Weekly KR Highlight
From Volume XXII, Number 2, Spring 2000
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin
CAUCASUS
Translated from Russian by Graham Hettlinger
(Part 2 of 2)
We found a pristine spot surrounded by plane trees and blooming shrubs, pomegranates, mahoganies, and magnolias. The black trunks of the cypresses stood out sharply among the other trees, and palm trees towered above the forest canopy.
I liked to get up early and walk in the forested hills while she slept until seven, when we usually drank tea. The sun was already strong when I went out; a fresh-smelling mist would slowly rise and burn in a blue radiance while I walked, the timeless white of mountain snow shining above the steep slopes. Returning home, I passed through the village bazaar, where the heat was already heavy, the air smelled of burning dung, and the crowd seethed around the merchants with their saddle horses and their mules. In the morning different mountain tribes came down to the bazaar, and the Circassian women seemed to float along the ground in their long, dark robes and red slippers. Occasionally, I’d catch their eyes—fleeting, bird-like glances from faces wrapped in black.
Later we went to the beach, which was always empty, and swam and lay in the sun until lunch. Then we ate fried fish with fruit and nuts, drank white wine. In the afternoons, we closed the window shutters; joyful strips of light sloped through their cracks into the warm twilight that gathered under the tiled roof.
When the heat lifted and we opened our window, we could see a portion of the sea between the cypresses that stood below us. It was violet, and it lay so still that one could believe there would be no end to this beauty, this peace.
At dusk brilliant clouds often drifted in from the sea, and they burned so beautifully that she would lie on the ottoman with a scarf of gauze across her eyes and weep: two weeks, three weeks, then Moscow once again.
The nights were warm and thick. Fireflies drifted like topaz in the murky dark; the songs of tree toads rang like small glass bells. When our eyes adjusted, we could see the stars and the mountain crest, and trees we’d overlooked in daylight stood out sharply above the village. All night the muffled beating of a drum rose from the dukhan, mingling with howls full of joy and hopelessness, as if there is nothing but a single, endless song.
Near our house a clear, bright stream flowed down a ravine to the sea. How wonderfully the falling water flashed, scattering itself like glass among the rocks at that secret hour when the moon comes from behind the mountains and the woods like a divinity and looks down watchfully.
Sometimes at night dark clouds came down from the mountains, and vicious storms broke out. Every lightning blast made the forest light up like a fantastic, green abyss before us, then vanish in the dark as thunder crashed across the sky. . . . Baby eagles awoke in the rain and cried like cats, a snow leopard roared and jackals yelped. Once an entire pack of jackals came to our lit window—they were always drawn to buildings in the storms. We opened the window and looked down at them, and they stood in the shimmering downpour, yelping—as if they wanted us to help . . . . She wept with joy as she watched.
He searched for her in Gelendzhik, in Gagry, and in Sochi. On the morning after his arrival in Sochi, he swam in the ocean, shaved, dressed in clean clothes. He had breakfast on the restaurant terrace at his hotel, drank a bottle of champagne and coffee with Chartreuse, slowly smoked a cigarette. Then he went back to his room, lay down on the couch, put a pistol to each of his temples, and fired.
––November 12, 1937