The Story of a Life

11

What Paradise Looks Like

One day Mama solemnly announced that in a few days we were all leaving to spend the summer holiday on the Black Sea in the small town of Gelendzhik near Novorossiisk. She could not have picked a better place than Gelendzhik to cure me of my infatuation for the sea and the south.

In those days Gelendzhik was a terribly hot, dusty little town devoid of greenery. The vegetation for many kilometres around had been destroyed by the savage Novorossiisk wind, the so-called North-Easter. Nothing but Jerusalem thorn and stunted acacias with parched little flowers grew in the gardens. The high mountains radiated stifling heat. At the end of the bay a cement factory belched smoke.

But Gelendzhik Bay itself was lovely. Large jellyfish, like pink and blue flowers, swam in its warm and clear waters. Spotted flounders and pop-eyed bullheads lay on its sandy bottom. The surf tossed up onto the beach red seaweed, the broken remnants of fishing nets, and bits of dark green glass from old bottles worn smooth by the action of the waves. Even after Gelendzhik the sea lost none of its charm for me. It simply became more ordinary and so more beautiful than my exquisite dreams.

In Gelendzhik I became friends with an elderly boatman by the name of Anastas. He was Greek, from the town of Volos. He had a new sailing boat, white with a red hull and a latticed deck that he had buffed to a high sheen. Anastas took summer residents out for trips on his boat. He was known for his skill and steadiness as a sailor, and so Mama sometimes let me go out alone with Anastas.

Once Anastas and I sailed out of the bay into the open sea. I shall never forget the terror and joy I felt when the sail filled with air and our boat heeled so far over that the water slapped against the gunwales. We crashed into enormous, thundering waves, translucently green and covering our faces with salty spray. I grabbed the shrouds and wished I were back on shore, but Anastas, clamping down on the pipe between his teeth, just hummed to himself and then said: ‘Oh, what nice shoes you have! How much did your mother pay for them?’ He nodded at my chuvyaki, soft leather shoes popular in the Caucasus.

My legs were shaking. I didn’t say a word. Anastas yawned and said: ‘It’s nothing! Just a little shower, and a warm one at that. You’ll have a good appetite after this. Your mama and papa won’t have to beg you to finish your dinner!’

He turned the sailing boat around with ease. It shipped water, and we sailed back towards the bay, diving and leaping through the waves which passed under our stern with a menacing roar. Horror-struck, I felt my heart stop.

All of a sudden Anastas began singing. I immediately stopped shaking, transfixed by this puzzling song:

From Batumi to Sukhumi – Ai-vai-vai!

From Sukhumi to Batumi – Ai-vai-vai!

A boy did run, with his toy – Ai-vai-vai!

But down he fell and broke his toy – Ai-vai-vai!

We furled our sail to this tune and glided up to the pier where Mama was waiting for me, pale as a sheet. Anastas lifted me out of the boat and onto the pier and then said: ‘He’s good and salty for you, madame. Got his sea legs now, he has.’

Another day my father hired a carriage and we drove out to Mikhailovsky Pass. At first the flinty road wound its way up the barren, dusty mountain slopes. We crossed bridges over ravines without so much as a drop of water. All day long the same grey, dry, cotton-wool clouds clung to the mountain peaks. I was thirsty. The red-headed Cossack driver turned around and told me to wait until we reached the pass and there I’d find plenty of refreshing, cool water to quench my thirst. I didn’t believe him. The dry, waterless mountains frightened me. I looked with longing on the dark, watery strip of sea below us. You couldn’t drink it, but at least one could bathe in its cool waters. The road climbed ever higher. Suddenly, I felt cool air on my face.

‘The pass!’ said the driver. He stopped the horses, climbed down, and secured the carriage with some metal blocks under the wheels.

Over the ridge we saw enormous, dense forests stretching across the mountains to the horizon. Here and there red granite cliffs poked through the greenery, and far off in the distance I could see the summit blazing with ice and snow.

‘The North-Easter doesn’t reach this far,’ said the driver. ‘It’s paradise up here.’

The carriage started to descend. All of a sudden, we found ourselves in a dark shadow. We could hear coming from the impenetrable forest the rush of water, bird calls and the sound of leaves ruffled by the troubled midday wind. The farther we descended the denser became the forest and the darker the shadows upon the road. Soon a small, clear stream appeared on the side of the road. It had a bed of coloured stones and was bordered by purple flowers which the rushing water tugged at and bent but was unable to rip free of the stony ground and sweep downstream into the gorge.

Mama scooped a cupful of water from the stream and gave it to me to drink. The water was so cold the outside of the cup was quickly covered with condensation.

‘It smells of ozone,’ said Father.

I took a deep breath. I didn’t recognise the smell, but it seemed to me as if I had been covered in heaps of rain-soaked twigs. Vines of clematis plucked at our hair. Small fluffy flowers poking out here and there from cracks in the road gazed with curiosity at our carriage and the grey horses, who, as if on parade, held their heads high and stepped ever so carefully so as not to lose control on the steep incline and crash.

‘There’s a lizard!’ said Mama.

‘Where?’

‘Over there. See the nut tree? Just to the left there’s a red rock in the grass. Look just a bit farther. Do you see the yellow flower? That’s an azalea. And a tad to the right of the azalea, near the beech tree lying on the ground. Do you see the shaggy reddish root poking out of the dry earth and the tiny blue flowers? It’s right there.’

I spotted the lizard, but only after my eyes had soaked up the sight of the nut tree, the red rock, the flowers of the azalea and the fallen beech.

So, this is the Caucasus! I thought.

‘It’s a paradise!’ said the driver once again as he turned off the main road onto a narrow, grassy path cut into the woods. ‘We’ll stop up ahead and go for a swim.’

The path through the thicket narrowed. Branches began slapping us in the face, and so we had to stop the carriage, climb down and continue on foot. The carriage followed slowly after us. We came to a clearing in the middle of a green gorge. Tall clumps of dandelions poked out of the thick grass like white islands. In the shadow of some large beech trees we spied an empty old barn alongside a noisy mountain stream. The clear water eddied over the stones, gurgling and bubbling as it flowed.

While the driver unharnessed the horses and went to fetch firewood with my father, we washed in the river. After the cold water our faces felt even hotter. We wanted to go exploring up the river, but Mama had spread a blanket on the grass and unpacked the provisions and said that she was not about to let us go anywhere until we had eaten. I gave in and sat down to eat a ham sandwich and cold rice pudding, but it turned out I had gulped down my food for no good reason. The obstinate copper tea kettle simply refused to boil on the fire, most likely because the water from the stream was as cold as ice.

Then, all of a sudden, the kettle boiled over and put out the fire. We drank the strong tea in a hurry and began pestering Father to finish so we could go and explore the woods. The driver said to be careful because there were a lot of wild boar in the forest. He told us that should we come across small holes dug in the ground, this was a sign they had been sleeping in the area. Mama started to worry, although she couldn’t go with us since vigorous walks left her short of breath, but the driver calmed her down, saying that the boar only attacked people if they were provoked.

We headed off upstream. Pushing through the thicket, we stopped along the way to point out to each other the blue sparks of trout swimming in the river’s granite pools, or enormous green insects with long antennae, or foamy, thrashing waterfalls, or horsetails taller than ourselves, or carpets of wood anemones and peony-filled glades. Borya stumbled upon a small dusty hole, shaped something like a baby’s bath. We carefully went around it. Most likely it was the bed for some wild boar.

Father had walked on ahead. He started calling to us. We struggled through buckthorn and made our way around some massive, mossy boulders before eventually catching up with him. He was standing near a strange structure covered with brambles. We could make out four massive, smoothly hewn rocks standing upright, with a fifth over the top of them like a roof. It was some sort of stone house. In one of the sides an opening had been cut, but it was so small that even I couldn’t squeeze through it. There were several other such stone structures nearby.

‘They’re dolmens,’ said my father. ‘Ancient tombs of the Scythians. But then again, maybe they weren’t tombs. Scholars still aren’t certain who built these dolmens, why they built them, or even how.’

I was certain that these dolmens were the homes of a long extinct race of dwarflike people. But I didn’t say that to my father. Borya was with us, and I knew he’d laugh at me. We returned to Gelendzhik burnt by the sun and drunk with fatigue and forest air. I fell asleep, yet through my slumber I could feel the hot air on my body and heard the distant roar of the sea.

After that I imagined that I was the owner of yet another magnificent land – the Caucasus. I lost myself in Lermontov, in the fierce mountain tribesmen, in Shamil.fn1 Once again, Mama began to worry.

Now, as a grown man, I recall my childhood enthusiasms with gratitude. They taught me a lot. What’s more, I never was one of those overly excited little boys, loud and spittle-mouthed and disturbing everyone’s peace. No, I was quite shy and kept my passions to myself.