stronger and they fight harder than men."
"Men," she continued like a child, for every mother is a hundred times a child in her soul, "men are always children of their mothers, for everyone has a mother, everyone is somebody's son, even you, old man; a woman bore you. You may renounce God, but that you cannot renounce, old man."
"That is true, woman," exclaimed Kermani, the fearless poet. "You can have no calves from a herd of bulls, no flowers bloom without the sun, there is no happiness without love. There is no love without woman. There is no poet or hero without a mother."
And the woman said:
"Give me back my child, because I am a mother and I love him!"
Let us bow down before Woman—she gave birth to Moses, Mahomet, and the Great Prophet Jesus who was murdered by the wicked, but who, as Sherif-eddin said, "will rise and come to judge the living and the dead. It will happen in Damascus."
Let us bow down before her who through the centuries gives birth to great men. Aristotle was her son, and Firdousi, and honey-sweet Saadi, and Omar Khayyam that is like wine mixed with poison, Iscander and blind Homer. All these are her children, they all have drunk her milk and every one of them was led into the world by her hand—when they were no taller than a tulip. All the pride of the world is due to mothers.
And the grey destroyer of towns, the lame tiger Timur-Gurgan, grew thoughtful and for a long time was silent. Then to all present he said:
"Men Tangri Kuli, Timur (I, Timur, a servant of God) say what I must say. I have lived for many years and the earth groans under me. For thirty years, with this hand of mine, I have been destroying the harvest of Death, I have been taking revenge upon Death because Death put out the sun of my heart—robbed me of my Jihangir. Others have struggled for cities and for kingdoms, but none has so striven for a man. Men had no value in my eyes; I cared not who they were nor why they were in my way. It was I, Timur, who said to Bayazet when I had defeated him: 'O Bayazet, it seems that kingdoms are nothing before God; you see that He gives them into the hands of people like us—you who are a cripple and me who am lame!' I said this to him when he was led up to me in chains, groaning under their weight. I looked upon his misfortune and felt that love was bitter as wormwood, the weed that grows on ruins.
"A servant of God, I say what I must. A woman sits before me, her number is legion and she has awakened in my soul feelings hitherto unknown to me. As an equal she speaks to me and she does not ask, she demands. I see and understand why this woman is so powerful: she loves and love helped her to recognise that her child is the spark of life from which a flame may spring that will burn for many centuries. Have not all prophets been children, and all heroes been weak? O Jihangir, the light of my eyes, perhaps it was thy lot to warm the earth, to sow happiness on it: I have covered it well with blood and made it fertile."
Again the Scourge of Nations pondered long. At last he said:
"I, Timur, slave of God, say what I must. Let three hundred horsemen go to all the four corners of my kingdom and let them find this woman's son. She shall wait here and I will wait with her. Happy shall he be who returns with the child on his saddle. Woman, is that right?"
She tossed her black hair from her face, smiled at him and, nodding, answered:
"Quite right, O king!"
Then the terrible old man rose and bowed to her in silence, but the merry poet Kermani sang joyfully like a child:
"What is more delightful than a song of flowers and stars?
Everyone will say: a song of love.
What is more enchanting than the midday sun in May?
A lover will reply: she whom I love.
Ah, I know the stars are splendid in the sky at depth of night,
And I know the sun is gorgeous on a dazzling summer's day,
But the eyes of my beloved out-rival all the flowers,
And her smile is more entrancing than the sun in May.
But no one yet has sung the best, most charming song of all;
Tis the song of all beginnings, of the heart of all the world,
Of the magic heart of women, and the mother of us all!"
Timur-Lenk said to his poet:
"Quite right, Kermani! God did not err when He selected your lips to announce his wisdom!"
"Well, God himself is a good poet!" said the drunken Kermani.
And the woman smiled, and all the kings and princes and warriors smiled too, like children, as they looked at her—the Woman-Mother.
All this is true. What is said here is the truth, all mothers know it, ask them and they will say:
"Yes, all this is everlasting truth. We are more powerful than Death, we who ceaselessly present sages, poets and heroes to the world, we who sow in it everything that is glorious!"
utorak, 30. lipnja 2026.
It is a quiet sultry day, and life seems to have come to a standstill in the serene calm; the sky looks affably down at the earth, with a limpid eye of which the sun is the fiery iris. The sea has been hammered smooth out of some blue metal, the coloured boats of the fishermen are as motionless as if they were soldered into the semicircle of the bay, which is as clear as the sky overhead. A seagull flies past, lazily flapping its wings; out of the water comes another bird, whiter yet and more beautiful than the one in the air. In the distant mist floats, as if melting in the sun, a violet isle, a solitary rock in the sea, like a precious stone in the ring formed by the Neapolitan bay. The rocky isle, with its rugged promontories sloping down to the sea, is covered with gorgeous clusters of the dark foliage of the vine, of orange, lemon and fig trees, and the dull silver of the tiny olive leaves. Out of this mass of green, which falls abruptly to the sea, red, white and golden flowers smile pleasantly, while the yellow and orange-coloured fruits remind one of the stars on a hot moonlight night, when the sky is dark and the air moist. There is quiet in the sky, on the sea and in one's soul; one stops and listens to all the living things singing a wordless prayer to their God—the Sun.
Between the gardens winds a narrow path, and along it a tall woman in black descends slowly to the sea, stepping from stone to stone. Her dress has faded in the sun: brown spots and even patches can be seen on it from afar. Her head is bare; her grey hair glistens like silver, framing in crisp curls her high forehead, her temples and the tawny skin of her cheeks; it is of the kind that no combing could render smooth.
Her face is sharp, severe, once seen to be remembered for ever; there is something profoundly ancient in its withered aspect; and when one encounters the direct look of her dark eyes one involuntarily thinks of the burning wilderness of the East, of Deborah and Judith.
Her head is bent over some red garment which she is knitting; the steel of her hook glistens. A ball of wool is hidden somewhere in her dress, but the red thread appears to come from her bosom. The path is steep and treacherous, the pebbles fall and rattle as she steps, but this greyhaired woman descends as confidently as if her feet themselves could find the way. This tale is told of her in the village: She is a widow; her husband, a fisherman, soon after their wedding went out fishing and never returned, leaving her with a child under her heart.
When the child was born she hid it; she did not take her son out into the street and sunshine to show him off, as mothers are wont to do, but kept him in a dark corner of her hut, swaddling him in rags. Not one of the neighbours knew how the new-born baby was shaped—they saw only the large head and big, motionless eyes in a yellow face. Previously she had been healthy, alert and cheerful and able not only to struggle persistently with necessity herself but knowing also how to say a word of encouragement to others. But now it was noticed that she had become silent, that she was always musing, and knitting her brows, and looked at everything as through a mist of sorrow, with a strange, wistful, searching expression.
Little time was needed for everyone to learn about her misfortune: the child born to her was a freak, that is why she hid it, that is what depressed her.
The neighbours told her, of course, how shameful it is for a woman to be the mother of a freak; no one except the Madonna knows whether this cruel insult is a punishment justly deserved or not; but that the child was guiltless, and she was wrong to deprive it of sunshine.
She listened to them and showed them her son. His arms and legs were short, like the fins of a fish, his head, which was puffed out like a huge ball, was weakly supported by a thin, skinny neck, and his face was wrinkled like that of an old man; he had a pair of dull eyes and a large mouth drawn into a set smile.
The women cried when they beheld him, men frowned, expressed loathing and went gloomily away; the freak's mother sat on the ground, now bowing her head, now raising it and looking at the others, as if silently inquiring about something which no one could grasp.
The neighbours made a box like a coffin for the freak, and filled it with rags and combings of wool; they put the little child into this soft warm nest and placed the box out in the yard in the shade, entertaining a secret hope that the sunlight which performs miracles every day might work yet one miracle more.
Time passed, but he remained unchanged, with a large head, a thin body, and four helpless limbs; only his smile assumed a more definite expression of ravenous greed, and his mouth was becoming filled with two rows of sharp, crooked teeth. The short paws learnt to catch chunks of bread and to carry them, with rarely a mistake, to the large warm mouth.
He was dumb, but when food was being consumed near him and he could smell it he made a mumbling sound, working his jaws and shaking his large head, and the dull whites of his eyes became covered with a red network of bloody veins.
The freak's appetite was enormous, and waxed greater as time went on; his mumbling never ceased. The mother worked untiringly, but very often her earnings were small and sometimes she earned nothing at all. She did not complain, and accepted help from the neighbours rather unwillingly, and always without a word. When she was away from home the neighbours, irritated by the mumbling of the child, ran into the yard and shoved crusts of bread, vegetables, fruit, anything that could be eaten, into the ever-hungry jaws.
"Soon he will devour everything you have," they said to her. "Why don't you send him to some orphanage or hospital?"
She answered gloomily:
"Leave him alone! I am his mother, I gave him life and I must feed him."
She was fair to look upon, and more than one man sought her love, but unsuccessfully. To one whom she liked more than the rest she said:
"I cannot be your wife; I am afraid of giving birth to another freak; you would be ashamed. No, go away!"
The man tried to persuade her, reminded her of the Madonna, who is just to mothers and looks upon them as her sisters, but the freak's mother replied to him:
"I don't know what I am guilty of, but I have been cruelly punished."
He implored, wept, raged; and finally she said:
"One cannot do what one does not believe to be right. Go away!"
He went away to a far-off place and she never saw him again.
And so for many years she filled the insatiable jaws, which chewed incessantly. He devoured the fruits of her toil, her blood, her life; his head grew and became more terrible, until it seemed ready to break away from the thin weak neck and to rise in the air like a balloon; one could imagine it in its course knocking against the corners of houses, and swaying lazily from side to side.
All who looked into the yard stopped involuntarily and shuddered, unable to understand what they saw. Near the vine-covered wall, propped up on stones, as on an altar, was a box, out of which rose a head, showing up clearly against the background of foliage. The yellow, freckled, wrinkled face, with its high cheekbones, and vacant eyes starting out of their sockets, impressed itself on the memory of all who saw it; the broad flat nostrils quivered, the abnormally developed cheek-bones and jaws worked monotonously, the fleshy lips hung loose, disclosing two rows of ravenous teeth; the large projecting ears, like those of an animal, seemed to lead a separate existence. And this awful visage was crowned by a mass of black hair growing in small, close curls, like the wool of a negro.
Holding in his little hands, which were short and small like the paws of a lizard, a chunk of something to eat, the freak would bend his head forward like a bird pecking, and, wrenching off bits of food with his teeth, would munch noisily and snuffle. When he was satisfied he grinned; his eyes shifted towards the bridge of his nose, forming one dull, expressionless spot on the half-dead face, the movements of which recalled to mind the twitchings of a person in agony. When he was hungry he would crane his neck forward, open his red maw and mumble clamorously, moving a thin, snake-like tongue.
Crossing themselves and muttering a prayer people stepped aside, reminded of everything evil that they had lived through, of all the misfortunes they had experienced in their lives.
The blacksmith, an old man of a gloomy disposition, said more than once:
"When I see the all-devouring mouth of this creature I feel that somebody like him has devoured my strength; it seems to me that we all live and die for the sake of such parasites."
This dumb head called forth in everyone sombre thoughts and feelings that oppressed the heart.
The freak's mother listened to what people said, and was silent; but her hair turned quickly grey, wrinkles appeared on her face and she had long since forgotten how to laugh. It was known that sometimes she would spend the whole night standing in the doorway, and looking up at the sky as if waiting for something. Shrugging their shoulders they said to one another:
"Whatever is she waiting for?"
"Put him on the square near the old church," her neighbours advised her. "Foreigners pass there; they will be sure to throw him a few coppers."
The mother shuddered as if in horror, saying:
"It would be terrible if he were seen by strangers, by people from other countries—what would they think of us?"
They replied:
"There is misfortune everywhere, and they all know it."
Disparagingly she shook her head.
But foreigners, driven by the desire for change, wander everywhere, and naturally enough as they passed her house looked in. She was at home, she saw the ugly looks, expressing aversion and loathing, on the repleted faces of these idle people, heard how they spoke about her son, making wry mouths and screwing up their eyes. Her heart was especially wounded by a few words uttered contemptuously, with animosity, and obvious triumph.
Many times she repeated to herself the stranger's words, committing them to memory; her heart, the heart of an Italian woman and a mother, divined their insulting meaning.
That same day she went to an interpreter whom she knew and asked what the words meant.
"It depends upon who uttered them!" he replied, knitting his brows. "They mean: 'Italy is the first of the Latin races to degenerate.' ... Where did you hear this lie?"
She went away without answering.
The next day her son died in convulsions from over-eating.
She sat in the yard near the box, her hand on the head of her dead son; still seeming to be calmly waiting, waiting. She looked questioningly into the eyes of everybody who came to the house to look upon the deceased.
All were silent, no one spoke to her, though perhaps many wished to congratulate her—she had been freed from slavery—to say a word of consolation to her—she had lost a son—but everyone was mute. Sometimes people understand that there is a time for silence.
For some time after this she continued to gaze long into people's faces, as if questioning them about something; then she became as ordinary as everybody else.
ponedjeljak, 29. lipnja 2026.
A Boy and His Dog – Harlan Ellison - https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/boy-and-dog/
It’d been made in 1948, seventy-six years ago
Many are the tales that may be told about mothers. For several weeks now the town had been surrounded by a close ring of armed foes. Of nights bonfires were lit and a multitude of fiery red eyes looked out from the darkness upon the walls. They glowed ominously, these fires, as if warning the inhabitants of the town. And the thoughts they conjured up were of a gloomy kind. From the walls it was apparent that the noose of foes was being drawn tighter and tighter. Black shadows could be seen moving this way and that about the fires. The neighing of well-fed horses could be heard, and the clatter of arms and the loud laughter and merry songs of men confident of victory—and what is more painful to listen to than the laughter and songs of the foe? The enemy had filled with corpses the streams which supplied the town with water; they had burned down the vineyards around the town, trampled down the fields, and cut down the trees of the neighbourhood, leaving the town exposed on all sides; and almost every day missiles of iron and lead were poured into it by the guns and rifles of the foe. Detachments of half-starved soldiers, tired out by skirmishes, passed along the narrow streets of the town; from the windows of the houses come the groans of wounded, the raving of men in delirium, the prayers of women and the crying of children. Everybody spoke quietly, in subdued tones, interrupting one another's speech in the middle of a word to listen intently to detect whether the foe was not
commencing to storm the town.
Life became especially unbearable in the evening, when the groans and cries became louder and more noticeable in the stillness, when blue-black shadows crept from the far-off mountain gorges, hiding the enemy's camp and moving towards the half-shattered walls, and, over the black summits of the mountains, the moon appeared, like a lost shield battered by the blows of heavy swords.
Expecting no assistance from without, spent with toil and hunger, and losing hope more and more every day, the people looked fearfully at the moon, at the sharp crests and the black gorges of the mountains, at the noisy camp of the enemy—everything spoke to them of death and no single star twinkled solace to them.
They were afraid to light lamps in the houses; a thick fog enveloped the streets, and in this fog, like a fish at the bottom of a river, a woman flitted silently to and fro, wrapped from head to foot in a black mantle.
People, noticing her, asked one another:
"Is it she?"
"Yes!"
And they drew back into the recesses of the doorways or, lowering their heads, ran past her silently. The men in charge of the patrols warned her sternly:
"You are in the street again, Monna Marianna? Have a care! They may kill you and no one will trouble to search for the culprit."
She stood erect and waited, but the patrol passed her by, either hesitating or not wishing to harm her. Armed men walked round her as if she had been a corpse. Yet she lingered on in the darkness, moving slowly from street to street, solitary, silent and black, seeming the personification of the town's misfortunes. And around her, mournfully pursuing her, surged depressing sounds: groans, sobs, prayers, and the grim talk of soldiers who had lost all hope of victory.
She was a citizen and a mother, and her thoughts were of her son and of the town of her birth. And her son, a handsome but gay and heartless youth, was at the head of the men who were destroying the town. Not long ago she had looked at him with pride, as upon her precious gift to the fatherland, as upon a beneficent force created by her for the welfare of the town, her birthplace, and the place also where she had borne and brought up her son. Hundreds of indissoluble ties bound her heart to the ancient stones, out of which her ancestors had built the houses and the city walls; to the soil in which lay the bones of her kindred; to the legends, songs and hopes of her native people. And this heart now had lost him whom it had loved most and it was rent in twain; it was like a balance in which her love for her son was being weighed against her love for the town. And it was not possible yet to decide which love outweighed the other.
In this state of mind she walked the streets at night, and many, not recognising her, were frightened, thinking that the dark figure was the personification of Death which was so near to them all; those that recognised her stepped hurriedly out of her way to avoid the traitor's mother.
Once, in a deserted corner of the city wall, she came across another woman: she was kneeling by the side of a corpse, and praying with face uplifted to the stars; on the wall, above her head, sentinels were talking quietly; their guns clattered as they knocked against the projecting stones of the wall.
The traitor's mother inquired:
"Your husband?"
"No."
"Brother?"
"Son. My husband was killed thirteen days ago; this one to-day."
And, rising, the mother of the dead man said humbly:
"The Madonna sees everything, she knows everything, and I thank her!"
"What for?" asked Marianna, and the other replied:
"Now that he has fallen with honour, fighting for his fatherland, I can say that he sometimes caused me anxiety: he was reckless, fond of pleasure, and I feared lest for that reason he might betray the town, as Marianna's son has done, the enemy of God and men, the leader of our foes; accursed be he and accursed be the womb that bore him!"
Covering her face Marianna hurried away. The next day she went to the defenders of the town and said:
"Either kill me because my son has become your enemy, or open the gate for me, that I may go to him."
They replied:
"You are a citizen, and the town should be dear to you; your son is just as much your enemy as he is ours."
"I am his mother: I love him and deem it to be my fault that he is what he is."
Then they consulted together as to what should be done and came to this decision:
"We cannot, in honour, kill you for your son's sin; we know you could not have suggested this terrible sin to him; and we can guess how you must be suffering. You are not wanted by the town, even as a hostage; your son does not trouble himself about you; we think he has forgotten you, the fiend—and therein lies your punishment, if you think you have deserved it! To us it seems more terrible than death!"
"Yes," she said; "it is more terrible."
They opened the gate for her, and let her out of the town. For a long time they watched her from the wall as she made her way over this native soil, sodden now with blood shed by her son. She walked slowly, dragging her feet painfully through the mire, bowing her head before the corpses of the defenders of the town and repugnantly spurning the pieces of broken weapons that lay in her path—for mothers hate the instruments of destruction, believing only in that which preserves life.
She walked carefully, as though she carried under her cloak a bowl full of some liquid which she was afraid of spilling. And as she went on, as her figure grew smaller and smaller, it seemed to those who watched her from the wall that their former depression and hopelessness were disappearing with her.
They saw her stop when she had covered half the distance, and, throwing back her hood, gaze long at the town. Beyond, in the enemy's camp, they had also noticed her advancing alone through the deserted fields; figures, as black as herself, cautiously approached her. They went up to her, asked her who she was and whither she was going.
"Your leader is my son," she said, and none of the soldiers doubted her words. They walked by her side, speaking in terms of praise of the bravery and cleverness of their leader. She listened to them, her head raised proudly in the air and showing not the least surprise. That was just how her son should be!
And now she stands before the man whom she knew nine months before his birth; before him whom she had never put out of her heart. And he stands before her, in silk and velvet, and wearing a sword ornamented with precious stones. In everything fit and seemly, exactly as she had seen him many a time in her dreams—rich, famous and beloved!
"Mother!" he said, kissing her hands. "You come to me; it means that you have understood me, and to-morrow I will capture this accursed town!"
"In which you were born," she reminded him.
Intoxicated by his exploits, maddened by the desire for still greater glory, he spoke to her with the insolent pride of youth.
"I was born into the world and for the world, in order to strike it with astonishment! I spared this town for your sake—it is like a splinter in my foot and hinders me from advancing to fame as quickly as I could wish. But either to-day or tomorrow I will destroy the nest of these stubborn ones!"
"Where every stone knows you and remembers you as a child," she said.
"Stones are dumb; if men cannot make them speak let mountains speak of me—that is what I want!"
"But the people?" she asked.
"O yes, I remember them, mother. I need them also, for only in the memories of people are heroes immortal."
She replied:
"He is a hero who creates life, spiting death, who conquers death."
"No," he replied. "He who destroys becomes as famous as he who builds cities. For instance, we do not know whether Æneas or Romulus built Rome, but we know the name of Alaric and the other heroes who destroyed it."
"It has outlived all names," the mother suggested.
In this strain he spoke to her till sunset. She interrupted his vain talk less frequently and her proud head gradually drooped.
A mother creates, she preserves, and to talk about destruction in her presence is to speak against her understanding of life. But not knowing this the son was denying all that life meant for his mother.
A mother is always against death, and the hand that introduces death into people's dwellings is hateful and hostile to all mothers. But the son did not see it, blinded by the cold gleam of glory which kills the heart.
And he did not know that a mother can be just as resourceful, just as pitiless and fearless as an animal, when it concerns life which the mother herself creates and preserves.
She sat limply, with head bowed down. Through the open mouth of the rich tent of the leader could be seen the town where she had thrilled to the conception and travailed in the birth of this her firstborn child, whose only wish now was to destroy.
The purple rays of the sun bathed in blood the walls and towers of the town, the window-panes glistened ominously; the whole town seemed to be wounded, and from its hundreds of wounds streamed the red blood of life. Time went on, and the town grew black, like a corpse, and the stars like funeral candles were lit above it.
She saw with her mind's eye the dark houses where they were afraid to light the lamps, for fear of attracting the attention of the enemy; and the dark streets filled with the odour of corpses and the subdued whispers of people awaiting death—she saw everything and all; everything that was native and familiar to her stood out before her, awaiting her decision in silence, and she felt that she was the mother of all the people of her native town.
From the dark mountain-tops clouds descended into the valley, and like winged coursers sped upon the doomed town.
"Perhaps we shall make an attack to-night," said her son, "if the night is dark enough! It is not easy to kill when the sun looks into one's eyes and the glitter of the weapons blinds one—many blows are wasted then," said he, examining his sword.
"Come here," said his mother; "put your head on my breast; rest a while, and recall to your mind how happy and kind you were as a child, and how everybody loved you."
He obeyed, knelt against her and said, closing his eyes:
"I love only glory and you, because you bore me as I am."
"But women?" she asked, bending over him.
"There are many of them, one soon tires of them, as of everything sweet."
And finally she asked him:
"Do you not wish to have children?"
"Why? In order that they may be killed? Somebody like me would kill them; it would grieve me, and no doubt I should be too old then, and too weak, to avenge them."
"You are handsome, but as sterile as the lightning," she said, sighing.
He answered, smiling:
"Yes, as the lightning."
And he fell asleep on her breast like a child.
Then she covered him with her black cloak and plunged a knife into his heart. He shuddered, and died instantaneously, for she, his mother, knew well where her son's heart beat. And having pushed the corpse off her knees to the feet of the astonished guards, she said, pointing in the direction of the town:
"As a citizen I have done all I could for my fatherland: as a mother I remain with my son! It is too late for me to give birth to another, my life is of no use to anyone."
And the same knife, still warm with his blood—her blood—she plunged into her own bosom, and doubtless struck the heart. When one's heart aches it is easy to strike it without missing.
nedjelja, 28. lipnja 2026.
It is spring-time, the sun shines brightly, and everyone is gay. Even the window-panes of the old stone houses seem to wear a cheerful smile. Along the street of the little town streams a crowd in bright holiday attire. The whole population of the town is there: workers, soldiers, tradespeople, priests, officials, fishermen; all are intoxicated with the spirit of spring-time, talking, laughing, singing in joyous confusion, as if they were a single body overflowing with the zest of life. The hats and parasols of the women make a medley of bright colours; red and blue balloons, like wonderful flowers, float from the hands of the children; and children, merry lords of the earth, laughing and rejoicing, are everywhere, like gems on the gorgeous cloak of a fairy prince. The tender green leaves of the trees have not yet unfolded; they are sheathed in gorgeous buds, greedily drinking in the warm rays of the sun. Far off the sun smiles gently and seems to beckon us. The impression seems to prevail that people have outlived their misfortunes, that yesterday was the last day of the hard shameful life that wearied them to death. To-day they have all awakened in high spirits, like schoolboys, with a strong, clear faith in themselves, in the invincibility of their will to overcome all obstacles, and now, all together, they march boldly into the future. It was strange—strange and sad and suddenly depressing—to notice a sorrowful face in this lively crowd: it was that of a tall, strongly built man, not yet over thirty but already grey, who passed arm-in-arm with a young woman. He carried his hat in his hand,
the hair on his shapely head glistened like silver, his thin but healthy face was calm and destined to remain for ever sad. The eyes, large and dark, and shaded by long lashes, were those of a man who cannot forget—who will never forget—the acute suffering through which he has passed.
"Notice that couple," said my companion to me, "especially the man: he has lived through one of those dramas which are enacted more and more frequently amongst the workers of Northern Italy."
And my companion went on:
That man is a socialist, the editor of a local Labour paper, a workman himself, a painter. He is one of those characters for whom science becomes a religion, and a religion that still more incites the thirst for knowledge. A keen and clever Anti-Clerical he was—just note what fierce looks the black priests send after him.
About five years ago he, a propagandist, met in one of his circles a girl who at once attracted his attention. Here women have learnt to believe silently and steadfastly; the priests have cultivated this ability in them for many centuries, and have achieved what they wished. Somebody rightly said that the Catholic Church has been built up on the breast of womankind. The cult of the Madonna is not only beautiful, as such heathen practices go, it is first of all a clever cult. The Madonna is simpler than Christ, she is nearer to one's heart, there are no contradictions in her, she does not threaten with Gehenna—she only loves, pities, forgives—it is easy for her to make a captive of a woman's heart for life.
But there he sees a girl who can speak, can inquire; and in all her questions he perceives, side by side with her naïve wonderment at his ideas, an undisguised lack of belief in him, and sometimes even fear and repulsion. The Italian propagandist has to speak a great deal about religion, to say incisive things about the Pope and the clergy; every time he spoke on that subject he saw contempt and hate for him in the eyes of the girl; if she asked about anything her words sounded unfriendly and her soft voice breathed poison. It was evident that she was acquainted with Catholic literature directed against socialism, and that in this circle her word had as much weight as his own.
Until latterly the attitude here towards women was far more vulgar and much coarser than in Russia, and the Italian women were themselves to blame for this; taking no interest in anything except the Church, they were for the most part strangers to the work of social advancement carried on by men and did not understand its meaning.
The man's self-love was wounded, the clever propagandist's fame suffered in the collisions with the girl; he got angry; lost his temper; occasionally he ridiculed her successfully, but she paid him back in his own coin, evoking his involuntary admiration, forcing him carefully to prepare the lectures he had to give to the circle she attended.
In addition to all this he noticed that every time he came to speak about the present shameful state of things, how man was being oppressed, his body and his soul mutilated—whenever he drew pictures of the life of the future when all will be both outwardly and inwardly free—he noticed that she was quite another being: she listened to his speeches, stifling the anger of a strong and clever woman who knows the weight of life's chains; listened to them with the rapt eagerness of a child that is told a fairy tale which is in harmony with its own magically complex soul.
This excited in him the anticipation of victory over a strong foe—a foe who could be a fine comrade, a valiant champion in the cause of a better future.
The rivalry between them lasted nearly a year, without calling forth any desire in them to join issue and fight their battle out; at length he made the first advance.
"Signorina is my constant opponent," he said, "does she not think that in the interests of the cause it would be better if we were to become more closely acquainted?"
She willingly fell in with his suggestion, and almost from the first word they entered upon a spirited contest: the girl fiercely defended the Church as the only place where the souls of the weary find rest, where before the face of the Madonna all are equal and equally pitiable, notwithstanding the differences in worldly seeming. He replied that it was not rest that people needed but struggle, that civic equality is impossible without equality in material things, and that behind the cloak of the Madonna is concealed a man to whom it is advantageous that people should remain miserable and unenlightened.
Thereafter these discussions filled their whole life, every meeting was a continuation of the one same endless, passionate theme, and every day the stubborn strength of their beliefs became more and more evident.
For him life was a struggle for the widening of knowledge, for the conquest of the forces of Nature, a struggle for the subjugation of mysterious energies to the will of man. It was meet that everybody should be equally armed for this struggle, which was to issue in Freedom and the triumph of Reason—the most powerful of all forces, and the only force in the world which acts consciously. For her life was a slow and painful sacrifice of man to the Unknown, the subjugation of Reason to that will the laws and aims of which are known to the priest only.
Nonplussed by this, he inquired:
"Why do you attend my lectures and what do you expect from socialism?"
"Yes, I know that I sin and contradict myself!" she confessed sorrowfully.
"But it is pleasant to listen to you and to dream about the possibility of happiness for all!"
Though not specially pretty she was slim and graceful, with an intelligent face, and large eyes, whose glance could be mild or angry, gentle or severe. She worked in a silk factory, lived with her old mother, her one-legged father and a younger sister who was attending a technical school. Sometimes she was happy, not boisterously, but quietly happy; she was fond of museums and old churches, grew enthusiastic over pictures and the beauty of which they were the token, and looking at them would say:
"How strange it is to think that these things have been hidden in private houses and that but one person had the right to enjoy them! Everybody must see the beautiful, for only then does it live!"
She often spoke in so strange a manner that it seemed to him that her words came from some dark crevice in her soul; they reminded him of the groans of a wounded man. He felt that this girl loved life and mankind with that deep mother love which is full of anxiety and compassion; he waited patiently till his faith should kindle her heart and this quiet love change to passion. The girl appeared to him to listen more attentively to his speeches and, in her heart, to be in agreement with him. And he spoke more passionately of the need for an incessant, active struggle for the emancipation of man, of the nation, of humanity as a whole, from the old chains, the rust of which had eaten into their souls, and was blighting and poisoning them.
Once, while accompanying her home, he told her that he loved her, and that he wanted her to be his wife. He was startled at the effect his words had on her: she reeled as though she had been struck, stared with wide-open eyes and turned pale; she leaned against the wall, and said, clasping her hands and looking, almost terrified, into his face:
"I was beginning to fear that that might be so; almost I felt it, because I loved you long ago. But, O God! what is going to happen now?"
"Days of your happiness and mine will begin, days of mutual work," he exclaimed.
"No," said the girl, her head drooping. "No; we should not have talked about love."
"Why?'
"Will you be married according to the laws of the Church?" she asked quietly.
"No!"
"Then, good-bye!"
And she walked quickly away from him.
He overtook her, tried to persuade her; she heard him out in silence and then said:
"I, my mother and my father are all believers, and will die believers. Marriage at the registrar's is no marriage for me; if children are born of such a marriage I know they will be unhappy. Love is consecrated only by marriage in a church, which alone can give happiness and peace."
It seemed to him that soon she would yield; he, of course, could not give in. They parted. As she bade him good-bye the girl said:
"Let us not torment each other, don't seek meetings with me. Oh, if only you would go away from here! I cannot, I am so poor."
"I will make no promises," he replied.
The struggle between two strong natures began: they met, of course, and even more often than before; they met because they loved each other, sought meetings in the hope that one or other of them would be unable to stand the torments of an ungratified longing which was becoming more and more intense. Their meetings were full of anguish and despair; after each one he felt quite worn out and exhausted; she, all in tears, went to confess to a priest. He knew this and it seemed to him that the black wall of people in tonsures became stronger, higher and more insurmountable every day, that it grew and parted them till death.
Once, on a holiday, while walking with her through a field outside the town, he said, not threateningly, but more as if to himself:
"Do you know, it seems to me sometimes that I could kill you."
She remained silent.
"Did you hear what I said?"
Looking at him affectionately she answered:
"Yes."
And he understood that she would rather die than give in to him. Before this "yes" he had embraced and kissed her sometimes; she struggled with him, but her resistance was becoming feebler, and he cherished the hope that some day she would yield, and that then her woman's instinct would help him to conquer. But now he understood that that would not be victory, but enslavement, and from that day on he ceased to appeal to the woman in her.
So he wandered with her in the dark circle of her life's horizon, lit all the beacons before her that he could; but she listened to him with the dreamy smile of the blind, saw nothing, believed him not.
Once she said:
"I understand sometimes that all you say is possible, but I think that is because I love you! I understand, but I do not believe, I cannot believe! As soon as you go away all that is of you goes away too."
This drama lasted nearly two years, and then the girl's health broke down: she became seriously ill. He gave up his employment, ceased to attend to the work of his organisation, got into debt. Avoiding his comrades, he spent his time wandering round her lodgings; or sat at her bedside, watching her wasting from disease and becoming more transparent every day, noting how the fire of fever glowed more and more brightly in her eyes.
"Speak to me of life, of the future," she asked him.
But he spoke of the present, enumerating vindictively everything that crushes us, all those things against which he was vowed to a lifelong struggle; he spoke of things that ought to be cast out of mens lives, as one discards soiled and worn-out rags.
She listened until the pain it gave her became unbearable; then touched his hand, and stopped him with an imploring look.
"I, am I dying?" she asked him once, many days after the doctor had told him that she was in a galloping consumption and that her condition was hopeless.
He bowed his head but did not answer.
"I know that I shall die soon," she said. "Give me your hand."
And, taking his outstretched hand, she pressed it to her burning lips and said:
"Forgive me, I have done you wrong. It was all a mistake—and I have worn you out. Now when I am struck down I see that my faith was only fear before what I could not understand, notwithstanding my desire and my efforts. It was fear, but it was in my blood, I was born with it. I have my own mind—or yours—but somebody else's heart; you are right, I understand it now, but my heart could not agree with you."
A few days later she died; he turned grey during her agony; he was only twenty-seven.
Not long ago he married the only friend of that girl, his pupil. It is they who go to the cemetery, to her—they go there every Sunday and place flowers on her grave.
He does not believe in his victory, he is convinced that when she said to him: "You are right," she lied to him in order to console him. His wife thinks the same; they both lovingly revere her memory. This sad episode of a good woman who perished gives them strength by filling them with a desire to avenge her; it gives their mutual work a strangely fascinating character, and renders them untiring in their efforts.
*
The river of gaily dressed people streams on in the sunshine; a merry noise accompanies its flow: children shout and laugh. Not everyone is gay and joyful; there are many hearts, no doubt, oppressed by dark sorrow, many minds tormented by contradictions; but we all go steadily forward. And "Freedom, Freedom is our goal!"
And the more vigour we put into it the faster we shall advance!
subota, 27. lipnja 2026.
THE KILLER By J. T. Oliver - https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65770/pg65770-images.html
Smith made a profitable business out of
murder. It was all quite simple—he killed a
man and then disposed of the body—forever!
At a small station between Rome and Genoa the guard opened the door of our compartment and, with the assistance of a dirty oiler, led, carried almost, a little, one-eyed, old man up the steps into our midst. "Very old!" remarked both at the same time, smiling good-naturedly. But the old man turned out to be very vigorous. After thanking his helpers with a pretty gesture of his wrinkled hand he politely and gaily lifted his shabby dust-stained hat from his grey head, and, looking sharply at the seats with his one eye, inquired: "Will you permit me?" He was given a seat at once. He then straightened his blue linen suit, heaved a sigh of relief and, putting his hands on his little, withered knees, smiled good-humouredly, disclosing a toothless mouth. "Going far, uncle?" asked my companion. "Only three stations!" he replied readily. "I am going to my grandson's wedding." After a few minutes he became very talkative and, raising his voice above the noise made by the wheels of the train, told us as he swayed this way and that like a broken branch on a windy day: "I am a Ligurian: we Ligurians are a strong people. I, for instance, have thirteen sons and four daughters; I confuse my grandchildren in counting them; this is the second one to get married—that's pretty good, don't you think?" He looked proudly round the compartment with his lustreless but still merry eye; then he laughed quietly and said: "See how many people I have given to my country and to the king!" "How did I lose my eye? Oh, that was long ago, when I was still a boy, but already helping my father. He was breaking stones in the vineyard; our soil is very hard, and needs a lot of attention: there are a great many stones. A stone flew from underneath my father's pick and hit me in the eye. I don't remember any pain, but at dinner my eye came out—it was terrible, signors! They put it back in its place and applied some warm bread, but the eye died!" The old man rubbed his brown skinny cheek, and laughed
again in a merry, good-humoured way.
"At that time there were not so many doctors, and people were much more stupid. What! you think they may have been kinder? Perhaps they were."
And now this dried-up, one-eyed, deeply wrinkled face, with its partial covering of greenish-grey, mouldy-looking hair, became knowing and triumphant.
"When one has lived as long as I one may talk confidently about men, isn't that so?"
He raised significantly a dark, crooked finger as though threatening someone.
"I will tell you, signors, something about people.
"When my father died—I was thirteen at the time—you see how small I am even now: but I was very skilful and could work without getting tired (that is all I inherited from my father)—our house and land were sold for debts. And so, with but one eye and two hands, I lived on, working wherever I could get work. It was hard, but youth is not afraid of work, is it?
"When I was nineteen I met a girl whom Fate had meant me to love; she was as poor as myself, though stronger and more robust; she, also, lived with her mother, an old woman in failing health, and worked when and where she could. She was not very comely, but kind and clever. And she had a fine voice—oh! she sang like a professional, and that in itself means riches, signors!
"'Shall we get married?' said I, after we had known each other for some time.
"'It would be funny, you one-eyed fellow!' she replied rather sadly. 'Neither you nor I have anything. What should we live on?'
"Upon my soul, neither I nor she had anything! But what does that signify to young love? You all know, signors, how little love requires; I was insistent and got my way.
"'Yes, perhaps you are right,' said Ida at last. 'If the Holy Mother helps you and me now when we live apart, it will be much easier for her to help us when we live together.'
"We decided upon it and went to the priest.
"'This is madness!' said the priest. 'Aren't there beggars enough in Liguria? Unhappy people, playthings of the devil, you must struggle against his snares or you will pay dearly for your weakness.'
"All the youths in the commune jeered at us, and all the old people shook their heads, I can tell you. But youth is obstinate and will have its way! The wedding day drew near; we were no better off than we had been before; we really did not know where we should sleep on our wedding night.
"'Let us go into the fields,' said Ida. 'Why won't that do? The Mother of God is equally kind to all, and love is everywhere equally passionate when people are young.'
"That is what we decided upon: that the earth should be our bed and the sky our coverlet!
"At this point another story begins, signors; please pay attention; this is the best story of my long life. Early in the morning of the day before our wedding the old man Giovanni, for whom I worked, said to me like this, his pipe between his teeth, as if he were speaking about trifles:
"'Ugo, you had better go and clean out the old sheep-shed and put some straw in it. Although it is dry there, and no sheep have been in it for over a year, it ought to be cleaned out properly if you want to live in it with Ida.'
"Thus we had a house!
"As I worked and sang, the carpenter Constanzio stood in the door and asked:
"'Are you going to live here with Ida? Where is your bed? You must come to me when you have finished and get one from me—I have one to spare.'
"As I went to his house Mary, the bad-tempered shopkeeper, shouted:
"'The wretched sillies get married and don't possess a sheet, or pillow, or anything else! You are quite crazy, you one-eyed fellow! Send your sweetheart to me.'
"And Ettore Viano, tortured by rheumatism and fever, shouted from the threshold of his house:
"'Ask him whether he has saved up much wine for the guests! Oh, good people, who could be more light-headed than these two?'"
In a deep wrinkle on the old man's cheek glistened a tear of happiness; he threw back his head and laughed noiselessly, pawing his old throat and the flabby skin of his face; his arms were as restless as a child's.
"Oh, signors, signors!" said he, laughing and catching his breath. "On our wedding morn we had everything that was wanted for a home—a statue of the Madonna, crockery, linen, furniture—everything, I swear! Ida wept and laughed, and so did I, and everybody laughed—it is not the thing to weep on one's wedding day, and they all laughed at us!
"Signors, words cannot tell how sweet it is to be able to say 'our' people. It is better still to feel that they are 'yours,' near and dear to you, your kindred, for whom your life is no joking matter, your happiness no plaything! And the wedding took place! It was a great day. The whole commune turned out to see us, and everybody came to our shed, which had become a rich house, as in a fairy-tale. We had everything: wine and fruit, meat and bread, and all ate and were merry. There is no greater happiness, signors, than to do good to others; believe me, there is nothing more beautiful or more joyful.
"And we had a priest. 'These people,' he said gravely, and in a manner suited to the occasion, 'have worked for you all, and now you have provided for them so that they may be happy on this the best day of their life. That is exactly what you should have done, for they have worked for you, and work is of more account than copper and silver coins; work is always greater than the payment that is given for it! Money disappears, but work remains. These people are happy and humble; their life has been hard but they have not grumbled; it may be harder yet and they will not murmur—and you will help them in an hour of need. Their hands are willing and their hearts as good as gold.' He said a lot of flattering things to me, to Ida and to the whole commune!"
The old man looked triumphantly, with his one eye, at his fellow-travellers, and there was something youthful and vigorous in his glance as he said:
"There you have something about people, signors. Curious, isn't it?"
petak, 26. lipnja 2026.
The sun melts in the blue midday sky, pouring hot, many-coloured rays on to the water and the earth. The sea slumbers and exhales an opal mist, the bluish water glistens like steel. A strong smell of brine is carried to the lonely shore. The waves advance and splash lazily against a mass of grey stones; they roll slowly upon the beach and the pebbles make a jingling sound; they are gentle waves, as clear as glass, and there is no foam on them. The mountain is enveloped in a violet haze of heat, the grey leaves of the olive-trees shine like old silver in the sun; in the gardens which cover the mountain-side the gold of lemons and oranges gleams in the dark velvet of the foliage; the red blossoms of pomegranate-trees smile brightly, and everywhere there are flowers. How the sun loves the earth! There are two fishermen on the stones. One is an old man, in a straw hat. He has a heavy-looking face, covered on cheeks and chin and upper lip with grey bristles; his eyes are embedded in fat, his nose is red, and his hands are sunburnt. He has cast his pliant fishing-rod far out into the sea, and he sits upon a rock, his hairy legs hanging over the green water. A wave washes up and bathes them, and from the dark toes clear, heavy drops of water fall back into the sea.
Behind the old man, leaning with one elbow on a rock, stands a tawny black-eyed fellow, thin and lank. On his head is a red cap, and a white jersey covers his muscular torso; his blue trousers are rolled up to the knee. He tugs with his right hand at his moustache and looks thoughtfully out to sea; in the distance black streaks of fishing boats are moving, and far beyond them, scarcely visible, is a white sail; the white sail is motionless, and seems to melt like a cloud in the sun.
"Is she a rich signora?" the old man inquires, in a husky voice, as he makes an unsuccessful effort to cross his knees.
The young man answered quietly:
"I think so. She has a brooch, and earrings with large stones as blue as the sea, and many rings, and a watch.... I think she is an American."
"And beautiful?"
"Oh yes! Very slender, it is true, but such eyes, just like flowers, and, do you know, a mouth so small, and slightly open."
"It is the mouth of an honest woman and of the kind that loves but once in her life."
"I think so too."
The old man drew in his rod, winked as he looked at the hook, and muttered with a laugh:
"A fish is no fool, to be sure."
"Who fishes at midday?" asked the youth, getting down on his knees.
"I," replied the old man, putting on fresh bait. And, having thrown the line far into the sea, he asked:
"You rowed her till the morning, you said?"
"The sun was rising when we got out on the shore," readily replied the young man, with a heavy sigh.
"Twenty lire?"
"Yes."
"She might have given more."
"She might have given much."
"What did you speak to her about?"
The youth seemed annoyed and lowered his head gloomily.
"She does not know more than ten words, so we were silent."
"True love," said the old man, looking back and showing his strong teeth in a broad smile, "strikes the heart like lightning, and is as dumb as lightning, you know."
The young man picked up a large stone and was about to throw it into the sea; but he threw it back over his shoulder, saying:
"Sometimes one cannot understand what people want with different languages."
"They say some day it will be different," said the old man, after a moments thought.
Over the blue surface of the sea, in the far-off milky mist, noiselessly glides a white steamer, like the shadow of a cloud.
"To Sicily," said the old man, nodding towards the steamer.
From somewhere or other he took a long, uneven, black cigar, broke it in two and, handing one half over his shoulder to the young man, asked:
"What did you think about as you sat with her?"
"Man always thinks of happiness."
"That's why he is always so stupid," the old man put in quietly.
They began to smoke. The blue smoke wreaths hung over the stones in the breathless air which was impregnated with the rich odour of fertile earth and gentle water.
"I sang to her and she smiled."
"Eh?"
"But you know that I sing badly."
"Yes, I know."
"Then I rested the oars and looked at her."
"Aha!"
"I looked, saying to myself: 'Here am I, young and strong, while you are languishing. Love me and make me happy.'"
"Was she feeling lonely?"
"Who that is not poor goes to a strange land if he feels merry?"
"Bravo!"
"I promise by the name of the Virgin Mary—I thought to myself—that I will be kind to you and that everybody shall be happy who lives near us."
"Well, well!" exclaimed the old man, throwing back his large head and bursting into loud bass laughter.
"I will always be true to you."
"H'm."
"Or—I thought—let us live together a little while; I will love you to your heart's content; then you can give me some money for a boat and rigging, and a piece of land; and I will return to my own dear country and will always, as long as I live, remember and think kindly of you."
"There's some sense in that."
"Then—towards the morning—it seemed to me that I needed nothing, that I did not want money, only her, even if it were only for one night."
"That is simpler."
"Just for one single night."
"Well, well!" said the old man.
"It seems to me, Uncle Pietro, that a small happiness is always more honest."
The old man was silent. His thick, shaven lips were compressed; he looked intently into the green water. The young man sang quietly and sadly:
"Oh, sun!"
"Yes, yes," said the old man suddenly, shaking his head, "a small happiness is more honest, but a great happiness is better. Poor people are better-looking, but the rich are stronger. It is always so."
The waves rock and splash. Blue wreaths of smoke float, like nymphs, above the heads of the two men. The young man rises to his feet and sings quietly, his cigar stuck in a corner of his mouth. He leans his shoulder against the grey side of the rock, folds his arms across his chest, and looks out to sea with the eyes of a dreamer.
But the old man is motionless, his head has sunk on his breast and he seems to doze.
The violet shadows on the mountains grow deeper and softer.
"O sun!" sings the youth.
"The sun was born more beautiful,
More beautiful than thou!
Bathe me in thy light,
O sun!
Fill me with thy life!"
The green waves chuckle merrily.
četvrtak, 25. lipnja 2026.
A young musician, his dark eyes fixed intently on far-off things, said quietly: "I should like to set this down in terms of music": Along a road leading to a large town walks a little boy. He walks and hastens not. The town lies prostrate; the heavy mass of its buildings presses against the earth. And it groans, this town, and sends forth a murmurous sound. From afar it looks as if it had just burned out, for over it the blood-red flame of the sunset still lingers, and the crosses of its churches, its spires and vanes, seem red-hot. The edges of the black clouds are also on fire, angular roofs of tall buildings stand out ominously against the red patches, window-panes like deep wounds glisten here and there. The stricken town, spent with woe, the scene of an incessant striving after happiness—is bleeding to death, and the warm blood sends up a reek of yellowish, suffocating smoke. The boy walks on. The road, like a broad ribbon, cleaves a way amid fields invaded by the gathering twilight; straight it goes, piercing the side of the town like a rapier thrust by a powerful, unseen hand. The trees by the roadside resemble unlit torches; their large black heads are uplifted above the silent earth in motionless expectancy.
The sky is covered with clouds and no stars are to be seen; there are no shadows; the late evening is sad and still, and save for the slow, light steps of the boy no sound breaks the silence of the tired fields as they fall asleep in the dusk.
The boy walks on. And, noiselessly, the night follows him and envelops in its black mantle the distances from which he has emerged.
As the dusk grows deeper it hides in its embrace the red and white houses which sink submissively into the earth. It hides the gardens with their trees, and leaves them lonely, like orphans, on the hillsides. It hides the chimney-stacks.
Everything around becomes black, vanishes, blotted out by the darkness of the night; it is as if the little figure advancing slowly, stick in hand, along the road inspired some strange kind of fear.
He goes on, without speaking, without hastening, his eyes steadily fixed upon the town; he is alone, ridiculously small and insignificant, yet it seems as if he bore something indispensable to and long awaited by all in the town, where blue, yellow and red lights are being speedily lit to greet him.
The sun sinks completely. The crosses, the vanes and the spires melt and vanish, the town seems to subside, grow smaller, and to press ever more closely against the dumb earth.
Above the town, an opal cloud, weirdly coloured, flares and gradually grows larger; a phosphorescent, yellowish mist settles unevenly on the grey network of closely huddled houses. The town itself no longer seems to be consumed by fire and reeking in blood—the broken lines of the roofs and walls have the appearance now of something magical, fantastic, but yet of something incomplete, not properly finished, as if he who planned this great town for men had suddenly grown tired and fallen asleep, or had lost faith, and, casting everything aside in his disappointment, had gone away, or died.
But the town lives and is possessed by an anxious longing to see itself beautiful and upraised proudly before the sun. It murmurs in a fever of many-sided desire for happiness, it is excited by a passionate will to live. Slow waves of muffled sound issue into the dark silence of the surrounding fields, and the black bowl of the sky is gradually filled with a dull, languishing light.
The boy stops, with uplifted brows, and shakes his head; then he looks boldly ahead and, staggering, walks quickly on.
The night, following him, says in the soft, kind voice of a mother:
"It is time, my son, hasten! They are waiting."
"Of course it is impossible to write it down!" said the young musician with a thoughtful smile.
Then, after a moment's silence, he folded his hands, and added, wistfully, fondly, in a low voice:
"Purest Virgin Mary! what awaits him?"
utorak, 23. lipnja 2026.
The year was the year '92—the year of leanness—the scene a spot between Sukhum and Otchenchiri, on the river Kodor, a spot so near to the sea that amid the joyous babble of a sparkling rivulet the ocean's deep-voiced thunder was plainly distinguishable. Also, the season being autumn, leaves of wild laurel were glistening and gyrating on the white foam of the Kodor like a quantity of mercurial salmon fry. And as I sat on some rocks overlooking the river there occurred to me the thought that, as likely as not, the cause of the gulls' and cormorants' fretful cries where the surf lay moaning behind a belt of trees to the right was that, like myself, they kept mistaking the leaves for fish, and as often finding themselves disappointed. Over my head hung chestnut trees decked with gold; at my feet lay a mass of chestnut leaves which resembled the amputated palms of human hands; on the opposite bank, where there waved, tanglewise, the stripped branches of a hornbeam, an orange-tinted woodpecker was darting to and fro, as though caught in the mesh of foliage, and, in company with a troupe of nimble titmice and blue tree-creepers (visitors from the far-distant North), tapping the bark of the stem with a black beak, and hunting for insects. To the left, the tops of the mountains hung fringed with dense, fleecy clouds of the kind which presages rain; and these clouds were sending their shadows gliding over slopes green and overgrown with boxwood and that peculiar species of hollow beech-stump which once came near to effecting the downfall of Pompey's host,
through depriving his iron-built legions of the use of their legs as they revelled in the intoxicating sweetness of the "mead" or honey which wild bees make from the blossoms of the laurel and the azalea, and travellers still gather from those hollow stems to knead into lavashi or thin cakes of millet flour.
On the present occasion I too (after suffering sundry stings from infuriated bees) was thus engaged as I sat on the rocks beneath the chestnuts. Dipping morsels of bread into a potful of honey, I was munching them for breakfast, and enjoying, at the same time, the indolent beams of the moribund autumn sun.
In the fall of the year the Caucasus resembles a gorgeous cathedral built by great craftsmen (always great craftsmen are great sinners) to conceal their past from the prying eyes of conscience. Which cathedral is a sort of intangible edifice of gold and turquoise and emerald, and has thrown over its hills rare carpets silk-embroidered by Turcoman weavers of Shemi and Samarkand, and contains, heaped everywhere, plunder brought from all the quarters of the world for the delectation of the sun. Yes, it is as though men sought to say to the Sun God: "All things here are thine. They have been brought hither for thee by thy people."
Yes, mentally I see long-bearded, grey-headed supermen, beings possessed of the rounded eyes of happy children, descending from the hills, and decking the earth, and sowing it with sheerly kaleidoscopic treasures, and coating the tops of the mountains with massive layers of silver, and the lower edges with a living web of trees. Yes, I see those beings decorating and fashioning the scene until, thanks to their labours, this gracious morsel of the earth has become fair beyond all conception.
And what a privilege it is to be human! How much that is wonderful leaps to the eye-how the presence of beauty causes. the heart to throb with a voluptuous rapture that is almost pain!
And though there are occasions when life seems hard, and the breast feels filled with fiery rancour, and melancholy dries and renders athirst the heart's blood, this is not a mood sent us in perpetuity. For at times even the sun may feel sad as he contemplates men, and sees that, despite all that he has done for them, they have done so little in return....
No, it is not that good folk are lacking. It is that they need to be rounded off—better still, to be made anew.
Suddenly there came into view over the bushes to my left a file of dark heads, while through the surging of the waves and the babble of the stream I caught the sound of human voices, a sound emanating from a party of "famine people" or folk who were journeying from Sukhum to Otchenchiri to obtain work on a local road then in process of construction.
The owners of the voices I knew to be immigrants from the province of Orlov. I knew them to be so for the reason that I myself had lately been working in company with the male members of the party, and had taken leave of them only yesterday in order that I might set out earlier than they, and, after walking through the night, greet the sun when he should arise above the sea.
The members of the party comprised four men and a woman—the latter a young female with high cheek-bones, a figure swollen with manifest pregnancy, and a pair of greyish-blue eyes that had fixed in them a stare of apprehension. At the present moment her head and yellow scarf were just showing over the tops of the bushes; and while I noted that now it was swaying from side to side like a sunflower shaken by the wind, I recalled the fact that she was a woman whose husband had been carried off at Sukhum by a surfeit of fruit—this fact being known to me through the circumstance that in the workmen's barraque where we had shared quarters these folk had observed the good old Russian custom of confiding to a stranger the whole of their troubles, and had done so in tones of such amplitude and penetration that the querulous words must have been audible for five versts around.
And as I had talked to these forlorn people, these human beings who lay crushed beneath the misfortune which had uprooted them from their barren and exhausted lands, and blown them, like autumn leaves, towards the Caucasus where nature's luxuriant, but unfamiliar, aspect had blinded and bewildered them, and with its onerous conditions of labour quenched their last spark of courage; as I had talked to these poor people I had seen them glancing about with dull, troubled, despondent eyes, and heard them say to one another softly, and with pitiful smiles:
"What a country!"
"Aye,—that it is!—a country to make one sweat!"
"As hard as a stone it is!"
"Aye, an evil country!"
After which they had gone on to speak of their native haunts, where every handful of soil had represented to them the dust of their ancestors, and every grain of that soil had been watered with the sweat of their brows, and become charged with dear and intimate recollections.
Previously there had joined the party a woman who, tall and straight, had had breasts as flat as a board, and jawbones like the jawbones of a horse, and a glance in her dull, sidelong black eyes like a gleaming, smouldering fire.
And every evening this woman had been wont to step outside the barraque with the woman in the yellow scarf and to seat herself on a rubbish heap, and, resting her cheeks on the palms of her hands, and inclining her head sideways, to sing in a high and shrewish voice:
Behind the graveyard wall,
Where fair green bushes stand.
I'll spread me on the sand
A shroud as white as snow.
And not long will it be
Before my heart's adored,
My master and my lord,
Shall answer my curtsey low.
Usually her companion, the woman in the yellow scarf, had, with head bent forward and eyes fixed upon her stomach, remained silent; but on rare, unexpected occasions she had, in the hoarse, sluggish voice of a peasant, sung a song with the sobbing refrain:
Ah, my beloved, sweetheart of mine,
Never again will these eyes seek thine!
Nor amid the stifling blackness of the southern night had these voices ever failed to bring back to my memory the snowy wastes of the North, and the icy, wailing storm-wind, and the distant howling of unseen wolves.
In time, the squint-eyed woman had been taken ill of a fever, and removed to the town in a tilted ambulance; and as she had lain quivering and moaning on the stretcher she had seemed still to be singing her little ditty about the graveyard and the sand.
The head with the yellow scarf rose, dipped, and disappeared.
After I had finished my breakfast I thatched the honey-pot with some leaves, fastened down the lid, and indolently resumed my way in the wake of the party, my blackthorn staff tiptapping against the hard tread of the track as I proceeded.
The track loomed—a grey, narrow strip—before me, while on my right the restless, dark blue sea had the air of being ceaselessly planed by thousands of invisible carpenters; so regularly did the stress of a wind as moist and sweet and warm as the breath of a healthy woman cause ever-rustling curls of foam to drift towards the beach. Also, careening on to its port quarter under a full set of bellying sails, a Turkish felucca was gliding towards Sukhum; and, as it held on its course, it put me in mind of a certain pompous engineer of the town who had been wont to inflate his fat cheeks and say: "Be quiet, you, or I will have you locked up!" This man had, for some reason or another, an extraordinary weakness for causing arrests to be made; and, exceedingly do I rejoice to think that by now the worms of the graveyard must have consumed him down to the very marrow of his bones. Would that certain other acquaintances of mine were similarly receiving beneficent attention!
Walking proved an easy enough task, for I seemed to be borne on air, while a chorus of pleasant thoughts, of many-coloured recollections, kept singing gently in my breast—a chorus resembling, indeed, the white-maned billows in the regularity with which now it rose, and now it fell, to reveal in, as it were, soft, peaceful depths the bright, supple hopes of youth, like so many silver fish cradled in the bosom of the ocean.
Suddenly, as it trended seawards, the road executed a half-turn, and skirted a strip of the sandy margin to which the waves kept rolling in such haste. And in that spot even the bushes seemed to have a mind to look the waves in the eyes—so strenuously did they lean across the riband-like path, and nod in the direction of the blue, watery waste, while from the hills a wind was blowing that presaged rain.
But hark! From some point among the bushes a low moan arose—the sound which never fails to thrill the soul and move it to responsive quivers!
Thrusting aside the foliage, I beheld before me the woman in the yellow scarf. Seated with her back resting against the stem of a hazel-bush, she had her head sunken deeply between her shoulders, her mouth hideously agape, her eyes staring vaguely before her, her hands pressed to her swollen stomach, her breath issuing with unnatural vehemence, and her abdomen convulsively, spasmodically rising and falling. Meanwhile from her throat were issuing moans which at times caused her yellow teeth to show bare like those of a wolf.
"What is the matter?" I said as I bent over her. "Has anyone assaulted you?"
The only result was that, shuffling bare feet in the sand like a fly, she shook her nerveless hand, and gasped:
"Away, villain! Away with you!"
Then I understood what was the matter, for I had seen a similar case before. Yet for the moment a certain feeling of shyness made me edge away from her a little; and as I did so, she uttered a prolonged moan, and her almost bursting eyeballs vented hot, murky tears which trickled down her tense and livid features.
Thereupon I turned to her again, and, throwing down cooking-pot, teapot, and wallet, laid her on her back, and strove to bend her knees upwards in the direction of her body. Meanwhile she sought to repel me with blows on face and breast, and at length rolled on to her stomach. Then, raising herself on all fours, she, sobbing, gasping, and cursing in a breath, crawled away like a bear into a remoter portion of the thicket.
"Beast!" she panted. "Oh, you devil!"
Yet, even as the words escaped her lips, her arms gave way beneath her, and she collapsed upon her face, with legs stretched out, and her lips emitting a fresh series of convulsive moans.
Excited now to fever pitch, I hurriedly recalled my small store of knowledge of such cases and finally decided to turn her on her back, and, as before, to strive to bend her knees upwards in the direction of her body. Already signs of imminent parturition were not wanting.
"Lie still," I said, "and if you do that it will not be long before you are delivered of the child."
Whereafter, running down to the sea, I pulled up my sleeves, and, on returning, embarked upon my role, of accoucheur.
Scoring the earth with her fingers, uprooting tufts of withered grass, and struggling to thrust them into her mouth, scattering soil over her terrible, inhuman face and bloodshot eyes, the woman writhed like a strip of birch bark in a wood fire. Indeed, by this time a little head was coming into view, and it needed all my efforts to quell the twitchings of her legs, to help the child to issue, and to prevent its mother from thrusting grass down her distorted, moaning throat. Meanwhile we cursed one another—she through her teeth, and I in an undertone; she, I should surmise, out of pain and shame, and I, I feel certain, out of nervousness, mingled with a perfect agony of compassion.
"O Lord!" she gasped with blue lips flecked with foam as her eyes (suddenly bereft of their colour in the sunlight) shed tears born of the intolerable anguish of the maternal function, and her body writhed and twisted as though her frame had been severed in the middle.
"Away, you brute!" was her oft-repeated cry as with her weak hands, hands seemingly dislocated at the wrists, she strove to thrust me to a distance. Yet all the time I kept saying persuasively: "You fool! Bring forth as quickly as you can!" and, as a matter of fact, was feeling so sorry for her that tears continued to spurt from my eyes as much as from hers, and my very heart contracted with pity. Also, never did I cease to feel that I ought to keep saying something; wherefore, I repeated, and again repeated: "Now then! Bring forth as quickly as ever you can!"
And at last my hands did indeed hold a human creature in all its pristine beauty. Nor could even the mist of tears prevent me from seeing that that human creature was red in the face, and that to judge from the manner in which it kept kicking and resisting and uttering hoarse wails (while still bound to its mother by the ligament), it was feeling dissatisfied in advance with the world. Yes, blue-eyed, and with a nose absurdly sunken between a pair of scarlet, rumpled cheeks and lips which ceaselessly quivered and contracted, it kept bawling: "A-aah! A-a-ah!"
Moreover, so slippery was it that, as I knelt and looked at it and laughed with relief at the fact that it had arrived safely, I came near to letting it fall upon the ground: wherefore I entirely forgot what next I ought to have done.
"Cut it!" at length whispered the mother with eyes closed, and features suddenly swollen and resembling those of a corpse.
"A knife!" again she whispered with her livid lips. "Cut it!"
My pocket-knife I had had stolen from me in the workmen's barraque; but with my teeth I severed the caul, and then the child gave renewed tongue in true Orlovian fashion, while the mother smiled. Also, in some curious fashion, the mother's unfathomable eyes regained their colour, and became filled as with blue fire as, plunging a hand into her bodice and feeling for the pocket, she contrived to articulate with raw and blood-flecked lips:
"I have not a single piece of string or riband to bind the caul with."
Upon that I set to, and managed to produce a piece of riband, and to fasten it in the required position.
Thereafter she smiled more brightly than ever. So radiantly did she smile that my eyes came near to being blinded with the spectacle.
"And now rearrange yourself," I said, "and in the meanwhile I will go and wash the baby."
"Yes, yes," she murmured uneasily. "But be very careful with him—be very gentle."
Yet it was little enough care that the rosy little homunculus seemed to require, so strenuously did he clench his fists, and bawl as though he were minded to challenge the whole world to combat.
"Come, now!" at length I said. "You must have done, or your very head will drop off."
Yet no sooner did he feel the touch of the ocean spray, and begin to be sprinkled With its joyous caresses, than he lamented more loudly and vigorously than ever, and so continued throughout the process of being slapped on the back and breast as, frowning and struggling, he vented squall after squall while the waves laved his tiny limbs.
"Shout, young Orlovian!" said I encouragingly. "Let fly with all the power of your lungs!"
And with that, I took him back to his mother. I found her with eyes closed and lips drawn between her teeth as she writhed in the torment of expelling the after-birth. But presently I detected through the sighs and groans a whispered:
"Give him to me! Give him to me!"
"You had better wait a little," I urged.
"Oh no! Give him to me now!"
And with tremulous, unsteady hands she unhooked the bosom of her bodice, and, freeing (with my assistance) the breast which nature had prepared for at least a dozen children, applied the mutinous young Orlovian to the nipple. As for him, he at once understood the matter, and ceased to send forth further lamentation.
"O pure and holy Mother of God!" she gasped in a long-drawn, quivering sigh as she bent a dishevelled head over the little one, and, between intervals of silence, fell to uttering soft, abrupt exclamations. Then, opening her ineffably beautiful blue eyes, the hallowed eyes of a mother, she raised them towards the azure heavens, while in their depths there was coming and going a flame of joy and gratitude. Lastly, lifting a languid hand, she with a slow movement made the sign of the cross over both herself and her babe.
"Thanks to thee O purest Mother of God!" she murmured. "Thanks indeed to thee!"
Then her eyes grew dim and vague again, and after a pause (during which she seemed to be scarcely breathing) she said in a hard and matter-of-fact tone:
"Young fellow, unfasten my satchel."
And whilst I was so engaged she continued to regard me with a steady gaze; but, when the task was completed she smiled shamefacedly, and on her sunken cheeks and sweat-flecked temples there dawned the ghost of a blush.
"Now," said she, "do you, for the present, go away."
"And if I do so, see that in the meanwhile you do not move about too much."
"No, I will not. But please go away."
So I withdrew a little. In my breast a sort of weariness was lurking, but also in my breast there was echoing a soft and glorious chorus of birds, a chorus so exquisitely in accord with the never-ceasing splash of the sea that for ever could I have listened to it, and to the neighbouring brook as it purled on its way like a maiden engaged in relating confidences about her lover.
Presently, the woman's yellow-scarfed head (the scarf now tidily rearranged) reappeared over the bushes.
"Come, come, good woman!" was my exclamation. "I tell you that you must not move about so soon."
And certainly her attitude now was one of utter languor, and she had perforce to grasp the stem of a bush with one hand to support herself. Yet while the blood was gone from her face, there had formed in the hollows where her eyes had been two lakes of blue.
"See how he is sleeping!" she murmured.
And, true enough, the child was sound asleep, though to my eyes he looked much as any other baby might have done, save that the couch of autumn leaves on which he was ensconced consisted of leaves of a kind which could not have been discovered in the faraway forests of Orlov.
"Now, do you yourself lie down awhile," was my advice.
"Oh, no," she replied with a shake of her head on its sinuous neck; "for I must be collecting my things before I move on towards—"
"Towards Otchenchiri"
"Yes. By now my folk will have gone many a verst in that direction."
"And can you walk so far?"
"The Holy Mother will help me."
Yes, she was to journey in the company of the Mother of God. So no more on the point required to be said.
Glancing again at the tiny, inchoate face under the bushes, her eyes diffused rays of warm and kindly light as, licking her lips, she, with a slow movement, smoothed the breast of the little one.
Then I arranged sticks for a fire, and also adjusted stones to support the kettle.
"Soon I will have tea ready for you," I remarked.
"And thankful indeed I shall be," she responded, "for my breasts are dried up."
"Why have your companions deserted you?" I said next.
"They have not deserted me. It was I that left them of my own accord. How could I have exposed myself in their presence?"
And with a glance at me she raised a hand to her face as, spitting a gout of blood, she smiled a sort of bashful smile.
"This is your first child, I take it?"
"It is.... And who are you?"
"A man."
"Yes, a man, of course; but, are you a MARRIED man?"
"No, I have never been able to marry."
"That cannot be true."
"Why not?"
With lowered eyes she sat awhile in thought.
"Because, if so, how do you come to know so much about women's affairs?"
This time I DID lie, for I replied:
"Because they have been my study. In fact, I am a medical student."
"Ah! Our priest's son also was a student, but a student for the Church."
"Very well. Then you know what I am. Now I will go and fetch some water."
Upon this she inclined her head towards her little son and listened for a moment to his breathing. Then she said with a glance towards the sea:
"I too should like to have a wash, but I do not know what the water is like. What is it? Brackish or salt?"
"No; quite good water—fit for you to wash in."
"Is it really?"
"Yes, really. Moreover, it is warmer than the water of the streams hereabouts, which is as cold as ice."
"Ah! Well, you know best."
Here a shaggy-eared pony, all skin and bone, was seen approaching us at a foot's pace. Trembling, and drooping its head, it scanned us, as it drew level, with a round black eye, and snorted. Upon that, its rider pushed back a ragged fur cap, glanced warily in our direction, and again sank his head.
"The folk of these parts are ugly to look at," softly commented the woman from Orlov.
Then I departed in quest of water. After I had washed my face and hands I filled the kettle from a stream bright and lively as quicksilver (a stream presenting, as the autumn leaves tossed in the eddies which went leaping and singing over the stones, a truly enchanting spectacle), and, returning, and peeping through the bushes, perceived the woman to be crawling on hands and knees over the stones, and anxiously peering about, as though in search of something.
"What is it?" I inquired, and thereupon, turning grey in the face with confusion she hastened to conceal some article under her person, although I had already guessed the nature of the article.
"Give it to me," was my only remark. "I will go and bury it."
"How so? For, as a matter of fact, it ought to be buried under the floor in front of some stove."
"Are we to build a stove HERE? Build it in five minutes?" I retorted.
"Ah, I was jesting. But really, I would rather not have it buried here, lest some wild beast should come and devour it... Yet it ought to be committed only to the earth."
That said, she, with averted eyes, handed me a moist and heavy bundle; and as she did so she said under her breath, with an air of confusion:
"I beg of you for Christ's sake to bury it as well, as deeply, as you can. Out of pity for my son do as I bid you."
I did as she had requested; and, just as the task had been completed, I perceived her returning from the margin of the sea with unsteady gait, and an arm stretched out before her, and a petticoat soaked to the middle with the sea water. Yet all her face was alight with inward fire, and as I helped her to regain the spot where I had prepared some sticks I could not help reflecting with some astonishment:
"How strong indeed she is!"
Next, as we drank a mixture of tea and honey, she inquired:
"Have you now ceased to be a student?"
"Yes."
"And why so? Through too much drink?"
"Even so, good mother."
"Dear me! Well, your face is familiar to me. Yes, I remember that I noticed you in Sukhum when once you were arguing with the barraque superintendent over the question of rations. As I did so the thought occurred to me: 'Surely that bold young fellow must have gone and spent his means on drink? Yes, that is how it must be.'"
Then, as from her swollen lips she licked a drop of honey, she again bent her blue eyes in the direction of the bush under which the slumbering, newly-arrived Orlovian was couched.
"How will he live?" thoughtfully she said with a sigh—then added:
"You have helped me, and I thank you. Yes, my thanks are yours, though I cannot tell whether or not your assistance will have helped HIM."
And, drinking the rest of her tea, she ate a morsel of bread, then made the sign of the cross. And subsequently, as I was putting up my things, she continued to rock herself to and fro, to give little starts and cries, and to gaze thoughtfully at the ground with eyes which had now regained their original colour. At last she rose to her feet.
"You are not going yet?" I queried protestingly.
"Yes, I must."
"But—"
"The Blessed Virgin will go with me. So please hand me over the child."
"No, I will carry him."
And, after a contest for the honour, she yielded, and we walked away side by side.
"I only wish I were a little steadier on my feet," she remarked with an apologetic smile as she laid a hand upon my shoulder.
Meanwhile, the new citizen of Russia, the little human being of an unknown future, was snoring soundly in my arms as the sea plashed and murmured, and threw off its white shavings, and the bushes whispered together, and the sun (now arrived at the meridian) shone brightly upon us all.
In calm content it was that we walked; save that now and then the mother would halt, draw a deep breath, raise her head, scan the sea and the forest and the hills, and peer into her son's face. And as she did so, even the mist begotten of tears of suffering could not dim the wonderful brilliancy and clearness of her eyes. For with the sombre fire of inexhaustible love were those eyes aflame.
Once, as she halted, she exclaimed:
"O God, O Mother of God, how good it all is! Would that for ever I could walk thus, yes, walk and walk unto the very end of the world! All that I should need would be that thou, my son, my darling son, shouldst, borne upon thy mother's breast, grow and wax strong!"
And the sea murmured and murmured.
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