Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  As if to add to our torments the mirage appeared in the midday hours on the plain again, showing us mountains and forests with lakes; but the nights were more terrible than ever. All the rays which that charred land stole from the sun in the daytime came out at night, scorching our feet and parching our throats. On such a night one man lost his mind, and sitting on the ground burst into spasmodical laughter, and that dreadful laughter followed us long in the darkness. The mule on which Lillian was riding fell; the famishing people tore it to bits in a twinkle; but what food was that for two hundred!

  The fourth day passed and the fifth. From hunger, the faces of the people became like those of birds of some kind, and they began to look with hate at one another. They knew that I had provisions; but they knew, too, that to ask one crumb of me was death, hence the instinct of life overcame in them hunger. I gave food to Lillian only at night, so as not to enrage them with the sight of it. She implored me by all that was holy to take my share, but I threatened to put a bullet in my brain if she even mentioned it. She was able, however, to steal from my watchfulness crumbs which she gave to Aunt Atkins and Aunt Grosvenor. At that time hunger was tearing my entrails with iron hand, and my head was burning from the wound.

  For five days there had been nothing in my mouth but water from that lake. The thought that I was carrying bread and meat, that I had them with me, that I could eat, became a torture; I was afraid besides, that being wounded, I might go mad and seize the food.

  “O Lord!” cried I in spirit, “suffer me not to become so far brutalized as to touch that which is to keep her in life!” But there was no mercy above me. On the morning of the sixth day I saw on Lillian’s face fiery spots; her hands were inflamed, she panted loudly. All at once she looked at me wanderingly, and said in haste, hurrying lest she might lose presence of mind, —

  “Ralph, leave me here; save yourself, there is no hope for me.”

  I gritted my teeth, for I wanted to howl and blaspheme; but saying nothing I took her by the hands. Fiery zigzags began to leap before my eyes in the air, and to form the words, “Who worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator?” I had broken like a bow too much bent; so, staring at the merciless heavens, I exclaimed with my whole soul in rebellion:

  “I!”

  Meanwhile I was bearing to the mount of execution my dearest burden, this my only one, my saint, my beloved martyr.

  I know not where I found strength; I was insensible to hunger, to heat, to suffering. I saw nothing before me, neither people nor the burning plain; I saw nothing but Lillian. That night she grew worse. She lost consciousness; at times she groaned in a low voice, —

  “Ralph, water!” And oh, torments! I had only salt meat and dry biscuits. In supreme despair I cut my arm with a knife to moisten her lips with my blood; she grew conscious, cried out, and fell into a protracted faint, from which I thought she would not recover. When she came to herself she wished to say something, but the fever had blunted her mind, and she only murmured, —

  “Ralph, be not angry! I am your wife.”

  I carried her farther in silence. I had grown stupid from pain.

  The seventh day came. The Sierra Nevada appeared at last on the horizon, and as the sun was going down the life of my life began to quench also. When she was dying I placed her on the burnt ground and knelt beside her. Her widely opened eyes were gleaming and fixed on me; thought appeared in them for a moment, and she whispered, —

  “My dear, my husband!” Then a quiver ran through her, fear was on her face, — and she died.

  I tore the bandages from my head, and lost consciousness. I have no memory of what happened after that. As in a kind of dream I remember people who surrounded me and took my weapons; then they dug a grave, as it were; and, still later, darkness and raving seized me, and in them the fiery words, “Who worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator!”

  I woke a month later in California at the house of Moshynski, a settler. When I had come to health somewhat I set out for Nevada; the prairie had grown over with grass, and was abundantly green, so that I could not find even her grave, and to this day I know not where her sacred remains are. What have I done, O God, that Thou didst turn Thy face from me and forget me in the desert? — I know not. Were it permitted me to weep even one hour at her grave, life would be easier. Every year I go to Nevada, and every year I seek in vain. Since those dreadful hours long years have passed. My wretched lips have uttered more than once, Let Thy will be done! But without her it is hard for me in the world. A man lives and walks among people, and laughs even at times; but the lonely old heart weeps and loves, and yearns and remembers.

  I am old, and it is not long till I shall make another journey, the journey to eternity; and for one thing alone I ask God, — that on those celestial plains I may find my heavenly one, and not part from her ever again.

  A JOURNEY TO ATHENS.

  IN leaving Stambul for Athens on the French steamer Donnai, I had before me the most beautiful view which it is possible to have in the world. The sky, rainy for a number of weeks, had at last become perfectly clear, and was reddened with a splendid evening. The neighboring Asiatic shore was flooded with light; the Bosphorus and Golden Horn looked like gigantic ribbons of fire; Pera, Galata, Stambul, with their towers and domes, and minarets of mosques, were sunk in purple and gold.

  The Donnai turned her prow toward the Sea of Marmora and began to stir the water lightly, pushing with care through the crowd of steamers, sailing vessels, small boats, and kayuks. Constantinople is one of the best anchoring places in Europe, and at the foot of this city, which from its steep slopes rules over two seas, there is another crowded city of ships. As over the first one tower minarets, over the second tower masts, on these masts is a rainbow of flags, and this lower city is not less noisy than the other. Here, as well as there, is a mixture of tongues, races, complexions, garments. One sees here all types of men who inhabit the adjoining three parts of the earth, beginning with Englishmen, and ending with those half-savage dwellers of Asia Minor, who have come to the capital to earn a morsel of bread, as “kayukjis.”

  We passed the point on which stands the old Serai.

  Pera, Galata, and Stambul began to merge into one terraced city, the borders of which the eye could not reach. Neither Naples nor any other place on earth can compare with that magnificent panorama. All descriptions, from those of Lamartine to those of De Amicis, are simply pale reflections of reality, for the words of men are but sound, hence unable to present to us either colors or those forms, now slender and aerial, now immense and tremendous. At times it seemed that a whole city of enchanted palaces was hanging in the air; then again I was under the impression of such majesty, greatness, and might, as if from that city terror were still going forth over Europe, and as if in the tower of the Seraskierat to-day, just as in past times, the fates of the world were in balance.

  From the Sea of Marmora the naked eye could distinguish only the larger buildings, that is, the old Serai, a part of the walls of the Seven-towered Castle, Saint Sophia, Suleimanie, and the tower of the Seraskierat. The foundations of the city seemed to sink slowly; first the encircling walls hid themselves, then the lower rows of houses, then the higher, then the mosques and their domes. The city seemed to be drowning. It was growing dark in the sky, but on the arrow-like minarets the last ruddy and golden gleams were still falling. One might have said that they were a thousand gigantic torches burning above a city now invisible.

  That is the hour in which the muezzins go out on the balconies of minarets and call the faithful to prayer, announcing to the four corners of the world that God is great and that God’s night is coming down to us.

  In fact night was coming, not only God’s night, but a serene and a starry one. Night is a time for meditation; and because the fates of future peace or war are weighed really in the neighborhood of these straits, it is difficult to keep from political soothsaying. Still I will not occupy myself with it.

&nb
sp; Let the daily papers do that work. Should future events give the lie to them, they will not be disgusted, I think, with their specialty. To me, as a novelist, comes a thought more literary in character, which, moreover, I throw out in parenthesis.

  Well, it occurs to me that those gleams of the evening, those flaming waters, those palaces and minarets bathed in gold and purple, are something as real and actual as the dead dogs lying by tens on the streets of Stambul. But there are novelists of a certain school, especially those forming the gray end of it, who prefer the description of dead dogs, to the no less real sunsets, blue expanses of the sea, and other wonderful aspects of nature. Why is this? Of course there are various causes, but among them doubtless is this one, that to depict the beautiful in all its splendor a man needs more power and more colors on his palette than to depict the disgusting, and that in general it is easier to make a man’s mouth water than to move his soul.

  But I have no thought of raising a polemic, hence I touch these thing only in passing; now I shall follow the course of the steamer.

  Mail steamers leaving Stambul in the evening are in the Dardanelles at dawn, with daylight they enter the Archipelago. We are in the Dardanelles then. Our steamer pushes forward between two shores lying close to each other; on those shores fortresses are visible and the black jaws of cannon which look forth from both sides at the straits. After a while we stop, for the steamer before issuing from that gorge must show papers and clear itself: whence has it come and whither is it sailing? The shores appear barren, covered with cliffs which crumble, are ground fine and piled into stone drifts. The whole landscape is melancholy and sterile, though the sun is just rising and sculptures every outline beautifully. The straits themselves are narrower than the Bosphorus, or even the Vistula. On the right side the houses of Gallipoli stand out in whiteness; their squalor and misery is evident even from afar. And again the question occurs to one, which in the East occurs almost everywhere, — in Rustchuk, in Varna, in Burgas, in Stambul itself: Are these the countries for which human blood has been spilt in quantity sufficient to fill the whole straits? Is it for these half-ruined cities, inhabited by semi-pauperous people, for those barren plains and sterile cliffs, that millions are expended and immense armies supported; that the lives of generations of people pass in uncertainty of the day and hour? In the Dardanelles more than in any place must a man give himself this question. There are regions whose main expression is wildness or melancholy; but I have never seen a landscape which said so clearly: I am age and exhaustion; I am abandonment and -misery! And still in those straits lies the heart of the whole question. It is not so much a question of the Bosphorus, or of Tsargrad itself, as it is of the Dardanelles. That narrow shaft of water, that rocky corridor, is the one window and also the door leading from regions behind to the world.

  “Have you read of those cords,” said to me a fellowtraveller, an Englishman, “which the Sultans used to send on a time to Grand Viziers, or unsuccessful commanders? These straits are such cords; it is possible to choke the Black Sea with them, and even Constantinople itself.”

  Meanwhile we sailed out into the Archipelago, to that famous sea which the ancient Greeks called a picture of the heavens, for it is dotted with islands as the heavens are dotted with stars. It is for this reason likely that they named it Arch-sea. Soon we saw the cliffs of Lemnos in front of us, the first island that is seen after issuing from the Dardanelles. Nothing in the north is delineated with definiteness equal to that of pearly Imbros; on the other side, nearer the Asiatic shore, stands Tenedos, on which the standard of the Prophet still waves, but above the whole Archipelago floats the soul of ancient Greece, with its songs and traditions. Under the influence of such memories, perhaps, these shores seem somehow different from all others which we see before coming here, and they answer to the outlines in which imagination paints the Grecian shores. Everything visible is naked, barren, just as it is near the Dardanelles, — neither tree nor human habitation; the region is gray olive in color, as if sunburnt and faded, but extended in long and bold direct lines like the prototypes of Doric architecture. One hill rears itself above another; here and there the peak of some height peers up, hardly visible in the blue curtain of distance; farther on, the background is entirely concealed. Above all is a simple and dignified melancholy. Once, according to tradition, the hammers of Hephaistos pounded in the volcano of Lemnos. Perhaps it was here that he forged the famous shield of Achilles? To-day the crater of Mosyehlos is silent, for the volcano is extinct; tradition has outlived the volcano and even the god.

  On the right and the left appear islands continually; with the enumeration of these I shall not trouble the memory or attention of any man. The eye sees farther on the Archipelago than on other European waters.

  Even the remotest islands are seen so clearly and definitely that one may distinguish almost every fissure in the rocks, and plants covering the brinks of precipices. So much light is poured down to the earth, from the heavens here, that Italy itself can give no idea of it. The sea and the sky are not merely blue, they are luminous. In other lands, the sun seems to scorch and to shine; here, it penetrates the whole landscape, soaks in, permeates, coalesces with it, excluding absolutely every shadow. Therefore, nothing is defined here so sharply as on the shores of the Mediterranean for example. Every outline on which the eye rests is immensely expressive, and still mild, for it is embraced by a single tone which is very clear and also tender.

  The Arch-sea is not always calm. Those same whirlwinds which bore the ship of Odysseus to the Cyclops rush on at times among the islands in the guise of wild horses; the waves thunder and hurl snow-white foam to the summits of cliffs on the shore. But at the moment of which I am speaking, the blue expanse was as smooth as a mirror, and only after the ship came a broad foaming pathway. There was not the least breeze during daylight. The steamer advanced as if on a lake, so the deck was swarming with passengers. There was no lack even of elegant toilets, for the women of Athens like, more than other daughters of Eve, to wear their best on every occasion.

  That assembly on deck lasted till late in the evening. The Greeks form acquaintance easily, to gratify their love of talk, perhaps. Their politeness is even too effusive for sincerity. In general, they boast immeasurably, not only of their ancient but their present civilization. From moment to moment they enumerate to strangers Greek celebrities of the day, scientific and artistic, known loudly as it were in all Europe; and they are astonished if any one has not heard of them. This or that painter with his latest picture has destroyed Gérôme utterly; this or that scientist inoculated for hydrophobia years earlier than Pasteur, which, speaking in parenthesis, is the more wonderful as there is no hydrophobia in southern countries. One might think, while hearing them, that as God once acted solely through the Franks, so now He makes use of the Greeks with far greater effectiveness. If anything of prime importance happens in the world, search carefully, and thou wilt find a Greek there.

  Night in the Archipelago is as beautiful as the day. Such nights Homer called ‘‘ambrosial.” The bases of the islands are wrapped in mist the most delicate; the moon whitens the summits of the mountains; but not the least cloud is visible on the sky, and the whole sea is covered with silvery trails, — the widest made by the moon, others by stars. That phenomenon is unknown in the North; but more than once in Southern seas I have seen those silver trails, or rather stripes, playing from the stars on the water.

  We are sailing amid such silence that every turn of the screw is heard. On the horizon we see a number of ships, or rather their lanterns, which seem from afar like many colored swaying points suspended in the atmosphere.

  These ships for the greater part are making, as we are, for the Piraeus, where they will be at daylight. At the first dawn in fact the screw ceases to roar and that sudden silence rouses all passengers. We dress; we hurry to the deck, — the Piraeus, Attica.

  I suppose that the most callous of visitors must stand on this soil with a certain emotion,
face to face with Athens. Envoys once carried to the Pope the great banner of all Islam taken at Vienna, and asked relics in return for it. “You have no need to seek relics,” replied the Pope; “take a handful of your own earth, it is soaked in the blood of martyrs.” So we may say in like manner of the soil of Attica: every handful of it is penetrated with Grecian thought and Grecian art. You will recall, surely, “the mothers” in the second part of Paust, those prototypes and first patterns of everything existing beyond the world and space, so majestic in their indefinite loneliness that they are terrible. Attica, while neither indefinite nor terrible, is the intellectual mother of all who are civilized. Without her, it is unknown where we might be at present, or what we might have become. Attica is the sun of the ancient world; and after its historical setting there remained so mighty an effulgence behind, that from it came the Renaissance or rebirth after the darkness of the Middle Ages. I say, Attica, and not Greece, for Attica was to Hellas what Hellas was to the world. In one word, when we enter that land we are at the source. Other civilizations on the neighboring shores of Africa and Asia, among other races of people, were developed into monsters; Grecian civilization alone remained human. Others were lost in phantasms; it was unique in this that it took the existent world as the basis for art and science, and was able from elements purely actual to develop the loftiest harmony; a harmony truly divine. Greece had the mind to be godlike without ceasing to be human, and this explains her significance.

  At the moment when we touched Grecian soil “rosy fingered Aurora” was entering the sky. Prom the Piræus to Athens one may go by rail, but it is incomparably better to take a carriage and see accurately everything which may be seen in half an hour on the way. The road from the Piræus is occupied on both sides by sycamores; it passes through the so-called plain of Attica, which the (Jephissus waters, or, rather, might water. Every name here rouses an echo in the memory and an historical reminiscence. Were it not for this, the Cepliissus would rouse no very great regard; for as there are bridges in Poland which do not exist, so the Cephissus is a non-existent river; this means that in the parched and burnt bed of it not one drop of water is flowing. The plain is narrow. On the left hand, in the direction of the Bay of Eleusis, we see the mountains of Daphne and the Poikilon; on the right is honey-bearing Hymettus, and Pentelicus, which to-day, as in old times, furnishes Athenians with marble. The country seems sun-parched, empty, sterile. The fields, mountains, and cliffs have an ashen hue, immeasurably delicate, with a tinge somewhat bluish. This is a color into which all others merge in Greece; and it predominates everywhere, on the islands as well as the mainland.