The Green Book Part 1

The Green Book.

by Mor Jokai.

CHAPTER I

SNOW ROSES

A blizzard is covering the roads with a thick coating of snow. The horses are up to their fetlocks in it. The dark-green firs bend beneath its weight, and what has melted in the midday sun already hangs from the slender branches of the undergrowth in thick ma.s.ses of icicles; and as the wind sweeps through the forest the ice-covered leaves and branches ring and jingle like fairy bells.

Ever and anon the moon shines out from amid the fast-flying clouds; then, as though it has seen enough, hides itself again under the ghostly mist. The sighing of the wind through the forest is like the trembling of fever-stricken nature. In the stillness of night, through the pathless forest, rides a troop of hors.e.m.e.n. Their little long-maned horses sniff their way with low, sunk necks; by the s.h.a.ggy fur caps of their riders, and their long lances hanging far back at their sides, they are to be recognized as a party of Don Cossacks.

They ride in battle array. In the van a picket with drawn carbines; next to them a detachment; then a cannon drawn by six horses. After that follow a large body of men; then, again, a mounted gun and artillerymen. Behind these another troop of mounted hors.e.m.e.n, and another gun-carriage drawn by six horses. But to this the cannon is wanting. In its stead a human form lies bound. The head hangs down over the back of the rattling carriage, and as the moon ever and anon peeps out from between the clouds, it discloses a face distorted with agony, from which all trace of hair on head or beard has been cut away--perhaps dragged out. The eyes and mouth are wide open. A coa.r.s.e horsecloth covering is fastened underneath the man. A corner of it drags along the snow-covered ground. From it every now and then a drop of blood falls--a sign that, in bleeding, the man still lives. The drops of blood in the snow fantastically change, as they fall, into roses. Red flowers on the white snow-field! The ghost-like procession disappears in the mist.

Keeping carefully to one side, but ever following closely on the track of the soldiers, is a horseman, also mounted on a long-maned, broad-headed pony. He wears a thick fur coat; a fur-bordered czamarka is on his head; icicles hang from his long beard. He rides slowly and cautiously, his horse taking long strides, as though its master were seeking something on the ground. Then, as often as he sees a red rose upon the snow, he dismounts, kneels, and with a golden spoon he takes up the crystallized token and places it in an enamelled reliquary, then rides on to the next.

The way leads without interruption through a primeval forest. It is the forest of Bjelostok. Only there, in all Europe, are bisons to be met with. There no sound of axe is ever heard; storms alone bring down the giant trees. One forest arises out of the decay of the former. Beeches, oaks, limes, vie in height with tall pines. In the dead of night resound the shriek of the lynx, and the roar of the female bison anxiously calling for its sucking calf. But no human sound is to be heard. No human dwelling is near. Had not the path through the forest been a highway, undergrowth had long since made it impenetrable.

The fallen drops of blood lead the rider on farther and farther. Now they appear at longer intervals. At length the last rose is reached; the track left by the wheels of the gun carriage is now his only guide. The horseman continues to follow it. The man bound to the gun-carriage is a.s.suredly dead by this time. If dead, they will as surely bury him somewhere.

Upon the endless solitary forest follow towns equally void of human beings. On the banks of a great river stand two towns facing one another, marked upon maps of a former century as still fortified places, but now only to be cla.s.sed among ruins. At that time they were specified by name, Kazimir and Ivanowicze, I believe. Now their very names are lost to history. Fallen walls, heaps of bricks and stones everywhere.

Nettles grow rank in the snow-covered squares and streets; castles, churches, and temples are overgrown with briers to the very roofs. The broad river is frozen over; from out the ice rise the piles of a half-burned drawbridge, near to which stretches a track across the snow.

The solitary horseman follows the traces. In the middle of the river his scrutinizing search is suddenly brought to a halt by a newly made gap in the ice.

That it is newly made is shown by the broken ice lying about, upon which no fresh layer of snow has had time to form. The shape of the gap is oblong--like an open grave. Close round it are traces of many feet upon the snow; not far away the smooth surface shows the pressure of a human form, which must have lain there face downwards. Here, without a doubt, has been the place of burial. They had lowered the body under the ice (a secure burial-place, indeed); the current would then convey it gently to the sea.

The horseman dismounts, kneeling down beside the open s.p.a.ce and baring his head. He murmurs something--perhaps a prayer. Into the water beneath there drops something--perhaps a tear.

At that instant the moon shines out resplendent. The man's head is distinctly visible--a head once seen not easily forgotten. A high forehead; the hair of reddish hue, but already tinged with gray, growing low upon it; the face thin, nervous; cheek-bones and chin prominent; nose aquiline; deep-set eyes; the towsled beard brushed forward; the character of the whole face was one of suppressed suffering, of silent woe. The moon has again disappeared under the clouds. A thick, heavy mist falls around. Primeval forest and ruins alike fade; the figure of the horseman grows more and more shadowy.

Through the thick mist, in the dead stillness of black night, is a weird sound of sighing and moaning. Perhaps it is the she-bison calling her young--perhaps it is the voice of one singing "Boze cos Polske."

CHAPTER II

MIST SHADOWS

At the same time that the wanderer on the rough path of Bjelostok forest was gathering up its snow roses, another man on the far-off sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea was preparing for a long, distant, and hurried journey.

The two men hasten to the same goal. They had never seen one another, had never heard the other's name, had never corresponded. Yet each is aware of the other's existence; aware that they are to meet, and that this meeting must take place on a given day. The first has, perhaps, the shorter road to take, but he can only ride slowly; he has to avoid inhabited towns, to utilize night for his progress, to pa.s.s the days in isolated csards.

The second has the longer and more difficult way; but the only battle he has to fight is with the elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, and these he can conquer. The fifth obstacle--man--places himself obsequiously at his service. This traveller wears the uniform of a colonel. Short of stature, he gains in height by the singular erectness of his head and the elasticity of his walk. By that walk he can be detected under any disguise. His closely cropped hair displays a broad, high brow; his eager eyes dance in his head as he speaks. He has an expressive face--one from which it is easy to read his thoughts, even when his lips are silent--a face in which every muscle moves with his words; one in strongest contrast to that of the other man. He can hide his every feeling under an immovable countenance; this one betrays beforehand his every thought. During his five minutes' colloquy with the jemsik, he has exhausted a whole gamut of expressions, from flattery to rage, as if playing upon the strings of a violin. He gesticulates violently with his hands; now his five fingers are under the peasant's nose; then they strike him on the shoulder, punch him in the ribs, seize him by the lappet of his coat; now shake, then embrace him. He kisses him, strokes his beard with coaxing action, then tugs at it, pushes him roughly away, finally reaching him his flask for a drink; and perhaps his only object has been to find out whether the road to Jekaseviroslaw is pa.s.sable or not.

For while the snow still lies deep in the forest of Bjelostok, and gun-carriages may yet drive across the ice-covered Niemen, thaw has already set in along the valleys of the Dnieper and the Don, and the whole plain is a sea, from out which the rush huts, with their surrounding plantations of reeds, stand out like solitary islands. To every hut a boat made of willow is secured; this boat is the one and only mode of locomotion, albeit a dangerous one, whereby in the spring season the inhabitants can convey themselves to the pasture-land to look after their cattle and horses.

As far as eye can reach stretches out the endless reddish-brown plain.

Rushes, reeds, and other water-plants not yet freed from their dried-up winter clothing, lend a deep-red shimmer to the landscape, to which the sprouting willows, now illumined by the light of the setting sun, add their tinge of color. The storm-portending evening glow tinges the fleecy clouds flame color, causing the rest of the sky to appear topaz green. Myriads of water-birds whirl restlessly through the air, filling the plain with their cries. In the far distance swim a flock of swans, tinged golden in the setting sun, which, half-sunken beneath the horizon, sends out its last rays across the changing clouds, like a departing sovereign clothed in gold and purple.

Across the great, never-ending plain there is but one path, laid bridge-like with willow stems. Over this the traveller must needs make his way--there is no alternative. The river banks pa.s.sed, further sign of human habitation ceases. The smithy of a gypsy colony, which has established itself on the side of a hill, alone sends its light far out into the evening mist. Soon that, too, will be lost in the gathering gloom; then the traveller's three-horsed car must jolt along by the fitful light of the moon. An occasional kurgan rising up here and there in the Steppe is the sole sign that it was once inhabited by a people.

Those tschudas upon the brow of the hill were their G.o.ds. Blocks of stone, with roughly carved human heads, proclaim afar, even to the banks of the Amur, the former abiding-place of a race which has not left even a name behind, only its G.o.ds, which later races have called tschudas (from the Hungarian word _csuda_, signifying "miracle").

The traveller will find shelter for the night with a Czaban, who has chanced to dig himself a cave near the wayside, and lives there, surrounded by his numerous herds of sheep. The Colonel remarks in his note-book that the shepherds living in the neighborhood of the kurgans are a stupid, squalid set, who smell of cheese.

Next morning the chariot with its ringing bells proceeds ever farther and farther, until the inundated banks of the Dnieper oblige it to halt.

Here, the traveller has no resource but to take to a boat. Luckily the stream is sufficiently swollen to enable his boat successfully to navigate the famous Falls of Herodotus without striking on the rocks.

Only of the last does the ferryman warn him. It is the Nyenaschiketz (the Insatiable). There it is not advisable to tempt one's fate by evening light.

"But I must go on," says the traveller, imperiously. He is in haste.

That alters the case. His imperious "must" knows no hindrances. Upon it follows the only answer, "Seisas" (Immediately). This one word characterizes the whole people. It even bridges over the "Insatiable."

The boat goes to pieces, but boatman and traveller swim safely to sh.o.r.e. The remainder of the night is pa.s.sed in a fisherman's hut. The traveller here remarks in his note-book that the boatmen and fisher-folk who live on the banks of the Dnieper are a stupid, squalid set, who smell of fish.

The opposite bank is inhabited by the Zaporogenes, who take their name from the falls "zaporagi"--people who live beside waterfalls. Here it is only possible to proceed on horseback. By nightfall the traveller has reached Szetsa, a so-called village. The houses are earthen caves, thatched with gra.s.s, called "kurenyi." The traveller, after having sung and drunk with the Zaporogenes, observes in his note-book that the dwellers in "kurenyi" are a stupid, squalid set, smelling of coach-grease.

The first work of a Zaporagen is to soak his new garments in tar, to make them durable. Among that people are to be found the first indistinct traces of a longing after freedom, primitive, but still existent. This instinct reaches its culminating-point in the propensity to rob their neighbors; turn their wives out of doors when tired of them, and take to themselves a fresh one, who may please them better.

On, on, in the saddle, until the ancient city of the Steppe looms in the horizon, "the Mother of Cities." It is Kiev, the so often razed and rebuilt Jerusalem of the Scythians, with its catacombs and remains of Sarmatic saints. In the distance a deceptive Fata Morgana, looking with its gilded cupolas like a city of churches, from out which the mighty tower of Lavra rises like a giant.

The traveller avoids alike the Beresztovo, the most inhabited quarter, and the barracks; nor does he avail himself of the hospitable shelter of the Lavra monastery, but seeks the Jewish quarter, and there in a poor-looking Jewish hovel pa.s.ses the night, taking counsel with soldiers who, as though informed beforehand of his coming, have entered one by one through the low entrance-door, to disappear in like manner by the opposite one.

The traveller remarks in his note-book that the Jews are a stupid, squalid set, who smell of anise-seed.

The way lies ever northwards. Spring-time vanishes from the earth; the glow of evening from the sky; a canopy of gloomy gray mist overspreads the firmament: the pale disk of the sun is like a medal upon a ragged soldier's cloak. Even the waning moon only rises late of nights. The nights grow longer, and the flames of the rush-heaps burning in the fields impede the way. The traveller is often obliged to turn back to the houses which border the pine forests. They are well-ordered, pretty domiciles, inhabited by apostates who have taken refuge from their pursuers in the woods.

There, too, sounds an occasional chord of yearning after freedom. They are prepared to endure, to make a firm stand, one and the other, in order to be allowed to write the name of Jesus ("Jhsus"). This is something for a beginning!

The traveller records in his note-book that the Raskolniks are stupid and unhappy, and smell of leather.

Still farther northwards. Upon the plains green with young wheat follow again expanses of snow; instead of flocks of swans and cranes, swarms of ravens and Arctic birds are to be seen thickening the air. This time the traveller pa.s.ses the night in the Sloboden, where all sorts and conditions of men congregate--men from the most remote parts in search of work, offering their pair of hands for any description of labor.

Hither each brings his misery, his ignorance, and--foul odors. The misery and ignorance are one and the same, but the foul odors are diverse: by these they distinguish one from another, through these they fall into broils. No sooner do they perceive the alien smell than they come to blows.

Time presses with the traveller. Now he has reached the land of sledges.

Thick mists and snow-storms are his companions. There come days in which there is no morning or noon-day; the snow-drifts change the world around him into a prison-house. Such terrific snow-storms are only known in those parts; they are "pad," the terror of travellers. The night frosts have become insupportable in their severity; the mile-stones lie hidden under the snow; the north wind has swept it into hillocks in many places; then, again, into deep holes, in which the sledge sinks axle-deep: a chorus of wolves howl in the woods. By morning the door of the csarda is snowed up; the only mode of egress is to crawl through the hole in the roof, where the jemsik, his sledge already horsed, is in waiting, leaning against the chimney. He calls laughingly to his fare:

"It is cold enough for a couple of fur coats, sir!"

The north wind has chased away the clouds over night; the sky is the color of steel. In the gray lilac-tinted horizon a red glowing fire-ball is rising--it is the sun, which, running its...o...b..t, scarce rises over the earth; even at mid-day it gives out no warmth. The kingdom of winter reigns. And now the way becomes more peopled. Life seems bright and stirring in this kingdom of winter. Whole strings of sledges, laden high with wares, move onwards in the one direction; well-appointed equipages, steering clear of the heavily laden freight, pa.s.s them by. It is the last day of the journey. Along the horizon a shining streak grows visible--the frozen ocean. The streak grows broader and broader, and as the sun goes down the rays of the aurora borealis stretch up over the starry sky to its very zenith; and, illuminated by this magic sea of rosy light, there arises from out the expanse of snow a giant city, with the white roofs of its palaces, the cupolas of its churches, the bastions of its fortresses, cupolas and bastions alike of dazzling whiteness, as though it were the ghost of a city, painted white upon white; above it the rosy northern light, behind it the bluish-leaden veil of mist.

The traveller has reached his goal. But the other--is he here too?

CHAPTER III