“Put the red ones here, Tanya. That’s carnelian – a gem very highly valued in antiquity that supposedly has some sort of curative power.”
“Most of them are red. Look at this one, what a beauty!” Tanya exclaimed. “Did you find that one? It’s translucent and gleams like a pearl.”
“That’s a hyalite, the most valuable kind of opal. You can make yourself a brooch out of it.”
“I don’t like brooches, rings, earrings – nothing but bracelets. But if you just give it to me as a present then I’ll be grateful… But why did you pick up those three stones? They’re dull, not any good.”
“What are you talking about, Tanya! How can you find fault with my very best find? Look.” And I lowered a plain white pebble into the water. The stone became translucent and glimmered with flecks of blue.
“How beautiful!” the young woman exclaimed in amazement.
“That’s right, this homely stone turns out to be magical. And in ancient times it was considered magical. It’s a hydrophane, also called ‘the eye of the world.’ It’s very porous and so it isn’t see-through when it’s dry. As soon as its pores fill with water it becomes translucent and very beautiful. That’s true of all varieties of quartz; there are many more sorts that differ in terms of tint, value, and beauty.”
“What did you learn from our excursion today?” Tanya asked.
“I now have an understanding of the makeup of this entire area. It actually turns out to be nothing interesting: ancient granites and strata of black quartzite with veins of quartz running through them. The hill that the observatory sits on is a little different from the others: it’s composed of very dense, glassy quartzites. The pretty stones in the riverbed were deposited there as the quartzite eroded – there must be quite a bit of chalcedony and opal in the veins, in the interstices and incrustations, and throughout the fissures.”
“And where is the mine mentioned in the inscription?”
“I still don’t know. You saw for yourself – there wasn’t the slightest trace. Maybe it’s hidden beneath the observatory ruins.”
“That’s bad! Matvei Andreyevich is going to poke fun at us again,” Tanya concluded. “It’s time to head back. Look, the sun is already setting. We’ll get back after dark as it is.”
The red fire of sunset gave the hills’ sloped shoulders a sharp silhouette. The total stillness accentuated the desolate silence of the surrounding sands. When we reached the observatory hill, the last glow of sunset had been extinguished in the west.
The ruins, barely discernible by starlight, greeted us in silence. A lone scops owl gave a melodious hoot off in the distance.2 The place was rather menacing at night; a vague foreboding gripped us, and we crept stealthily along, whispering, as if we were afraid of waking something slumbering amid the gloomy walls.
Suddenly, I felt as if my daytime fatigue had vanished, replaced by a rush of energy. The dry, still air coming off the sun baked walls, despite its warmth, seemed exceptionally fresh. Every now and then, a pleasant, barely perceptible tingling ran over my skin.
“I don’t feel tired at all,” Tanya whispered to me, moving so close that our shoulders were almost touching. “There’s something in the air here.”
“Yes, I would say that the air is as if we were next to an electrical generator. Touch your hair, Tanya: it’s sticking out all over the place all of a sudden.”
Tanya ran her hand over her hair, trying to smooth it out, and a multitude of tiny blue sparks flickered under her fingers.
“Like before a storm,” Tanya commented, “except the sky is clear and there isn’t a hint of humidity, quite the opposite.”
“Strange. In general, a lot of things in this place are inexplicable…” I began, but stopped short when a faint greenish glow coming from a gap in the wall caught my eye.
We were approaching the main structure, the one with the quadrant’s arc. I took a closer look and noticed the faintly visible glow of several letters of an inscription on the inner wall of the portico.
“Look, Tanya!” I led my companion to a collapsed part of the wall.
In the pitch blackness under the arches, the curlicues of lettering outlined by a greenish-yellow glow stood out clearly.
“What is that?” Tanya whispered excitedly. “There are inscriptions all over the place here, but they don’t glow.”
“All of those inscriptions were done in gold. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Tanya confirmed.
“But this one… Wait a minute…”
I carefully slipped into the portico and lit a match. The mysterious glow instantly vanished. Before me there was nothing but a dark, broken down wall. But I did manage to notice a surviving tile fragment covered with a smooth glaze and orange-greenish lettering.
“Let’s go take a look right away!” Tanya urged.
“Let’s go,” I agreed, and asked: “Have you ever been to the observatory at night, you or the professor?”
“No, not once.”
“In that case, let’s go to the camp first – but don’t tell the professor anything. We’ll have dinner, and we’ll continue our investigation after everyone goes to sleep, if you want. And if you’re tired, I’ll go on my own.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! How could I be tired? It’s all so mysterious and interesting!”
“Excellent. But one condition, Tanya: not a word to the professor. I myself don’t understand what’s going on yet, but if you and I come up with some sort of explanation, we’ll have quite a surprise for Matvei Andreyevich in the morning!”
Tanya gave me a warm, firm handshake. We quickly walked down the hill to the campsite where, as usual, a small fire was blazing. After grumbling at us for being late for supper, the professor started to interrogate me about the results of our excursion. As Tanya had predicted, Matvei Andreyevich lavished my poor self with good-natured mockery as soon as he learned that I hadn’t found any traces of the paint mine.
“Fine, better not to ask what you found there in th e darkness with Tanya… Come on now, don’t be angry! Show us your stones… What a lot of carnelians! We could get a whole sack of them in just a few days. Carnelians aren’t highly valued anymore, another example of the wisdom of human experience that’s been forgotten with the passage of time. It used to be that all of Near Asia valued this stone as much as the most precious gems. They made bracelets out of it, necklaces, buckles. And they believed that carnelians protect people against many diseases. Most curious of all, it turns out that this belief was not simple superstition. I recently learned…” the professor fell silent as he held the red stone up to the firelight.
“What did you learn, Matvei Andreyevich, tell us?” Tanya asked.
“It’s very simple: doctors are starting to test treatments using carnelian. It turns out that they almost always have some radioactivity – weak, you could even say negligible, equal to the total radioactivity in the human body. But it is specifically because there are only tiny traces of radium in carnelians that they have a beneficial effect on the nervous system, restoring some sort of equilibrium in it, or something like that – I’m no expert.”
“Radium?” I was suddenly transfixed by a vague hunch, and thoughts of electrical discharges, glowing inscriptions, and orange-greenish paints began to swirl through my mind. I leapt to my feet impatiently, but immediately got a hold of myself and hurriedly took out a pack of cigarettes.
“What’s come over you, Ivan Timofeyevich? It’s as if something just stung you,” the professor asked in surprise. “But perhaps it’s time to sleep. Let’s get an early start tomorrow – we’ll probably finish digging out the entrance. You two do as you please, but Vyachik and I are turning in.”
Tanya and I were left alone. I nervously smoked my papirosa, waiting for the professor to fall asleep so we could take candles for our nocturnal investigation into the secrets of the Nur-i-Desht observatory.
Finally, Tanya got two candles and I grabbed a heavy cro
wbar from under the pile of tools.
“What’s that for?” Tanya looked perplexed.
“It’ll come in handy. We might have to get a rock out of the way or dislodge a slab.”
Below, in the stony caverns, total darkness reigned. We felt our way down the familiar path without lighting any candles. Turning to the right, into the slit-like doorway, we reached the niche in the stairway. Tanya let out a cry: a large panel weakly but distinctly shone with a string of Kufic letters. The same sort of golden yellow string of glowing letters extended up and down the arch over the stairway.
“I see,” I thought out loud. “There isn’t much light here during the day…”
“Meaning?” Tanya asked impatiently.
“Wait and ask me after I solve the whole puzzle. Let’s go up, to the quadrant. We’ll probably find more traces of glowing inscriptions… Wait! Give me a candle. Let’s have a look in here.”
I recalled the mysterious glow inside the base of the astronomical tower that I had seen on the first day and decided to try getting inside. Using the crowbar, I started to carefully pry away a stone that was firmly fused into the masonry above a narrow ventilation slot. After some persistent effort, the stone began to yield. I pressed harder and, after maneuvering the stone toward me, I freed it from the masonry. The second gave way more easily. There was now an opening large enough for my head and an arm to hold a candle.
The candle’s flame illuminated the tower’s rounded, narrow interior, which extended far upward into the darkness. To the left of the hole I had broken through was a broad, rough-hewn stone supporting a large, wide-necked vessel covered in a thick layer of dust, its glaze faintly glimmering through the grime. Based on the vase’s shape, even I could tell it was old.
“The vase, Tanya, the vase!” I cried, and stood aside so she could look into the hole.
“It’s too tight to squeeze through. How will we get it?” she asked, suppressing an excited gasp.
“Just a moment.”
Inspired by the discovery, I quickly managed to remove another two stones. Once inside the tower I hurriedly drew back: to the right of the stone that supported the vase and behind it gaped the darkness of a well. Narrow steps spiraled down to a ledge inside the tower. I handed the vase to Tanya through the hole and said:
“Wait for me, Tanya. I’m going down.”
“No, no, I’ll go with you: who knows what’s there…” She became flustered and fell silent.
Our eyes met, and I… In short, I climbed down, keeping my hands against the wall for support. I then helped Tanya, who was right behind me.
The well was not deep. In fact, it turned out not to be a well at all, but an uneven, slightly sloped passage cut into the rock face. A chill penetrated our light clothing. But rather than the cold, stagnant air of a dungeon, this air was pure and fresh, like the ozone-rich air at the top of a mountain. At a depth of several meters, the passage widened into a large, rugged cave with pitted walls grooved with narrow furrows trailing off in all directions. I already knew what to look for: here and there in the cracks of siliceous shale and quartzite and at the bottom of the furrows, there were small ochreous lemon-yellow and orange blotches.
“And here’s where they mined the paints, Tanya! But they were no ordinary paints.”
We climbed back up. Over Tanya’s objections, I committed sacrilege: I carried away the vase without waiting for morning. Pressing the heavy vase to my chest, I stepped cautiously, afraid of tripping. Near the portico we put down our precious find and slowly circled the building. It turned out I was right: we discovered the glow of lettering in several other places as well. The quadrant’s arc was also embellished with glowing strokes.
After climbing down to the stream, we carefully removed the vessel’s lid. There was nothing but dust inside. We then washed the vase on the outside, silently carried it to the tent, and placed it by the head of the professor’s cot, gleefully anticipating how surprised and stunned he’d be in the morning.
“Well, now tell me!” Tanya whispered into my ear. “I’m not going to be able to sleep anyway until I find out.”
Moving away from the tent, we settled down at the edge of the stream, which was running into the dark steppe with a melodious babble.
“As it turns out, it’s all very simple, Tanya. There’s a deposit of uranium ore here, which means there’s radium. These yellow spots are uranium ochers. They’re used in ceramics for a long-lasting glaze with vibrant and pure colors: orange, greenish yellow, olive. Uranium ores are found in incrustations and in the cracks of quartzites and were used even back in antiquity, but radium – radium! – there were probably traces of it, along with the uranium, in the siliceous beds of light-colored quartzites. And I believe that the entire observatory hill, which is composed of these quartzites, emanates radium. Quartzites should be weakly radioactive. Radium salts, when mixed with other minerals, can make unusually durable luminous paints. Today, these luminous compounds have many uses, especially in warfare. It turns out that the ancient astronomers also knew this secret and, perhaps, the very name “Nur-i-Desht” – “Light of the Desert” – also comes from the strange phenomena at the observatory. There hasn’t been a lot of research into radium yet. We know that it ionizes air, builds up electricity and ozone, kills microbes, and can neutralize toxins. Now I understand the mystery behind the exceptionally joyous effect this place has: a huge bed of radioactive quartzites, not encased under other rocks, has created a large field of weak radiation, apparently at a level optimally beneficial to the human body. Think back on what the professor was saying about carnelians. And today, with no wind, there was more than the usual buildup of radium. You and I immediately noticed that tonight. Quite an unexpected and interesting discovery, isn’t it?” And I placed my hand on top of hers.
“Yes it is,” Tanya said coldly and quickly stood up. “Well, we should get to sleep. It’s already late.”
A bit puzzled by Tanya’s sudden standoffishness, I stayed at the riverbank. All my thoughts whirled around my unexpected discovery. I continued to find more and more evidence confirming my theory and spent a long time sitting in the darkness. Finally, I began to lose my way in the labyrinths of chemistry and wandered off to bed.
I awoke to the sound of the professor’s loud cries as he called out to us. The vase was taken out into the light. Bright orange, brown, and olive-colored stripes ran up and down it, with a pattern of velvety greenish-black glowing enamel in between. The glaze’s exquisite tones could only have been achieved using uranium compounds – yet another confirmation of my night-time discovery in the blinding light of day!
When I shared all my ideas with the archeologist, his joyous excitement was a sight to behold! I added that the radium emanation could explain the greater clarity of the air immediately above the observatory.
“Now you’re going a bit far,” the professor objected. “But as for our state, I completely agree. This is not just a place of light, but a place of joy. But why is our Tanya sad today? What happened?”
“Nothing, Matvei Andreyevich, I’m just fine.”
After taking a second look at the mine, we got back to work on the stairway. By the end of the day we had managed to clear a small opening, and we took turns crawling into it. There was a cavern there with several rooms. I’m not sure what the archeologist saw there, but it seemed to me that the cavern was just as empty as all the ones I had seen before.
A sunset wind raced across the steppe; clouds of pink dust rose above the silver-gray carpet of wormwood. The professor and Vyachik walked ahead, while Tanya, lost in thought, slowed her pace, lagging behind. I caught up to her and took her by the hand.
“What’s wrong, Tanya? You’re always so cheerful, lively, and suddenly… It seems to me you’ve changed since our discovery yesterday.”
The young woman looked me squarely in the face.
“I don’t know whether or not you’ll understand, but I’ll say it anyway… Nur-i-Desht truly is a place of
joy. And I thought that joy was inside me, from me, that I was strong, free, and happy. And then you came along…” she hesitated, “stern, withdrawn, scorched by the flames of war. And you also became serene and joyous… And then it turns out that the only reason for all this is radium... So if it hadn’t been for radium,” her voice dropped almost to a whisper, “we wouldn’t have had the amazing enchantment of these days at the ancient observatory.”
Tanya turned away, tore her hand from mine, and ran down the hill. I followed her slowly, pausing to survey the ruins of Nur-i-Desht.
“Light of the desert – yes, without doubt, light both for my soul and for the desert. It won’t be fleeting; the joy of my days at the Nur-i-Desht observatory will always be there!”
Once again, as we had many times before, Tanya and I were sitting outside the tents by the campfire as it was burning out. The golden glow of the ancient vase radiated beside us, a shining chalice of bygone but undying human hopes.
“Dear Tanya,” I said. “Here, my heart has come back to life, and it has opened… to you. Who knows? Maybe the scientific advances of the future will offer a deeper understanding of the effect radioactive substances have on us. And who’s to say that we aren’t under the influence of many more radiations – cosmic rays at the very least. Up there,” I stood and reached toward the starry sky, “all sorts of energy could be streaming, emanating from the dark depths of space… the particles of distant stellar worlds.”
Tanya rose and made an impulsive movement toward me. Her clear eyes reflected the ashen starlight.
In the heights above us, piercing the glistening clouds of the Milky Way, shone Cygnus the Swan, stretching out its long neck in eternal flight toward the future.
First published in Russian: 1944
Translation by Nora Seligman Favorov
* * *
1. Kufic writing is an Arabic script distinguished by wide geometric letters linked together.
Red Star Tales Page 22