A Hero of Our Time Read online

  CHAPTER VII

  IN the meantime we had finished our tea. The horses, which had beenput to long before, were freezing in the snow. In the west the moonwas growing pale, and was just on the point of plunging into the blackclouds which were hanging over the distant summits like the shreds of atorn curtain. We went out of the hut. Contrary to my fellow-traveller'sprediction, the weather had cleared up, and there was a promise ofa calm morning. The dancing choirs of the stars were interwoven inwondrous patterns on the distant horizon, and, one after another, theyflickered out as the wan resplendence of the east suffused the dark,lilac vault of heaven, gradually illumining the steep mountain slopes,covered with the virgin snows. To right and left loomed grim andmysterious chasms, and masses of mist, eddying and coiling like snakes,were creeping thither along the furrows of the neighbouring cliffs, asthough sentient and fearful of the approach of day.

  All was calm in heaven and on earth, calm as within the heart of a manat the moment of morning prayer; only at intervals a cool wind rushedin from the east, lifting the horses' manes which were covered withhoar-frost. We started off. The five lean jades dragged our wagons withdifficulty along the tortuous road up Mount Gut. We ourselves walkedbehind, placing stones under the wheels whenever the horses were spent.The road seemed to lead into the sky, for, so far as the eye coulddiscern, it still mounted up and up, until finally it was lost in thecloud which, since early evening, had been resting on the summit ofMount Gut, like a kite awaiting its prey. The snow crunched under ourfeet. The atmosphere grew so rarefied that to breathe was painful; everand anon the blood rushed to my head, but withal a certain rapturoussensation was diffused throughout my veins and I felt a species ofdelight at being so high up above the world. A childish feeling, Iadmit, but, when we retire from the conventions of society and drawclose to nature, we involuntarily become as children: each attributeacquired by experience falls away from the soul, which becomes anew suchas it was once and will surely be again. He whose lot it has been, asmine has been, to wander over the desolate mountains, long, long toobserve their fantastic shapes, greedily to gulp down the life-givingair diffused through their ravines--he, of course, will understand mydesire to communicate, to narrate, to sketch those magic pictures.

  Well, at length we reached the summit of Mount Gut and, halting, lookedaround us. Upon the mountain a grey cloud was hanging, and its coldbreath threatened the approach of a storm; but in the east everythingwas so clear and golden that we--that is, the staff-captain andI--forgot all about the cloud... Yes, the staff-captain too; insimple hearts the feeling for the beauty and grandeur of nature is ahundred-fold stronger and more vivid than in us, ecstatic composers ofnarratives in words and on paper.

  "You have grown accustomed, I suppose, to these magnificent pictures!" Isaid.

  "Yes, sir, you can even grow accustomed to the whistling of a bullet,that is to say, accustomed to concealing the involuntary thumping ofyour heart."

  "I have heard, on the contrary, that many an old warrior actually findsthat music agreeable."

  "Of course, if it comes to that, it is agreeable; but only just becausethe heart beats more violently. Look!" he added, pointing towards theeast. "What a country!"

  And, indeed, such a panorama I can hardly hope to see elsewhere. Beneathus lay the Koishaur Valley, intersected by the Aragva and another streamas if by two silver threads; a bluish mist was gliding along the valley,fleeing into the neighbouring defiles from the warm rays of the morning.To right and left the mountain crests, towering higher and higher,intersected each other and stretched out, covered with snows andthickets; in the distance were the same mountains, which now, however,had the appearance of two cliffs, one like to the other. And all thesesnows were burning in the crimson glow so merrily and so brightly thatit seemed as though one could live in such a place for ever. The sun wasscarcely visible behind the dark-blue mountain, which only a practisedeye could distinguish from a thunder-cloud; but above the sun was ablood-red streak to which my companion directed particular attention.

  "I told you," he exclaimed, "that there would be dirty weather to-day!We must make haste, or perhaps it will catch us on Mount Krestov.--Geton!" he shouted to the drivers.

  Chains were put under the wheels in place of drags, so that they shouldnot slide, the drivers took the horses by the reins, and the descentbegan. On the right was a cliff, on the left a precipice, so deep thatan entire village of Ossetes at the bottom looked like a swallow's nest.I shuddered, as the thought occurred to me that often in the depth ofnight, on that very road, where two wagons could not pass, a courierdrives some ten times a year without climbing down from his ricketyvehicle. One of our drivers was a Russian peasant from Yaroslavl, theother, an Ossete. The latter took out the leaders in good time and ledthe shaft-horse by the reins, using every possible precaution--butour heedless compatriot did not even climb down from his box! When Iremarked to him that he might put himself out a bit, at least in theinterests of my portmanteau, for which I had not the slightest desire toclamber down into the abyss, he answered:

  "Eh, master, with the help of Heaven we shall arrive as safe and soundas the others; it's not our first time, you know."

  And he was right. We might just as easily have failed to arrive atall; but arrive we did, for all that. And if people would only reason alittle more they would be convinced that life is not worth taking such adeal of trouble about.

  Perhaps, however, you would like to know the conclusion of the storyof Bela? In the first place, this is not a novel, but a collection oftravelling-notes, and, consequently, I cannot make the staff-captaintell the story sooner than he actually proceeded to tell it. Therefore,you must wait a bit, or, if you like, turn over a few pages. Though I donot advise you to do the latter, because the crossing of Mount Krestov(or, as the erudite Gamba calls it, le mont St. Christophe [15]) isworthy of your curiosity.

  Well, then, we descended Mount Gut into the Chertov Valley... There'sa romantic designation for you! Already you have a vision of the evilspirit's nest amid the inaccessible cliffs--but you are out of yourreckoning there. The name "Chertov" is derived from the word cherta(boundary-line) and not from chort (devil), because, at one time,the valley marked the boundary of Georgia. We found it choked withsnow-drifts, which reminded us rather vividly of Saratov, Tambov, andother charming localities of our fatherland.

  "Look, there is Krestov!" said the staff-captain, when we had descendedinto the Chertov Valley, as he pointed out a hill covered with a shroudof snow. Upon the summit stood out the black outline of a stone cross,and past it led an all but imperceptible road which travellers use onlywhen the side-road is obstructed with snow. Our drivers, declaring thatno avalanches had yet fallen, spared the horses by conducting us roundthe mountain. At a turning we met four or five Ossetes, who offeredus their services; and, catching hold of the wheels, proceeded, witha shout, to drag and hold up our cart. And, indeed, it is a dangerousroad; on the right were masses of snow hanging above us, and ready,it seemed, at the first squall of wind to break off and drop into theravine; the narrow road was partly covered with snow, which, in manyplaces, gave way under our feet and, in others, was converted into iceby the action of the sun by day and the frosts by night, so that thehorses kept falling, and it was with difficulty that we ourselvesmade our way. On the left yawned a deep chasm, through which rolled atorrent, now hiding beneath a crust of ice, now leaping and foamingover the black rocks. In two hours we were barely able to double MountKrestov--two versts in two hours! Meanwhile the clouds had descended,hail and snow fell; the wind, bursting into the ravines, howled andwhistled like Nightingale the Robber. [16] Soon the stone cross washidden in the mist, the billows of which, in ever denser and morecompact masses, rushed in from the east...

  Concerning that stone cross, by the way, there exists the strange, butwidespread, tradition that it had been set up by the Emperor Peter theFirst when travelling through the Caucasus. In the first place, however,the Emperor went no farther than Daghestan; and, in the seco
nd place,there is an inscription in large letters on the cross itself, to theeffect that it had been erected by order of General Ermolov, and thattoo in the year 1824. Nevertheless, the tradition has taken such firmroot, in spite of the inscription, that really you do not know what tobelieve; the more so, as it is not the custom to believe inscriptions.

  To reach the station Kobi, we still had to descend about five versts,across ice-covered rocks and plashy snow. The horses were exhausted;we were freezing; the snowstorm droned with ever-increasing violence,exactly like the storms of our own northern land, only its wild melodieswere sadder and more melancholy.

  "O Exile," I thought, "thou art weeping for thy wide, free steppes!There mayest thou unfold thy cold wings, but here thou art stifled andconfined, like an eagle beating his wings, with a shriek, against thegrating of his iron cage!"

  "A bad look out," said the staff-captain. "Look! There's nothing to beseen all round but mist and snow. At any moment we may tumble into anabyss or stick fast in a cleft; and a little lower down, I dare say, theBaidara has risen so high that there is no getting across it. Oh, thisAsia, I know it! Like people, like rivers! There's no trusting them atall!"

  The drivers, shouting and cursing, belaboured the horses, whichsnorted, resisted obstinately, and refused to budge on any account,notwithstanding the eloquence of the whips.

  "Your honour," one of the drivers said to me at length, "you see, wewill never reach Kobi to-day. Won't you give orders to turn to the leftwhile we can? There is something black yonder on the slope--probablyhuts. Travellers always stop there in bad weather, sir. They say," headded, pointing to the Ossetes, "that they will lead us there if youwill give them a tip."

  "I know that, my friend, I know that without your telling me," saidthe staff-captain. "Oh, these beasts! They are delighted to seize anypretext for extorting a tip!"

  "You must confess, however," I said, "that we should be worse offwithout them."

  "Just so, just so," he growled to himself. "I know them well--theseguides! They scent out by instinct a chance of taking advantage ofpeople. As if it was impossible to find the way without them!"

  Accordingly we turned aside to the left, and, somehow or other, aftera good deal of trouble, made our way to the wretched shelter, whichconsisted of two huts built of stone slabs and rubble, surrounded by awall of the same material. Our ragged hosts received us with alacrity. Ilearned afterwards that the Government supplies them with money and foodupon condition that they put up travellers who are overtaken by storm.