Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/232

 casus bear a strange resemblance to ruins, even before they are destroyed. You can see somewhere under a rock or upon a rock a heap of low, flat-rooted huts densely packed together and forming in appearance only a single terrace-like mass, in which can be seen only the narrow lines of windows like loop-holes in a castle wall. The whole thing is not distinguished in color from the rocky background. Sometimes a tapering, pinnacle turret projects from the aúl, and then such a village reminds you very strongly of some of the ruined masses of rock in Bohemia. That is generally the appearance of a Caucassian mountaneer’s hamlet, and that, no doubt, had been the appearance of this one as well. But its inhabitants, the Circassians, had deserted it, enemies had destroyed it, and the terribly luxuriant nature of the Caucasus held sway over a bare pile of stones. In the comparatively short number of years since the last inhabitant of the village had departed from his native treshold, nature had contrived to enwrap these ruins with an almost impenetrable forest thicket.

When with the help of our daggers we lad hacked a pathway to the ruins through the Gordian knots of clinging plants and thorn-bushes, it was with difficulty that we could distinguish a half-fallen stone hut; around the twisted walls there was a rank growth of prickly shrubs and weeds spread densely almost to the flat roofs, where huge ferns and other plants were mouldering in the shadow of thickly interwoven branches with which the young trees veiled the empty hut; in the low entrance a snake rose up and hissed, as if it wanted to prevent the intruders from making their way into the hut, of which it was now the sole inhabitant. And at the back could be seen, as far as the eye could at all penetrate the wild thicket, several other such ruins, which were more like a waste pile of stones overgrown with vegetation. The surgeon informed us that amid this desolation we should neither find nor see anything particular, and so we returned—all the more willingly, since any further penetration into this wild chaos which was inhabited by snakes and other reptiles, would have caused us much exertion and unpleasantness.

We mounted still further on to the flat mountain-ridge, and there we pitched our tents. Of course, only in a figurative sense. In spite of the scorching noon-tide sun, we had no need of artificial covering; a group of bushy trees with a thick undergrowth of shrubs, afforded us all shady and fragrant shelter. It was a delightful little spot with which the apostles would probably have been even more pleased than they were on the peak of Mount Tabor.

Thence upon all sides we had a captivating view of the surrounding mountains which filled the landscape along the horizon with billows of various form and size. Here was everything that the heart of a painter could desire; mountains and valleys covered with thick forests in all shades of green, fantastic rocks of various colors, delightful blossoming hollows, charming quiet dales, in the distance snowy peaks half concealed by a torn veil of mist, and then the sea appeared through the cleft of a distant rock like a moist sapphire-colored eye—but yet something was missing. There was no town which spread itself out in a valley, no tower which peeped forth behind the forests, no cottage which nestled against quiet hill-sides, no sign of a peasant, a shepherd or a forester which animated the landscape, nowhere could be seen a garden or a plot of land, nor any sign whatever of human life—amid a deep and holy calm nature alone held sway here in her utter beauty and magnificence.

On the western side of the flat mountain-ridge upon which we had ensconced ourselves, the mountain descended by a suddeh and almost vertical precipice into a deep inaccessible hollow filled with wild forest; our view in this direction was shut off by a rather beautiful young ash-tree, growing above the edge of the abyss isolated in the picturesque embrace of rich vine-tendrils, like a slender youth in the arms of a passionate girl.

Having feasted our gaze, we saw to it that our appetites were also satisfied. For a considerable while jaws were busy upon various wings, thigh-bones and similar matters, and finally the inevitable samovar again glittered in the midst of the party.

At first, as was natural, conversation centred around the decayed Circassian village and the Circassians generally, and in the course of this the curious circumstance was remarked upon by various persons that we were able to sit here so peacefully and undisturbedly gossiping in the midst of a region where only a short time previously the valiant nation of mountaneers dwell untroubled in their stone retreats, devoted with a fanatical love to Islam and their wild liberty. But suddenly Uljana, who during this conversation had fixed her dreamy eyes in silence upon the grass, turned to the surgeon with the bashful question: “But what else happened to the sick man in the Czech settlement, Pavel Semenovitch?”

“Of course, of course—first of all you must finish your rather lengthy definition of fame,” added Suslikov facetiously, and the others also joined him in this request.

And Tabunov continued his narrative thus:

“First of all you perhaps want to know whether the poetical accomplishments of my patient were real or only a sick man’s fancy. Don’t be afraid, Aglaja, I am not going to launch forth into a literary and critical analysis, for which I feel neither desire nor qualification. I will merely tell you this: On the evening of the same day that I returned from Metodějovka, I was lying tired out in bed, and with a yawn I took up a book to read a few pages, according to my