to
samuel langford
{85}
sour and always a little miserable, vuk karadjitch worked all day in the fields, feeling that life had brought him nothing. life was as tasteless as water, as unmusical as the chink of money on a counter. he could not conceive why he had been born; existence was a casually organized series of accidents. every thing that happened was accidental. death was the only event that the gods had deliberately and elaborately planned: one saw death coming almost from the very moment that one was born.
karadjitch had the lithe body of an aristocrat: the features also, and the poise of head. his neck had proud muscles, and his throat was shapely. but though he had the appearance and carriage of one highly born, his birth was lowly, and the education he had snatched, almost stolen, from life was not of the kind to increase his money-earning capacity.
his mind, a little marred at birth, had been almost ruined by knowledge. his brain fastened itself on the past—on mythology—the sweet legend of hylas, and on the golden story of helen of troy. it is so easy to make the past more real than the present: it is so pleasant to do this, so fruitful of happiness. so vuk karadjitch lived in the days that were long before his birth.
and as he worked in the orchards that lie above kirekoj—working at night to keep robbers away—he stared continually at the moon, the moon that was to him the oldest and most tired thing in all god’s universe. ever since he had been a boy this wayward planet had excited him, and the coming of manhood had not lessened th{86}e strange sympathy, even longing, that he felt for the great globe of light wandering with such self-conscious pride among the stars....
his mother, a harassed, reserved woman, used years ago to put little vuk to bed with fear whenever the moon shone through the high, shutterless window. she would cover his head so that he should not see the blue light on the wall.
“go to sleep, child,” she would whisper as she bent over him; “do not walk to-night.”
but almost of a certainty he would rise in his sleep and walk to the room in which his mother sat, his eyes open and luminous, his little hands stretched palm upwards in front of him. then she would tremblingly put down her work, go to him, and just touching him with the tips of her fingers, guide him back to bed.
if, as often happened, the boy’s father was in the house when vuk walked, the gnarled old man would roughly seize him and shake him into terrified wakefulness.
“it’s a beating the lad wants,” the father would say; and, indeed, one night he raised his hand and his son staggered and shrieked under the blow he received.
vuk’s father had reason, though he knew it not, to dislike the boy. karadjitch was a cuckold, but so little suspicion had he of this, that he smiled with secret pleasure when neighbours remarked how like to him was his wife’s handsome boy.{87}
one evening the mother arranged a curtain over the bedroom window so that the moon could not get at her son. but even on that night vuk walked. and, a few evenings later, softly entering his room, his mother saw him standing on the back of a high chair at the window, his body precariously balanced, his dilated eyes fixed most questioningly on the molten moon....
she spoke nothing to her neighbours of all these things which, i must tell you, happened fifteen years ago in that most lovely of towns—doiran so white and perfect standing by the blue, deep lake whose name is also doiran.
kirekoj has no lake like doiran, yet vuk, now a young man of twenty-three, loved this place cupped so gently in the mountains. he had only to walk up through the vineyards and orchards and drag himself to the top of the ridge to see langaza which, though not so beautiful as doiran, is perhaps more mysterious.
just as, when a boy, he had been employed to scare away birds from the crops, so was he now paid to guard the fruit-burdened orchards from robbers....
one night in august his depression was so great that, as he sat with his back against a young pomegranate tree, he allowed his mind to become numb with wretchedness. there was no moon this night, and he had come to depend so much upon this far-off friend of his that a great loneliness oppressed him. a dog, {88}snuffing in the undergrowth, came to him and put his nose in vuk’s open hand. the young man made no response, but the dog licked and liked him and stayed with him. and every night the affectionate wild creature would come and sit by him. never once did vuk give him a caress or vouch him a word. yet he never wished the dog to go away.
the man and woman in kirekoj with whom vuk lived were kind to him, though they thought him strange and often wondered what his thoughts were. when vuk set out in the evening to his work, the woman would give him a little parcel of food—bread, a handful of olives, and a bottle of red wine, and vuk would smile at her shyly and say some words of thanks. the young men of the village—mostly bulgars—had long ago accepted him; at first, they had teased him a little, but as he always replied with a smile of good-nature, they had soon come to see that his oddness was not a thing to give them amusement.
sometimes vuk would try to throw himself into their company, forcing himself to be one of them. he was afraid of his own strangeness. but his abnormal shyness barred his way, and the sensitive distaste he had for life was too strong to be overcome. he envied his fellows. he envied their capacity for comradeship, their day-long happiness, the ease with which they laughed and talked. but he could never become like them. his self-distrust increased with the years, and he turned more passionately than ever to his d{89}reams of the past and to his silent companion in the sky.
one afternoon, the man with whom he lived came in from his work in the fields and found vuk reading a book.
“will you drink wine with me?” the man asked.
“thank you: i will,” answered vuk, shrinking a little.
the man poured out two glasses, and, as the day was very hot, vuk drained his at a single draught. the man silently refilled it, and in five minutes the glass was again empty.
his host, looking at him, smiled.
“why don’t you go to the inn and drink with stepan and the other lads?” he asked. “to get drunk sometimes is good for a man.”
vuk, returning his gaze, smiled also.
“i will drink with you, if you like,” he returned, for the wine had excited him, and he did not feel as much afraid as usual.
so his host brought another bottle and yet another and, after some time, vuk began to talk.
“am i in your way living here?” he asked, his eyes looking wounded and beseeching.
“no. i like you to be here. my wife likes you to be here. we are all happy together—eh?”
“i am happy with you,” said vuk. “i often want to say things to you, but i can’t. i am not stupid. i understand things, but—somehow—— ” his voice trailed off to a murmur. then, clen{90}ching his fists and tightening all his body, he said with an effort: “i understand things, but i cannot speak about them. it seems as though you are all so far off that you wouldn’t grasp what i said. and i am always afraid that i might say something that would be strange to you.”
his host laughed tolerantly.
“we are all strange, eh? and what would it matter if we didn’t understand you? you must talk: it is good for every man to talk. perhaps you are wise, and no one understands wise men.”
this comforted vuk a little.
“perhaps i am,” he said; “i do not know.” he paused for a moment. “have you—have you ever noticed at night how, though it may be very silent, it is still more silent when the moon appears?”
his companion considered a moment.
“no, i don’t think i have,” he answered, shifting uneasily in his chair.
vuk took another mouthful of wine.
“well, you listen one night and you’ll hear. especially when the moon is just rising—red and swollen on the horizon. of course, she is angry then, and at those times i always think she is like some raging, drunken queen rising from her couch in the middle of the night.”
his companion stared at vuk for a moment and then laughed. but by now vuk was too exalted and excited to notice that his host was uncomfortable and perhaps a little conte{91}mptuous, and, putting his arms on the table and leaning forward, he began to talk volubly.
“i wish i had money to buy jewels,” he said, “especially certain jewels like opals. i would like to hold many opals in the hollow of my hand: i would like to crush them together between my hands. you know that all fire is the sun. did you know that? yes. i’m telling you. take coal. coal is buried wood. and what is wood? wood is trees. and it is the sun that makes trees grow. it pulls at the ground and draws them out; it warms them and feeds them. when you burn wood and coal, it is the sun that leaps out at you—a little bit of the sun that has been silently hiding for many years. a good deal of the sun is stored under the ground and a good deal of it is alive and burning there. well, it is the same with the moon. some precious stones absorb the moon. opals do. that is why i want to hold many opals in my hand and crush them together. and i am sure that the moon gives herself to water, especially to large sheets of water like lake langaza.” he paused a few moments, his thoughts far away. “you can feel the moon, soft and sliding, on your limbs, if you bathe at night when the moon is high in the sky: but when the dawn comes, the light of the sun destroys all the moon that is in the water.”
he noticed, for the first time, that his companion’s eyes were shut and that his heavy breathing was developing into a snore.{92}
“i am explaining this to you!” exclaimed vuk, peremptorily.
but his host sank deeper into slumber, and for a little while vuk talked quietly to himself until he, too, slept.
that evening at dusk vuk, dazed with wine, made his way to the orchards above kirekoj. for a long time he sat brooding among the trees, until the moon, full and splendid, went redly up the sky. he watched her so closely that he could see her moving. to-night she did not seem to glide: she moved with just perceptible jerks—“like the hands of a very large clock,” said vuk to himself, for he had wandered far and had lived in many big cities.
he watched the trees appearing out of the blackness: they seemed to be marching upon him, closing in upon him. so he arose and began to walk, and presently came to the edge of the orchard and looked up at the mountain at whose feet he stood. he began to climb, and soon, after leaving the vineyards behind him, he came upon large, bare rocks in the clefts of which grass and flowers grew. it was while he was climbing both with hands and feet that his dog-friend, excited but silent, joined him.
“tchut! tchut!” said vuk, beneath his breath.
the dog, honoured by human speech, became still more excited, and vuk could see him dimly as, having rushed to the top of a high rock, he stood open-mouthed, wagging his tail.{93}
now, there was no one either in langaza or kirekoj who was more bound by conscience to his work than vuk karadjitch, and it was very strange that on this night he should, without effort, have left his master’s orchards to wander up the mountains. he did not know where he was going or, indeed, why he was “going” at all. but i have no doubt that something in his brain—one of the many selves that were vuk—was urging him forward to some secret purpose of its own.
stillness and the moon’s rays held the night, and though the moon falsified distance and misled even vuk who was used to the moon’s deceit, he reached the top of the mountains sooner than he had expected. there, unseen, langaza lay beneath him. looking in langaza’s direction, he suddenly became aware of his motive in coming thither. turning to the dog, he muttered threateningly:
“go away! go away!”
but though he threw stones at the animal, it refused to leave him. so, muttering to himself, vuk proceeded down the other side of the mountain, making his way to langaza with impatient strides.
langaza is a lake without banks, and even a careful investigator will find it difficult to determine where dry land ends and water begins. rushes and grasses, tropically luxuriant, grow from dry earth, mud, and the lake’s bed. in hot weather the air is miasmatic, and millions of mosquitoes make with their wings high shrieks {94}as they fly their way through the air.
when vuk found himself on the edge of this poisoned richness, he was covered with sweat, and the fumes of the afternoon’s wine had left his brain. for a little time he stood looking at the moon—not at the moon in the sky, for that was too far away, and its very distance mocked him; but at the moon in the lake that was so near. man cannot without wings soar into the sky, but his own weight will carry him to the bottom of the deepest abyss.
he walked into the rushes and grasses and, in a moment, was surrounded by them; they towered above his head, and soon his feet began to sink in the slime and mud of the lake’s true edge. the dog, with velvet paws, followed a pace behind him. vuk had forgotten him, for vuk’s mind was now full of the moon and inflamed by it.
in a very short time walking became laborious and slow, for vuk’s feet sank into the mud until it covered his ankles, and it was with a great effort that he drew them out again. the sucking, explosive sound they made, and the moon man’s heavy breathing startled many large water-birds that, with flopping wings and raucous throats, announced their fear as they rushed away.
guided by the moon, vuk at length reached the inner edge of the rushes. in his journey he had fallen many times, and his clothes, his hands, and his face were thick with ooze; the spiky rushes had pierced his flesh, and his{95} face and neck were bleeding. the water now reached his thighs. he stood still while he undressed. his impatient hands feverishly unwound the long cloth that circled his stomach many times. when naked, he waded still further into the lake, and then, lifting his feet and pressing his chest against the water, he swam towards the moon lying in the lake. the dog, devoted and dumb, and seemingly driven by the same fate, followed him.
vuk could swim well, but he was already exhausted before he had emerged from the forest of rushes and grasses. it was a long, long way to the moon in the lake, and in a little time his strokes became feeble and there was only just enough movement in his arms to keep him afloat. turning himself on his back, he rested. all deep desire had gone from his mind. weary, he wished for oblivion. the moon was at the bottom of the lake, waiting. he had only just to sink now where he was, and slowly, very slowly, but oh! how safely and inevitably, he would go to her.
he began to sink and to be smothered.... after a time he reappeared, feebly struggling. the dog snatched at and missed him. vuk sank again. and after that vuk’s body, remaining, for how long i know not, midway between the water’s surface and the lake’s bottom, was never again seen.
the d{96}og swam in ever-widening circles round the spot where the moon man had disappeared until he, also, sank, perhaps joining the only friend he had ever known.
