elated than he really was. I, as the youngest and most useless, was
given to my uncle in the mountains. Mother remained somewhere near the
middle, in the house of her elder sister, whence she tried to stretch out to
us her warm and ageing wings.
My uncle turned out to be quite a big cattle-breeder; he had twenty
goats and three sheep. While I was trying to make up my mind where family
assistance ended and exploitation began, he quietly and painlessly put me in
charge of them. I soon took a liking to the job and learned how to exert my
will over this small but rebellious herd.
We were bound together by two ancient magical calls: Kheit! and Iiyo!
They had many meanings and shades of meaning depending on how they were
spoken. The goats understood these meanings perfectly but sometimes, when it
suited them, pretended to miss certain subtleties.
The various meanings were numerous enough. For instance, if I let my
voice ring out freely: "Kheit! Kheit!" it meant, "Graze on calmly, you've
nothing to worry about." If I called out in a tone of pedagogical reproach,
the meaning would be, "I can see you! I know where you're off to." And if I
let out a very sharp and rapid, "Iiyo! Iiyo!" they were supposed to
understand it as "Danger! Come back!"
Skillful mingling of both calls yielded a great number of variations of
an educative nature-orders, advice, warnings, reproach and so on.
At the sound of my voice the goats would usually raise their heads, as
if trying to make out what exactly was required of them this time. They
always grazed with a certain air of fastidiousness, tearing leaves off the
bushes and reaching up for the freshest and furthest away. There was
something indecent about them standing on their hind legs, and later on
when, as a young man, I saw the goat-legged human figures in a reproduction
of El Greco I was reminded of that impression.
The goats liked to graze on steep, craggy slopes near a mountain
stream. I think the sound of the water awakened their appetite, like the
sizzling of spitted meat before dinner. Their beards shook and they bared
their small, even teeth as they nibbled. It irritated me to see them abandon
one branch and with careless greed start on another before they had finished
the first.
At dinner we had to save every crumb, and they could afford to be
fussy. It was unjust.
The sheep usually followed in the wake of the goats recognising their
precedence but maintaining a modest dignity.
They kept their heads low to the ground, as though smelling out the
grass. For choice they preferred open level patches. But if they were
frightened by something and bolted, there was no stopping them. Their tails
would whack their hindquarters as they ran and each whack increased their
terror, making them rocket ahead in a kind of multi-stage panic.
As a resting place the goats would choose the highest and rockiest crag
they could find. They liked a clean spot to lie on. The oldest goat would
usually occupy the summit. He had terrifying horns and tufts of matted hair
that was yellow with age hung from his sides. You could feel he understood
his role in life. He moved slowly, with a dignified swaying of his
snow-white, wise old astrologer's beard. If a young goat was so unmindful as
to occupy his place he would walk up calmly and knock him down with a
sideways thrust of his horns, not even looking in his direction.
One day a goat disappeared from the herd. I wore myself out, running
from bush to bush, tearing my clothes to shreds and shouting till I was
hoarse. But still I couldn't find her. On my way back I happened to look up
and there she was, perched on a thick branch of a wild persimmon tree. She
had climbed up the twisted trunk. Our eyes met. She surveyed me with a
jaundiced glance of haughty non-recognition and obviously had no intention
of climbing down. Only when I let fly with a stone did she spring lightly to
the ground and run to rejoin the herd.
I think goats are the craftiest of all quadrupeds. I had only to let my
mind wander for a minute and they would melt away into the white rocks, the
hazel thickets and the ferns.
It was a hot, worrying job to look for them, running up and down the
narrow, heat-cracked paths with lizards darting to and fro like flashes of
green lightning. Sometimes a snake would wriggle away from just under my
feet and I would jump sky-high, the sole of the foot that had nearly trodden
on it tingling from its resilient chill, and go on running and running with
a sense of the insuperable, almost joyful lightness of fear.
And how strange it was to stop and listen to the rustle of the bushes,
wondering whether your quarry was there and listening to the swish of the
grasshoppers, to the distant song of the larks in the majestic blue above,
or perhaps to a human voice from the road, on to the steady thudding of your
own heart, and to breathe in the fleshy smell of the sun-drenched foliage,
all the sweet languor of the summer stillness.
But the worst thing of all was when the goats were trying to get into a
field of maize. No hedge could stop them.
I would race towards the field, shouting from a distance and throwing
anything that came to hand but, far from taking flight at the sight of me,
they would continue to gobble down the long maize leaves as fast as their
jaws would go.
In good weather I would usually lie on the grass in the shadow of a big
alder bush, listening to the spluttering roar of our U-2 planes patrolling
on the other side of the pass. Fighting was going on over there and every
day the thunder of war reached us as regularly as the sounds of labour in
the busy season.
One day a "hedgehopper", as we used to call those old biplanes, came
shooting over the mountains with a kind of panic-stricken rattle and dropped
like a stone into the lap of the Kodor Valley, then flew on almost at ground
level all the way to the sea. With every fibre in my body I felt the sheer
human terror of the pilot who had skimmed over the ridge, evidently to get
away from a German fighter. The plane's shadow swept across the field quite
near to me at unearthly speed, darkened the tobacco plantation, and a few
moments later was streaking low over the Kodor delta.
Once in a while a German plane would fly over at a great height. We
could tell it by the irregular throb of its engines, rather like the hum of
a malarial mosquito. Usually the anti-aircraft guns would open up when it
got near the town and we would see the shell bursts all round it, like
dandelion tops, but it would cruise along among them as though enchanted.
All through the war I never saw one of them shot down.
One day a villager came back from town, where he had gone to sell his
pigs, with the story that my brother was wounded, had been put in hospital
in Baku and was pining for mother to come and see him. The news startled us
all. Mother had to be told as soon as possible and it turned out that there
was no one else to send but me. I was only too willing.
They gave me a good feed of cheese and hominy grand dad lent me one of
his walking sticks and I set out on my Journey, although the day was near
its close and the sun only a tree's height above the horizon. I had only a
vague idea of the way there, or rather the whereabouts of the house where
mother was living, but I showed no interest in any explanations in case they
changed their minds about sending me.
I should have to go up through the forest and along a mountain ridge,
then make my way down to the road that was used for carting logs, and follow
it all the way to the village.
As soon as I entered the big forest of beeches, mingled with a
sprinkling of chestnuts and hornbeam, everything was cool, as though I had
dived into cold water and the summer day was far away behind me.
I breathed the clean, dank coolness of the forest, listened to the
exciting rustle of the green crowns overhead and made good speed along the
path. The deeper I went into the forest the more persistently and cheerfully
my stick tapped on the springy, rootwoven earth.
I knew that bears sometimes came up here at this time of the year. They
liked the bilberries that grew on the slopes and along the path.
At any other time I should have been frightened, but now I was spurred
on by heroic dreams and a vague anxiety about my brother. My feet seemed to
have wings and I mounted the slopes with ease, thrilling with the importance
of my mission and, above all, the realisation that I was needed. Although my
thoughts were occupied with these exalted feelings, I still had time to
admire the beauty of the mighty dark-silver trunks of the beeches, the
unexpectedly appealing glades with their bright feathery grass the inviting
roots of the big trees covered with the scaly leaves of last year. I would
have liked to lie down in those leaves with my head resting on the great
mossy roots. Sometimes through a gap in the trees I saw a misty green valley
with the sea poised at the end of it between earth and sky, like a mirage.
It was evening.
All of a sudden two girls appeared round a bend, looking frightened and
joyful at the same time. I knew them. They were from our village, but now
there was something strange about them. They were not quite their usual
selves. They spoke very quietly, in almost guilty tones, their heads
lowered. There was something of the woods, something shy and subtle about
them. One had her shoes in a bag and now she stood with one long bare leg
awkwardly scratching the other. I guessed she was trying to conceal at least
one of her legs.
Gradually their embarrassment communicated itself to me. I didn't know
what to say and was glad to bid them good-bye. They said good-bye, too, and
went on quietly, almost furtive in their attitude to the forest.
Presently I saw among the dark trees ahead a reddish-yellow road that
from a distance looked like a mountain torrent. Glad at the thought of
having a smooth road to walk on, I set off at a run down the steep path,
braking with my stick to stop myself plunging into the gloomy rhododendron
bushes.
I almost rolled out on to the road. I was sweating and my legs were
trembling from the strain, but the smell of petrol fumes and warm,
day-wearied roadside dust only increased my excitement. This was the smell
of the city that I had known since childhood. I must have been missing town
and my own home badly and, although it was even further from here to our
house in town than from the little village in the mountains, this woodland
road seemed to lead there.
I walked along it, trying to make out tyre-tracks in the dusk, and was
overjoyed when I spotted any particularly heavy marks. As I went on, the
road gradually grew lighter because a huge reddish moon was rising above the
jagged line of the forest.
At night in the mountains we used to spend a lot of time gazing at the
moon. I had been told you could see a goat-herd and a herd of white goats on
it, but I had never been able to spot them. Evidently you had to have seen
that goat-herd in early childhood. Whenever I watched the cold orb of the
moon I saw the outlines of rocky mountains and was overcome by a kind of
sweet sadness, perhaps because they were so terribly far away and yet so
much like our own mountains.
Now the moon looked like a big round of smoked mountain cheese. How I
would have relished a bite of that pungent smoky cheese, and some steaming
hominy to go with it!
I quickened my pace. The road was bordered on both sides with low alder
thickets, broken here and there by a maize field or a tobacco plantation. It
was very quiet- only the tapping of my stick enlivened the stillness.
Peasant houses with clean little yards and the bright light of fires showing
cosily through half-open kitchen doors began to appear.
I listened eagerly to the faint sounds of voices, which suddenly became
quite distinct.
"Let the dog out," came a man's voice, and a kitchen door flew open and
a dog ran out barking in my direction. I hurried on and, looking back over
my shoulder, noticed in the red rectangle of the open door the dark figure
of a girl standing very still and staring into the darkness.
Frightened by the dogs, I now tried to pass the houses as quietly as
possible.
At length I found myself on a broad green with a large walnut tree in
the middle and benches nailed round its trunk.
With its collective farm management office, village shop and barn this
must have been a noisy, busy place in the daytime, but now everything looked
desolate and deserted and by the light of the moon, rather eerie.
The house I was making for was situated not far from the farm
management office. I knew that after the green I had to take a path to the
left of the road, but there was more than one path leading off to the left
and I couldn't remember which would take me to my destination.
I halted doubtfully at a path that ran off into some hazel-nut
thickets. Was this the one? I could not remember any thickets like these. Or
perhaps there had been some? One minute I thought I saw many familiar
signs--a bend in the path, the ditch dividing it from the road, even the
hazel-nut thickets; but then I looked again and they all seemed different,
the wrong ones, and the path itself looked strange and hostile.
I stood shifting from one foot to another, listening to the buzzing of
the cicadas, staring at the enchantedly still bushes and at the moon, now
high in the sky and dazzling as a mirror.
All of a sudden something black and glossy bounced on to the path and
ran towards me. Before I could move, a large dog was greedily sniffing me
all over, pushing its moist, snuffling nose against my legs.
A few seconds later a man appeared with a small axe over his shoulder.
He called the dog off and I realised why it had been in such a hurry to
smell me; knowing its master, it had been afraid it would not have time. The
dog bounded away, circled round us, whining with the desire to please its
master, then froze by one of the bushes, sniffing at a trace left by some
other animal.
The man had a bridle round his waist and was evidently looking for his
horse. He came up to me and peered at me in surprise.
"Who do you belong to? What are you doing here?" he asked crossly
because he could not recognise me.
I said I was looking for Uncle Meksut's house.
"What do you want him for?" he asked, now exulting in his surprise.
I realised that healthy peasant curiosity was invincible, and told the
whole story.
While doing so, I kept a wary eye on the dog. Its master shook his
head, clicked his tongue and surveyed me sadly, as though regretting that I
should be mixed up in adult affairs at such a tender age.
"Meksut lives quite near here," he said, pointing with his axe along
the path I had been thinking of taking.
He started telling me the way, interrupting himself now and then to
marvel yet again at how close this Meksut fellow lived and how simple it was
to get there. All I gathered in the end was that I had to go down the path.
I was so thankful to have met him and to hear that Uncle Meksut lived so
close, that I didn't ask any further questions. The man called his dog. I
heard its panting in the darkness, then the sleek powerful body shot out of
the bushes. The dog ran up to its master, remembered me in passing and gave
me another quick sniff all over--the way they check a passport when they're
sure it's all in order--and squatted down, with its tail beating on the
grass.
"You're very close here, it's almost within shouting distance," he
said. And he went on his way, still apparently thinking aloud and rejoicing
in my good luck. The dog bounded on ahead, the man's footsteps died in the
stillness and I was left alone.
I set off along the path with its dense thickets of hazel-nut and
blackberry. In places the bushes joined over the path and I had to duck
under them, holding them up with my stick. Even so, the wet branches
sometimes caught me from behind and the chilly dew made me start. After a
time the bushes parted and it grew much lighter. I came out into the open
and found myself in a cemetery, gleaming pallidly in the white light of the
moon.
Cold with fear, I remembered passing this cemetery once before, but
that had been in the daytime and it had made no impression on me whatever. I
recalled an apple tree I had stripped of a few apples. It was still there
and, although it now seemed quite different, I tried to recover the carefree
attitude of the day when I had been knocking down apples. But even this did
not help. The tree stood motionless in the light of the moon with its
dark-blue leaves and pale-blue apples and I crept past it as quietly as I
could.
The cemetery was like a dwarf city with its iron railings, the little
green gardens of the graves, toy-like palaces small benches, and wooden and
iron roofs. It was as though death had only made the people here much
smaller and much more vicious and dangerous, and they were still living here
in their quiet, sinister way.
Beside some of the graves there were stools with wine and food on them.
On one there was even a lighted candle shielded by a glass jar with the
bottom knocked out. I knew it was the custom to place food and drink by a
grave, but this only made me all the more frightened.
The crickets were chirping. The moonlight whitened the already white
gravestones and this made the black shadows even blacker, and they lay on
the ground like heavy motionless boulders.
I tried to pass the graves as quietly as possible but my stick tapped
thunderously on the hard soil. I tucked it under my arm but then there was
no sound at all, and this was even more frightening. All at once I noticed
the lid of a coffin leaning against the cemetery fence and, just beside it,
a freshly dug grave that had not yet been enclosed.
I felt an icy chill creep up my spine, reach the back of my head and
clutch painfully at my scalp, making my hair stand on end. I walked on,
keeping my eyes fixed on the coffin lid which was gleaming reddishly in the
light of the moon.
I was sure that the dead man had climbed out of his grave propped the
coffin lid against the fence and was now walking round somewhere close by
or, perhaps, was hiding behind the coffin lid, waiting for me to turn or run
away.
I therefore walked on without quickening my pace, feeling that the main
thing was not to take my eyes off the coffin lid. Grass rustled round my
feet. I realised that I had left the path but I kept walking, still with my
eyes fixed on the coffin lid. Eventually I might have wrung my own neck if I
had not suddenly felt myself falling into a deep hole.
Now it's started, I thought, as the moon streaked across the sky and I
landed on something white and furry that wriggled out from under me. I lay
on the ground with my eyes closed and awaited my doom. I sensed that the
thing was near and that I was completely at its mercy. Scenes from the tales
of hunters and shepherds about mysterious encounters in the forest or
strange occurrences in cemeteries went flashing through my head.
The thing, however, was in no hurry. My fear became unbearable and with
all the strength I could muster I forced open my eyes.
It was as if I had suddenly switched on a light. At first I could see
nothing, then I made out in the darkness something white and unsteady. I
felt that it was watching me closely. The most frightening thing about it
was the way it swayed. Icy shivers kept racing up my spine, bristling the
hair on the back of my head and ricochetting into the tips of my ears.
I don't know how much time passed. Gradually I began to recognise the
smell of freshly dug earth, still warm from the day's sunshine, and another
very familiar, encouraging, almost homely smell. The white thing was still
swaying in the corner, but terror that goes on endlessly ceases to be
terror.
I became aware of a pain in my leg. I had twisted it badly when I fell
and now I wanted to stretch it.
I stared hard at the thing in the corner. Gradually the blurred white
shape began to acquire familiar outlines and eventually I realised that the
ghost had turned into a goat. I could make out in the darkness its beard and
horns. But since I had long been aware that the devil sometimes took the
form of a goat, I was somewhat comforted; clearly this was what had
happened. What I hadn't known was that he could also smell of goat.
I cautiously stretched out my leg and noticed that the thing was also
showing signs of caution. At least it had stopped chewing and was only
swaying.
I kept very still and it began chewing again. I raised my head and saw
the edge of the hole into which I had fallen rimmed with moonlight, and a
transparent strip of sky with a small star in the middle. A tree rustled
overhead and it was strange to think of the breeze that must be stirring up
there. I looked up at the star and that, too, seemed to sway in the breeze.
There was a light thud; an apple had fallen off the tree. I gave a start and
realised that it was getting cold.
A boyish instinct told me that inaction could not be a sign of strength
and since the thing, whatever it was, merely went on chewing and staring
through me, I decided to make an attempt at escape.
I rose cautiously to my feet and realised that even with a jump I could
not reach the edge of the hole. My stick was still up there and it might not
have been much help anyway.
The hole was rather narrow and I tried to climb out by pushing my hands
and feet against opposite walls. Grunting with exertion, I managed to raise
myself a little but the leg I had twisted gave way and I flopped to the
bottom again.
When I fell, the thing scrambled up and jumped aside in terror. That
was an unwise move on its part. I grew bolder and went over to it. It
cowered silently in its corner. I cautiously put out my hand to its face. It
brushed my hand with its lips, breathing warmly over it, smelled it and with
a shake of its head gave out a real goatish snort.
This finally convinced me that it was no devil but simply another
creature in trouble like myself. In my time as a herd-boy I had often known
goats to climb into places from which they could not find a way out.
I sat down on the ground beside the goat, put my arms round its neck
and tried to get warm by pressing against its warm belly. I tried to make it
sit down but it stubbornly insisted on standing. Eventually, however, it
began to lick my hand, at first cautiously, then with increasing confidence,
and its firm, springy tongue scraped roughly at my wrist, licking off the
salt. The rough, ticklish sensation was pleasant and I did not draw my hand
away. My goat began to enjoy itself and soon started plucking at the cuff of
my shirt with its sharp teeth, but I rolled up my sleeve and gave it a fresh
place to graze.
It took a long time, licking the salt off my arm, and I huddled against
its warm body and felt that even if the blue, moonlit face of a corpse were
to appear over the edge of the pit I would merely cuddle up closer to my
goat and not feel too frightened. For the first time in my life I really
appreciated what it meant to have another living creature for company.
In the end the goat grew tired of licking my arm and unexpectedly sat
down beside me and resumed its chewing.
It was still as quiet as ever but the moonlight had become even more
transparent and the star had moved to the edge of the strip of sky. It was
even cooler now.
Suddenly I heard the sound of hoofbeats approaching and my heart began
to race madly.
The hoofbeats grew more and more distinct and sometimes I caught the
clink of a metal shoe on a stone. I was afraid the horseman would turn aside
but the noise grew steadily louder and I could soon hear the laboured
breathing of the horse and the creak of the saddle. Suspense rooted me to
the spot but, when the hoofbeats were almost overhead, I jumped up and began
to shout:
"Hi! Hi! I'm here!"
The horse stopped and in the stillness I could detect the bony click of
its teeth as it champed at the bit. Then a man's voice called hesitantly:
"Who's there?"
I strained upward and shouted, "It's me! A boy!"
The man was silent for a time, then I heard, "What boy?"
The man's voice was firm and suspicious. He was afraid of a trap.
"I'm a boy from the town," I said, trying to speak in a living and not
a corpse-like voice with the result that my voice sounded repulsively
unnatural.
"How did you get down there?" the man asked harshly, still fearing a
trap.
"I fell in. I was on my way to Uncle Meksut's," I said hastily, afraid
that he would go on without listening to any more.
"To Meksut? Why didn't you say so before?"
I heard him dismount and throw the reins over the fence. The sound of
his footsteps came nearer but before he got to the edge of the hole he
stopped.
"Grab hold of this!" I heard, and a rope swished through the air and
dangled in front of me.
I took hold of it, then remembered the goat. It was standing all by
itself in the corner. Without a second thought I wound the rope round its
neck, quickly tied a double knot and shouted, "Pull!"
As the rope grew taut, the goat shook its head and reared on its hind
legs. I grabbed its hindquarters and heaved for all I was worth because the
rope was cutting into its neck. But as soon as its horned head, bathed in
moonlight, appeared over the edge of the hole, the man cried out in what
seemed to me a goat-like voice, dropped the rope and ran. The goat crashed
down beside me, bleating plaintively and I let out a yell of pain because in
falling it had trodden on my foot with its hoof. What with the pain, the
disappointment and weariness I burst into tears. Tears had been close enough
already, almost on a level with my eyes. Now they streamed forth so
abundantly that in the end I was frightened by them and stopped crying. I
raged at myself for not telling the man about the goat, but then I
remembered his horse and decided that he was bound to come back for it
sooner or later.
After about ten minutes I heard his stealthy footsteps. I knew he
wanted to unhitch his horse and make off.
"That was a goat," I said loudly and calmly.
Silence.
"That was a goat," I repeated, trying not to change my tone.
I felt he had stopped and was listening.
"Whose goat?" he asked suspiciously.
"I don't know. It fell in before me," I replied, realising that this
did not sound very convincing.
"You don't seem to know anything," he said. Then he asked, "What
relation are you to Meksut?"
Somewhat incoherently I began to explain our relationship (everyone is
related in Abkhazia). I felt that he was beginning to trust me and tried not
to reawaken his suspicions. Shouting up to him from below, I explained why I
was visiting Uncle Meksut.
It made me realise just how difficult it is to offer excuses for your
behaviour when you have both feet in a freshly dug grave.
In the end he came up to the grave and peered cautiously over the edge.
His unshaven face wore an expression of disgust, strangely intensified by
the moonlight. It was obvious that he disliked both the place where he was
and the place where he was looking. I had the impression he was trying to
hold his breath.
I tossed him the rope, which was still attached to the goat. He gripped
it and heaved. I tried to help from below. The goat resisted foolishly, but
as soon as we had lifted it a little the man seized its horn and, expressing
violent disgust in every movement, dragged the animal out of the grave.
Obviously he was still finding the whole incident very unpleasant.
"You Godforsaken creature," he said, and I heard him put his boot into
the goat. The goat gulped and probably tried to run away because the man
grabbed the rope and tugged.
Then he leaned right into the grave, keeping one hand on the edge,
seized my wrist with the other and heaved me crossly to the surface. As he
heaved I tried to make myself lighter because I was afraid of getting some
of the same medicine as the goat. He planted me on the ground beside him. He
was a big, heavily built man, and my wrist felt sore from his grip.
For a moment he surveyed me in silence, then his face broke into a
sudden smile and his big hand came out and ruffled my hair.
"You gave me a proper scare with that goat of yours. I thought I was
pulling out a human being, and then that horned devil appears!"
My spirits rose at once. We went over to the horse, which was still
standing patiently by the fence.
The goat followed us on the end of the rope. When we reached the horse,
it stamped nervously and squinted at the goat.
A tasty smell of horse sweat, saddle leather and maize struck my
nostrils. He must have been taking his maize to the mill, I thought, and
remembered that the rope had also smelled of maize. He helped me or rather
hoisted me into the saddle. I remembered my stick but dared not go back for
it. Besides, the moment I tried to get into the saddle the horse turned its
head and snapped at my leg. I just managed to draw it away in time.
Its master led it away from the fence, gathered up the reins and,
without letting go of the rope attached to the goat, heaved his massive body
into the saddle. I felt the horse's back sag under him and he crushed me
against the saddle bow as he settled himself in the saddle and flicked the
reins.
The thought of the goat behind us made me rather ashamed. In the grave
we had been on equal terms, but now I was in a privileged position.
The horse trotted along at a lively pace, trying to break into a
canter, stamping its feet with pent-up energy and irritation at having a
goat trailing behind it.
Lulled by the muffled clip-clop of hoofs and the gentle rocking of the
saddle, I fell into a doze, awakening only when the path led down a slope
and the weight of the rider behind crushed me against the saddle bow, so
that I had to push for all I was worth to protect my stomach. When we were
climbing, however, I would nestle back comfortably on his chest, drowsily
aware of the horse's quivering forelock, sensitive ears and monotonously
swaying neck.
The horse halted and I became fully awake again. We were standing by a
fence beyond which I glimpsed a broad, tidy yard and a large house, built on
high wooden piles. There were lights in the windows. It was Uncle Meksut's
house.
"Hi there, where's the master?" the owner of the horse shouted and lit
a cigarette. He looped the goat's tether round a stake in the fence without
knotting it.
In answer to his shout a door opened and we heard a voice call, "Who's
there?"
The voice was firm and sharp. People in our parts usually answer an
unfamiliar shout at night like that, to show they are ready for any
encounter.
Uncle Meksut--I recognised his stocky, broadshouldered figure at
once--came down the steps and walked in our direction, shoving away the
dogs, and peering at us keenly from a distance.
I remember his surprise and fright when he recognised me.
"Wait till you hear it all," said my rescuer, plucking me out of the
saddle and trying to pass me straight across the fence to Uncle Meksut.
But I resisted and, clutching a stake in the fence, slid down into the
yard by myself. He unwound the goat's tether.
"Where's the goat from?" Uncle Meksut asked, looking even more
surprised.
"Quite a miracle, eh!" said the horseman cheerfully and mysteriously,
and glanced at me as if we were equals.
"Get off your horse and come inside!" Uncle Meksut urged, taking his
bridle.
"Thanks, Meksut, but I just can't manage it," the horseman replied with
an air of haste, though up to now he had shown no sign of being in a hurry.
In accordance with Abkhazian custom Uncle Meksut urged him at great
length to partake of his hospitality, now showing offence, now pleading, now
making fun of the allegedly urgent business that was preventing him from
staying. All the time he kept glancing now at me, now at the goat, sensing
that there was some connection between my arrival and the goat but unable to
grasp what.
At length the horseman rode away with the goat behind him and Uncle
Meksut took me into the house, clicking his tongue in astonishment and
shouting at the dogs.
In a room lighted not so much by the lamp as by the brightly blazing
fire, there were both men and women seated round a table laid with snacks
and fruit. I spotted my mother at once and saw her face turn slowly pale
despite the crimson reflection of the flames. The guests jumped to their
feet with gasps and exclamations of alarm.
One of my aunts from town, on hearing of the purpose of my visit, began
to fall slowly backwards as if in a faint. But since no one in the country
understood such things and no one showed any intention of saving her, she
checked herself halfway and pretended she had a crick in the back. Uncle
Meksut did all he could to reassure the women, proposed a toast to victory,
to their sons, and to everyone's safe return home. He was a man of great
hospitality and his house was always full of guests. Down here in the valley
they had already brought in the grape harvest and the season of long toasts
was just beginning.
Mother sat in silence, without touching any of the food or drink. I
felt sorry for her and wanted to comfort her, but the role I had chosen for
myself would allow no such display of weakness.
I was given a plate of steaming hominy and chicken, and a glass of wine
was poured for me. Mother shook her head reproachfully but Uncle Meksut said
that the wine was too young to be real wine yet and I wasn't a baby any
longer.
I related my adventures and, as I sucked the last of the chicken bones,
felt a delicious drowsiness creeping over me, sweet and golden as the young
wine itself. I fell asleep at the table.
The next day I learned that it was the Moslem custom to bury a man
without any lid on his coffin, presumably to facilitate his resurrection.
The stray goat turned out to be one of the collective farm's. The freshly
dug grave into which we had fallen had been dug by mistake.
Mother returned from Baku about ten days later. My brother, it turned
out, had not been wounded at all. He had just been feeling homesick and
wanted to see one of the family before being sent to the front. And, of
course, he got what he wanted. Always up to some trick was my brother.
--------
My idol
He used to sit in front of me in class, so during lessons I would
admire the manly shape of the back of his head and his broad shoulders. I
think it was that indomitable back of his head that I liked first, before I
liked him.
When he turned to dip his pen in our inkwell, I was able to study his
profile with its high-bridged nose, thick, close-knit eyebrows and cold grey
eyes.
He always turned slowly, as a warrior in the saddle turns to observe
any lagging members of his troop. Sometimes he would grant me an
understanding smile, as though he had felt my gaze and wanted me to know
that he appreciated my devotion and yet would prefer me to exercise a little
moderation, a little restraint in admiring the back of his head,
particularly as he had other merits besides his massive cranium.
In his movements in general I felt a solidity not usually found in
thirteen- or fourteen-year-olds. But it was not the fake solidity affected
by the swots and the beginners of the bootlicking tribe. It was the real
thing that was to be found only in grown-up people.
True solidity, I would say, is the feeling of distinction a man
acquires from being aware of a certain overabundance of physical weight in
his every movement.
Now, if such a person enters a room and, let us say, sits down at your
festive table and, having seated himself, casually motions the suddenly
agitated guests to be seated as well, what, dear comrades, is the
characteristic feature of this situation?
Its characteristic feature is that this superabundance of physical
weight imparts to his gesture such gravity that he restores your guests to
their places almost without looking at them at all, from which it follows
that they were quite right to have become agitated in the first place.
Because how could they have failed to become agitated on realising how
morally lightweight and insecure they were in face of this extra weighty but
indubitably pacifying gesture.
So, during the movement of this hand which, though not too sweeping,
is, happily, sufficiently prolonged, those at table who for one reason or
another were not alerted in time manage to rouse themselves and now with a
certain belated jubilance (like everything belated, exaggerated) jump to
their feet and join in the general agitation so that they can subside with
everyone else in obedience to the movement of the hand, which seems to say,
"It's quite all right, comrades, I'll just squeeze into a corner
somewhere..."
"What a man!" the assembled guests intimate with a delighted murmur
and, having murmured, relax into a state of exhausted happiness.
That is what true solidity is!
And he, my idol, possessed such true solidity, that is to say, he was
constantly aware of this extra physical weight in every movement.
Admittedly, this weight was the direct result of a muscle development far
beyond his years and not an expression of the burdens of authority, as in
adults.
Yes, my idol was stronger than anyone not only in our class, but in
what for us at that age was the whole conceivable world. And yet at first
glance there was nothing special about him--just a stocky lad, by no means
tall even for our class.
"That's for smoking, I don't grow because I smoke," he would say in the
break, pulling at the home-made cigarette concealed in his fist, and it
sounded rather as if this was divine punishment for his self-indulgence,
although since the punishment atoned for the sin he was still able to speak
of it calmly and go on smoking.
We lived in the same street. His name was Yura Stavrakidi and he was
the youngest son in the large family of a house painter. He was always
helping his father, particularly in summer. The painter's eldest son was by
that time in the process of becoming an intellectual. Already a full-grown
lad, he was in his last year at an industrial technical school, wore a
neck-tie and could talk for hours about international politics. Yura and his
father, one might say, were helping him to hold on to his intellectual
laurels. But even he would now and then discard the neck-tie, change his
clothes, take a paint brush and go off to work with his father and brother.
When they returned from work in the evening he would spend a long time
washing in the yard. Yura would pour the water for him and, as I would be
waiting for Yura, I had to put up with this lengthy procedure, which was not
so easy.
It was the usual thing at this time for all those who liked discussing
international events to gather in a corner of the yard.
Yura's brother, instead of getting on with washing himself, having his
supper and going out to sit with them--if he couldn't do without this thing
of his--would start bandying all kinds of ideas back and forth while
washing, which endlessly prolonged t