Читать книгу The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s - Brian Aldiss - Страница 6
ОглавлениеThrough his heavy lids, the church hardly appeared to grow nearer until they were upon it. The summer and the wound at his chest made him dizzy. As he stumbled from his horse, the great daisies in the long grass made it seem to him that he was walking across a starry sky, and his perspectives would not come right.
A priest with a rich mantle thrown over his black frock came hurrying to them. He heard Jovann say to the priest, ‘It is King Vukasan, and he is sore wounded. Make ready a couch for him to rest on.’
He muttered into his horse’s flank, ‘We must get to Sveti Andrej and warn them to arm themselves against the Turk,’ and then the daisies and the sky and dappled shade rippled like a banner, and he had a near view of his silver stirrup before blackness closed upon him.
When he roused again, things were better for him. He lay on a bunk in a cool cell, and his head was clearer. Propping himself on one elbow, he said, ‘Now I am able to go on to my kinsmen at Sveti Andrej.’
Jovann and the old black priest were at his side, smiling with anxiety. ‘My lord king,’ said the priest, ‘you have taken grievous harm, and must stay with us until you have strength for the rest of the journey.’
His mouth was stiff, but he said, ‘Priest, yesterday we fought a battle all daylight long against the scimitared muslim, until the River Babuna flowed with their blood and ours. Courage does not trifle with numbers, that I know, but we had only one blade to every six of theirs, and so in the end every one of my soldiers fell. My cousins at Andrej must be told to make ready to fight, and there are only my general Jovann and I surviving to tell them. Bind me up and let me go on.’
Then Jovann and the priest conferred together, first with Jovann’s moustache at the priest’s furry ear, and then with the priest’s beard at Jovann’s ear. Then Jovann came to his king and knelt by the bed, taking his hand and saying, ‘My lord, though we did not slay the vile muslim, at least we stayed him; he also has his wounds to bind. So the urgency is only in you, and not in the situation. It is the heat of noonday now. Rest, take some soup and rest, and we will go on later. I must have care of you and not forget that you are of the house of Nemanija and your wound bleeds authority.’
So he learnt to be persuaded, and they brought him a thin soup and a trout culled from the nearby lake, and a pot of wine, and then they left him to rest.
He could eat no more than a mouthful of the fish. Though he was not conscious of his wound, he was sick inside with worry, wounded to think that the consuming Turk ate his lands away and was never defeated; his people were brave and terrible in battle; why then did God not allow them to flourish? It was as if a vast tide of time flowed continually against them.
Listlessly, he stared through the opened window by his bed. This room in the priests’ quarters closely overlooked the lake, so that the waters seemed to flow even to the sill. All that punctuated the expanse of his view was a reed bed near at hand; the further shore was an uncertain line of blue, there merely to emphasise the water. He stared at it a long time until, growing tired of its excessive vacancy, he turned his gaze instead to the view within the room.
Although the cell itself was simple, it contained a number of objects, cloaks and instruments and even a field hoe. These had been hastily concealed, at least to some extent, from the royal view by a screen, interposed between the foot of the bed and the miscellany. Slowly his stare fixed itself on this screen.
It was carved of wood, elaborately, in a manner that he recognised as that of the masters of Debar, for some of their work graced his own stronghold. Intertwined among leaves and vines were large birds swallowing fruit, and boys lying piping, and hogs rolling in flowers, and turrets, and lizards that curled like Turkish scimitars. These little religious foundations, scattered like jewels throughout his kingdom, hid many such treasures, but at this time he took no delight in them.
For a long while, he lay between lake and screen, thinking he must move and speed on to his kinsmen. Many times he thought he had already climbed from his bed before Jovann arrived at the door, staring anxiously at his face and asking, ‘Are you strong enough, my lord, to take the road again?’
‘Fetch me my sword,’ he said.
So they set forth again, and this time, the path leading upland, they went by a more complicated way. The horses were fresh from their rest but nervous, and started violently at the jays that flashed across their track. Their nervousness conveyed itself to him, and he sweated inside his shirt until its heavy embroidery knocked cold against his ribs. He started against his will to speak of what was in his mind, of things that he knew a king had better keep hidden from even the most faithful of his generals.
‘I fear an evil enchantment upon me,’ he said through his teeth. ‘When the wolves howled as my child-wife died at Bitola of the fever, I thought they cried my name, and now I know they did. There is a mark on me, and the mark is disaster.’
‘Then it is on me as well, and all who love you,’ said Jovann. ‘You are our common wealth, and as surely as the pig-fearing muslim shall slay you, he shall slay all Serbia.’
Then he regretted he had spoken, for it was not in Jovann’s position to answer in such a way, but still the words shuddered from his lips. ‘As our fine clothes cannot hide our nakedness from God, so the trees that make my kingdom fair cannot hide his curse from me. For you know what the legends say, that we south Slavs rode from the East in great numbers when barbaric enemies drove us from the lands of our ancestors. Though our people have for many centuries broken the earth here, and I lie under it numerously, yet it is still not our homeland; and I am afeared, Jovann, afeared lest this land fall all to the dark-visaged muslim and the distant pashas.’
‘Your royal brethren will take arms with us against them, and turn them back so roughly that they never again dare cross the Vardar,’ said Jovann stoutly. But under the thick trees his face seemed to have a green shade that was not of nature; and even as he spoke, he reined his horse and stared anxiously ahead.
On the path where they must ascend, a magpie crouched with a lizard in its gullet. With wings outspread, it beat at the dust and the horses rattled their reins with dislike of the sight. Jovann sucked in a sharp hissing breath, and slid from the saddle, drawing his sword as he moved forward. The black bird flopped dead at his feet the lizard still protruding from its beak. He made to strike it, but the king cried to him to stay.
‘I never knew a magpie to choke to death before, nor to take a lizard,’ he said. ‘Better not to touch them. We will ride about them.’
So they pricked their horses through the mantle of trees, forcing them along the mountain, and rode with some difficulty until they achieved the plain once more. Here grew the red poppies in their multitudes, millions and millions of them, the hue of dried blood in the distance, of fresh blood underfoot. In the king’s head, there was only this colour, as he tried to understand the meaning of the lizard and the magpie.
With a heavy hand, he pointed across the plain, ‘Jakupica Planina lies there, with snow still on its ridge. When we have forded the Topolka, we can camp by the foot of the hills. By tomorrow night, we will rest ourselves by the stoves of Sveti Andrej and lay our story in sympathetic hands. But first I shall call at a small monastery I know of, Sveti Pantelimon by name, where lives a strange and wise seer who shall explain to me what ails me and my kingdom.’
So they slowly drew near the river in the afternoon heat, and came on a shepherd sitting by a flock of sheep, some white and many black, with half-grown lambs among them. The shepherd was a youth who greeted the king without an excess of respect.
‘My humble home lies there,’ he said, when Jovann spoke sharply to him, and he stretched a finger towards a distant hut perched on a rock. ‘And there waits your enemy the grinning musulman!’ And the finger raised to crags over which a falcon circled. The king and his general looked there, and made out smoke ascending.
‘It is impossible they should be here so soon, my lord. Plainly the boy lies,’ Jovann said in a small voice.
‘There is, alas, more than one force of the enemy on my fertile lands,’ he said and, turning to the boy, asked, ‘If you know the stinking muslim is there, why do you not fight? Why do you not join my arms? Have you nothing, even your life, that is precious to you, and that you must defend?’
But the boy was not perturbed, answering straightly, ‘King Vukasan, because you are a king and therefore rich, the laughing musulman wants all from you, and will take all. But I have nothing, being poor, that he could want. Think you these are my sheep? Then my master would laugh to know. Think you my life is my own? Then you have a different creed from mine. No, your enemies in the hill will pass me by and leave me as I am.’
Jovann drew his sword, and the boy retreated a step, but the king said, ‘Leave him, for only baseness comes from the base, and he is right to hold that even the thieving muslim can wish nothing from him. Meanwhile, we have one more reason to press swiftly on towards Sveti Andrej.’
But when they had crossed the broad and shallow stream of the Topolka, they came on wide shingle beds, on which the hooves of the horses could obtain small purchase. The heat rose up from these shingle beds, dazzling their eyes, and nothing grew save an occasional poppy and frail yellow flowers with five wide-spread petals to each blossom. And the shingle crunched and seemed to wish to draw them back to the river. So they were tired when they gained the bank, and the weight of the sun grew heavy on their shoulders. When they reached the first foothill, Jovann, taking as little regard for majesty as the shepherd boy had done, flung himself off his horse and declared he could go no further. They climbed down beneath a tree where a slight breeze stirred, so that the shadows of its branches crawled like vines on the stoney ground. They pulled ripening figs from the tree and ate, and the horses cropped at scanty grass. Heavy blood was in their foreheads; they fell asleep as they sprawled.
He stirred, and the foliage above his head was patterned with fruit like the wooden screen from Debar, and there were greedy birds there, screaming and devouring the fruit. The sun was low over the hills, and he sat up guiltily, crying, ‘Jovann, Jovann, we must go on! Why are we waiting here, my general?’
His companion sat up, rubbing his head and saying grumpily, ‘As I will die for you, my lord, when the time comes, so when the time comes must I sleep.’
But they got to their feet then, and the king forced them to go on, though Jovann would have eaten the cold fish, wrapped in leaves, that he had brought with him for their evening fare. Looking back over the plain of poppies, they heard the clank of a sheep bell as the sheep were ushered towards protection for the night, and they saw the lights of the Turk burning on the forehead of the mountain. These sights and sounds were soon hidden from them as they rounded the shoulders of the new hills and as night brought down its gentle wing upon them.
Wrapped safe in shadow, the king let his mind wander from the ride, until he imagined he had no wound and his child-wife Simonida was alive again; then said he gently to her, ‘My daughter, you see how the boundaries of our kingdom widen, and how the soldiers and merchants grow as rich as was my grandfather, great Orusah himself. The Bulgars now pay us tribute as far as Bess-Arabia, and the Byzantines are so poor and weak that their cities fall to us every month.’
And he imagined that she smiled and answered, ‘My sweet lord Vukasan, it is good as you say, but let us establish a state that will make the name Serbia sweet even to those it conquers. Let there be not only executions, but laws; not only swords and armies but books and universities, and peace where we can instil peace.’
Then did the king smile and stroke her hair, saying, ‘You know that way shall be my way, even as it would be your way or the way of my father and grandfather. We will bring wise men to speak to the people from distant Hilander, on the Mount called Athos, and there shall be artists and masons summoned from Thessaloniki, who work less rudely than our native craftsmen. And we shall start new arts and works with men from Ragusa and Venezia, and even beyond, from the courts of Europe, and the Pope in Rome shall heed us …’
‘You dream too largely, my sweet lord. It is not good to do so.’ She had often said it.
‘Dreams cannot be too large. Do you know what I dream, my daughter? I dream that one day I may ride into Constantinople and have myself crowned king of Byzantium – Emperor! – while you shall wear no dress but jewels.’
‘Then how your subjects will stare at me!’ she said with a laugh, but the sound came faint and unnatural, more like the clink of a horse’s bridle; and he could not see her for shade, so that Jovann said at his elbow, ‘Steady, my lord, as you go, for the way is rocky here.’
And he answered heavily and confusedly, saying, ‘You are not the companion she was, though I grant you are bolder. What a change has come these last few years! Perhaps you were right in holding I dreamed too largely, for now my dreams are no more and you are gone from me, sweet child of my bed, and all I hear of is the rattle of swords, and for the designing of your jewellery I have exchanged battle plans against the fuming muslim. Ho, then, and hup, or we’ll die before we get to the gates of Constantin’s town!’
The horse plunged under his sharp-digging stirrup, and he returned to his senses, more tired from the mental journey than the actual one.
‘Did I speak to myself then, Jovann?’
‘It is my lord’s privilege,’ said the general.
‘Did I speak aloud, tell me?’
‘My lord, no, on my oath.’ But he knew the man lied to hide his sovereign’s weakness, and bit his lip to keep silence until he had the pleasure of feeling the blood run in the hairs of his beard.
They followed a vague track, not speaking. At last they heard the noise of a bullock-cart creaking and bumping along, and emerged onto the dusty road that would take them to Sveti Andrej. Now that the trees stood further apart, and their eyes were adjusted to the night journey, they could see the shape of the bullock-cart ahead. He was well awake now, and motioned to Jovann to follow. They rode up to the cart and hailed the driver.
Deciding they now had no cause to go further, the two bullocks dragging the cart stopped and cropped grass in the middle of the road. With an oath, Jovann jumped to the ground, his sword again ready in his hand. The driver of the cart sprawled face up to the stars with his throat cut. Rags lay under his outspread arm which they examined after a little, and found them to be a peasant woman’s clothes.
‘This they dare do, so near to home, to kill one of my peasants for the sake of his wife, so near to home, so near to home!’
In a storm of anger and weakness, he felt the tears scald from his eyes, and sat on the bank to weep. Jovann joined him, and put an arm about his shoulders, until he stopped for shame. At that, Jovann thrust a jug into his hands.
‘The man’s rakija, lord. We might as well profit from it, since he no longer can. Drink it, for we have not many hours’ travel left, and then we will eat the fish and pluck some of the cherries that are growing above our heads.’
He was secretly angry that Jovann could speak of these trivial matters when the urgency of the situation was so great. But a sort of fear gripped him; he was unnerved by the way the bullock-cart had arrived so punctually to deliver its message of death, and he needed to feel the heat of the rakija as it plunged down his throat. They drank in turns, quaffing out of the jug.
After a while, the bullocks took the cart off down the road again, creaking and bumping every inch of the way. The two men began to laugh. The king sang a fragment of song:
‘How happy are they who dwell in Prilep
Where the birds nest under every eave
And the green tree grows.’
Although he recalled that the Turk now stood at the gates of Prilep, he sang the verse again into the leafy night. He told Jovann stories of the old days to raise his spirits, of how his grandfather Orusan had in his youth leaped across the fissure in the rock on Pelister and would not marry till he found a girl of hot enough breath to do likewise, no, not though five bare-legged maidens lost their life trying; and how he himself had swum underground a vrst in a cold and unknown river in the same region; and of his father’s day-long flight alone in the hills, with Alisto, the Shiptar prince. And then he thought of his little wife dying in Bitola, and was solemn, and reproached himself. They got to their feet and climbed once more stiffly into their saddles, though Jovann took a great bunch of cherries from the tree as they went, pulling half a branch along with him.
So they rode on through the night, and shivered in their jackets. When dawn leapt over the hills again, they were near to the holy place that the king had mentioned, called Sveti Pantelimon.
He halted his steed by a side track and said, ‘The way is steep here. I will leave the horses here with you and be back in only an hour, after I have consulted the holy man about the future.’
But Jovann protested. ‘My lord, we are but two hours’ travel now from the house of your kinsmen at Sveti Andrej. Let us first carry our ill news to them and set their warlike intentions astir, and then we can return here to your holy man tomorrow, after we have rested.’
But he was set in his course, and said so. ‘Then,’ said the faithful Jovann with a sigh, ‘I will follow after you on foot, leading the horses, that where we may ride we can. Heaven guide you, sweet lord, that you know best.’
‘There is no room for doubt of that,’ he said sharply, though in his own head there was room enough.
Now they climbed amid sharp spurs of rock, on which the first lizards already crawled to sun themselves. Tortoises ambled from their path, and the progress they made was no faster than that of the tortoise, for the track led back and forth about the hillside. The noise grew of a fast mountain stream by which they could guide themselves. When they found it, they saw how it ran deep between two cliffs, and how the path to Sveti Pantelimon followed beside it as man’s paths must ever be slave to those of nature.
Here, after a brief discussion, the horses were hobbled and left, and the king and Jovann went forward together, the one behind the other because the path was so narrow. The water rushed by their feet, making unpleasant music. The rocks above overhung dangerously, so that the trees growing slantwise from one side were often trapped in the vines growing from the other. In one place, a great boulder had fallen and wedged itself between two sides above their heads, making a bridge for any who were foolhardy enough to pass that way. At another point, where blue flowers clung to the damp rock, they had to bend double, for the path had been painfully chipped through the rock itself.
It was thus, bent double like cripples at Bitola fair, that they reached the monastery of Sveti Pantelimon. Roses grew by it, otherwise it was a grim place, a tiny church built into the rock on a widening ledge of the rock, with a dwelling hut attached. The modest brick cupola of the church was almost scraped by fingers of rock stabbing from the cliff-face.
The intruders were seen. Only four brothers lived here; three of them hurried out to meet their royal guest, whom they recognised. But it was the fourth the king required to see, and after taking slatko, the traditional dish of Serbian hospitality, he asked to see this priest.
Jovann rose. ‘My lord king, I fear for your safety even here, since we know not that even now the foul-stomached muslim may be riding along this very canyon. I am a soldier. I will guard outside, and give you warning if they come – in a place like this, we might hold off an army.’
‘Guard well, my general,’ said the king, and was prompted to give Jovann his hand.
The holy man he wished to see sat in the bare adjoining room. He seemed, with his wrinkled visage, to represent antiquity rather than old age; but his most notable feature was his left eye which, unlike its brown neighbour, was entirely and featurelessly white. To the king, it appeared that this priest, by name Milos, often saw best with his white eye.
When their courtesies were concluded, the king said, ‘I am here to ask you only one question, and I need from you only one answer.’
‘Often, my lord king Vukasan, there is more than one answer to a question. Question and answer are not simple and complete opposites, as are black and white.’
‘Do not tease me, for I am weary, and the freedom of my kingdom is at stake.’
‘You know I will do what I can.’
‘I believe you are among the wisest men in my lands, and that is why I come to you now. Here is the question. Only a few years ago, in the reign of my father and grandfather, whom we all recall and bless, this our kingdom was expanding, and with it the life of our peoples. Life and knowledge and art and worship were gaining strength every day. Now we see all that we hoped for threatened with ruin, as the red-tipped muslim bites into our lands. So I ask you what will the future be, and how can we influence it for good?’
‘That sounds, my lord king, like two questions, both large; but I will reply to you straightly.’ Milos opened the palm of his hand and stared at it with his white eye. ‘There are as many futures as there are paths in your kingdom, my lord; but just as some paths, if followed to their end, will take you to the west and others if followed to their end will take you to the east, so there are futures which represent the two extremes of what may be – the best and the worst, we might say. I can, if you will, show you the best and the worst.’
‘Tell me what you can.’
The priest Milos rose and stared out of his small window, which afforded a view onto the gloomy rock beyond. With his back to the king, he said, ‘First, I will tell you what I see of the good future.
‘I see you only a year from now. You lead a great army to a beleaguered city set under an isolated mountain, as it might be Prilep. There you smite the sacrilegious Turk, and scatter the entrails of his soldiery far over the blossoming plain, so that he does not come again to our Serbian lands. For this great victory, many petty princes turn to your side and swear allegiance to you. The Byzants, being corrupt, offer you their crown. You accept, and rule their domain even as your father hoped you might.’
He turned to look at the king, but the king sat there at the bare table with his head bowed, as if indifferent to the burning tidings the priest bore. The latter, nodding, turned back to contemplate the rock and continued in an even tone as previously.
‘You rule wisely, if without fire, and make a sensible dynastic marriage, securing the succession of the house of Nemanija. The arts and religion flourish as never before in the new kingdom. Many homes of piety and learning and law are established. Now the Slavs come into their inheritance, and go forth to spread their culture to other nations. Long after you are dead, my king, people speak your name with love, even as we speak of your grandfather, Orusan. But the greatness of the nation you founded is beyond your imagining. It spreads right across Europe and the lands of the Russian. Our gentleness and our culture go with it. There are lands across the sea as yet undiscovered; but the day will come when our emissaries will sail there. And the great inventions of the world yet to come will spring from the seed of our Serbian knowledge, and the mind of all mankind be tempered by our civility. It will be a contemplative world, as we are contemplative, and the love in it will be nourished by that contemplation, until it becomes stronger than wickedness.’
He ceased, and the king spoke, though his eyes were fixed on the bare floor. ‘It is a grand vision you have, priest. And … the other, the ill future?’
Milos stared but with his white eye at the rock and said, ‘In the ill future, I see you leading no grand army. I see a series of small battles, with the shrieking Turk winning almost all of them by superior numbers and science. I see you, my lord king, fall face forward down into the Serbian dust, never to rise again. And I see eventually Serbia herself falling, and the other nations that are our neighbours and rivals, all falling to the braying enemy, until he stands hammering at the gates even of Vienna in the European north. So, my lord, I see nigh on six centuries in which our culture is trampled underfoot by the conqueror.’
Silence came into the chilly room, until the king said heavily, ‘And the other lands you spoke of, and overseas, how are they in this ill future?
‘Perhaps you can imagine, my lord. For those six centuries, lost is the name of Serbia, and the places we know and love are regarded simply as the domain of the ginger-whiskered Turk. Europe grows into a fierce and strifeful nest of warring nations – art they have, but little comtemplation, power but little gentleness. They never know what they lack, naturally. And when Serbia finally manages to free itself from its hated bondage, the centuries have changed it until your name is lost, and the very title King no longer reverenced. And though she may grow to be a modest power in the world, the time when she might have touched the hearts of all men with her essence is long faded, even as are last year’s poppies.’
After he had heard Milos out, the king rose to his feet, though his body trembled. ‘You give me two futures, priest, and even as you said, they differ as does a speckled trout from a bird. Now answer my question and say which of them is to be the real future, and how I can realise the good vision of which you spoke first.’
The priest turned to face him. ‘It is not in my power to tell you which future will happen. No man can do that. All I can do is give you an omen, hoping that you will then take power into your own hands. Seers see, rulers rule.’
‘Give me then an omen!’
‘Think for yourself where the futures divide in the prospects I laid before you.’
He groaned and said, ‘Ah, I know full well where they divide. We do not bring enough men against the devilish muslim at one time. We are as you say a contemplative people, and the floods must lap our doorstep before we take in the rug at the portal.’
‘Suppose it were not a question of being warlike but of being … well, too contemplative.’
‘Then Jovann and I must rouse the whole nation to fight. This I will do, priest, this is what I was hastening to Sveti Andrej to do.’
‘But you called here. Was not that a delay?’
‘Priest, I came bleeding from the battle at the River Babuna with all haste.’
‘Ah?’
He put a weary hand to his forehead and stared at the bare wall. He recalled the long hours of delay at the monastery, the sleep under the trees, the feast of fish and cherries and rakija; and then the diversion here, and he blamed himself deeply for this ineradicable tardiness in his nature, so characteristic of his people also. But there were some more warlike than he, and on them, he saw, the new burden of militarism must rest.
‘Jovann,’ he said. ‘My bold General Jovann stands outside even now, defending us. He will lend metal to the Serbian arm even if I by my nature cannot.’
Milos looked at him with the white eye and said, ‘Then there is your omen. Come now to the window, my lord king.’
By leaning a little way out of the window, it was possible to see the path by the stream below. Jovann lay with his back to a rock, a pink rose between his teeth. All thought of the Turk had plainly left him, for he sat drawing a heart in the dust, and his sword lay some distance from him beneath a bush.
‘As we are contemplative, I fear it will not be a contemplative future,’ Milos said, taking the arm of the king to prevent him swooning.
When the dizziness wore off, King Vukasan shook off the hand that held his. He saw, looking wearily up, that it was Jovann who squatted by his bed. He lay breathing heavily, conscious of the terrible weight on his chest, trying to measure where his spirit had been. He saw the wooden screen at the bottom of his couch, he regarded the still lake outside his window and he forced a few words through his swollen lips.
‘We should have been in Sveti Andrej today.’
‘My lord, do not fret yourself, there is plenty of time in the world.’
And that, my dear unhastening Jovann, is only the truth, thought he, unable to turn the thought into words; but the fate of the coming centuries has to be decided now, and you should have left me here to die and dream of death, and hurry on with the news that my kinsmen must unite and arm … But he could only look up into the trusting and gentle face of his general and speak no word of all he feared.
Then his focus slipped, and rested momentarily on the carved screen. He saw that among the wilderness of flowers and leaves a bird strained at a lizard, and a bullock-cart traced a path along a vine, and there were little cupolas appearing amid the buds, and shepherd boys and fat sheep, and even a wooden river. Then his head rolled to one side, and he saw instead the vast vacancy of the lake, with the rushes stirring, and the sky reflected in the lake, until it seemed to his labouring mind that all heaven stood just outside the window. He closed his eyes and went to it.
And Jovann moved on tiptoe out to the waiting priests and said, ‘A mass must be sung, and the villagers must come at once with flowers and mourn their king as he would have it. And all arrangements must be made properly for the burial of this, our great and loved king. I will stay and arrange it for a day or so before taking the news on to Sveti Andrej. There is plenty of time, and the king would not wish us to spoil things by haste.’
And one of the priests walked along with him along the narrow way, to summon mourners from the nearest village in the beleaguered hills.
