near, for his disquiet was growing by the second and had become
almost unbearable. He had never been wounded in his life, had never
had to have an operation. He didn’t know that the same anxiety and
suffering had marked the passing of those thousands of men whose
death he had planned and that in his most recent project millions of
people were schedule for the same experience.
The inventor watched the dying general for a while, then rose and
searched the rubble of the barracks for his suitcase. He took his fins
and walked slowly to the shore. The tank droned in the distance: he
did not turn around, for his own life was a matter of indifference to
him. Within himself he felt only a terrible emptiness—the kind of
emptiness a man can feel only when he has done everything in life
that he wanted to.
*
*
*
*
*
The colonel was chasing the tank. The tank increased its speed, and
now the colonel realized it was all up: he was winded, his lungs were
on fire, his heart was racing so madly that the tremors shook his
whole body. He staggered ten yards further, then stopped, exhausted.
The tank also stopped. It was like a miracle.
Immediately the desire to live flamed up again in the colonel’s
consciousness and gave him new strength. He reeled forward a bit,
then stopped again, for he realized that here where there was no
The Proving Ground
213
cover, the tank could crush him with its treads. He groaned in despair,
tried to dispel the thought, to force it from his brain. He shook his
head, squeezed his eyes closed, and heard the motor of the steel
colossus roar once more.
*
*
*
*
*
The inventor swam with even strokes, intending to reach the next
island. He gave no thought to what might happen after that. His mind
was still filled with the endless arguments in smoke-filled workrooms,
the opinions of every possible authority, directions, cost estimates,
plans. In his ears he could still hear shell bursts and the groans of the dying. But gradually all that receded.
Murmuring billows flowed over him. He lowered his head and saw
stripes of sunlight, moving with the movement of the swell that was
bright at the surface but darker down below. Schools of mackerel
passed effortlessly beneath him, turned suddenly as if on command,
and disappeared into the pearl-green glimmer that suffused the upper
reaches of the water.
Pompous and slow, jellyfish swam by like brightly coloured parasols
adorned with old-fashioned fringes. Then a stream, like a strange
silver ribbon with all its parts moving simultaneously, suddenly
showed amid the water. The swimmer drew near and stopped. The
stream was made up of a vast number of some kind of large fish which
he didn’t recognize. There were thousands, perhaps hundreds of
thousands of them. They appeared out of the blue darkness, gleaming
and twinkling with unusual purples and reds, numberless, silent, in
dense swarms, turned at the identical spot, and disappeared again into
the bottomless depths.
How many thousands of miles lay behind them? Perhaps they had
come from the forested shores of Africa or perhaps from amid the
weeds of the Sargasso Sea and through the old pirate waters past the
Antilles, Haiti and Puerto Rico? Where were they heading now, and
why had they chosen just this spot in the ocean as their turning
point? Why were they so beautiful in the immensity of their
luminescent train?
The inventor was reminded that his own children were dead; but
there were other children. Eager eyes would feast on the marvels of
ocean, forests and cities. Perhaps there was something worth living
for after all?
Suddenly he wondered whether he had swum far enough away
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Sever Gansovsky
from the island. Could his own tank still reach him with a shell? The
inventor raised his head above the water, and instantaneously a
penetrating whistle rent the air.
5
At night, ants and crabs went to work on the corpses. They
disappeared when the day grew hot, but the next night they were
back, working so swiftly that on the second morning only white bones
were left on the sand. A typhoon began to blow and reached full
strength on the third day after the destruction of the commission. The
first blasts of wind whipped away the remnants of the barracks; the
builders had erected them in the open, not in a hollow as the Indians
did their huts. The palms were bent double; the frenzied storm
levelled the dunes. Then the storm shifted to the shore of the
mainland; the palms straightened up once more and, of all that the
soldiers had brought, only the tank was left, half covered with sand.
The villagers returned. The children climbed over the strange
colossus until they grew tired of the sport. Inside the tank the
hidden mechanical brain waited to be awakened again by the
impulses of hate and fear.
translated by MATTHEW J. O’CONNELL
RUSSIA
Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus
VSEVOLOD IVANOV
The soldier recognized his native mountains the moment he caught
sight of them.
In the midday light they were a gloomy, brimstone grey, cut here
and there by deep, orange-coloured ravines. From where he was
standing, he could even see the Sciron red running along the steep
southern face of the mountain range. It was curved at one end like a
shepherd’s crook—at least that’s what it had looked like to Polyander
the soldier when he was a boy, and that’s what it still looked like to
him. The Sciron was a road with a terrible reputation, people
travelling on it were always coming across pools of blood and other
omens of impending trouble.
More trouble was the last thing Polyander wanted. Worn out
prematurely, his complexion yellowish and wasted, he’d had his fill
of trouble.
He had sworn an oath to serve King Alexander of Macedon—more
commonly known at Alexander the Great—and he had served him.
And then he had served King Cassander, a cruel, brutal, ambitious
man who seized power and soon as Alexander was dead, imprisoning
the widow and son of the conqueror to whom the gods and arms of
the whole world had paid homage. Despite this Polyander had loyally
turned his silver-studded shield against Cassander’s enemies. What a
fool he was! He’d wanted to win Cassander’s favour. They say faith
can move mountains. As things turned out, though, even the biggest
mountain would have been easier to move than Cassander. Of all his
men Cassander most distrusted Polyander—he was terrified by the
mighty shield, the ruddy, muscular neck, the powerful voice so
admired by the other soldiers. When Polyander was barely forty
years old, Cassander declared him a supernumerary, unfit for further
service in the light infantry, and sent him home without pensio
n or
mustering-out pay.
And now the mountains stood before him—and behind them his
home, the prosperous city of Corinth. The soldier gazed up at the
mountains, wondering how his native city would greet him and
which of his relatives he would find alive. It was years since he’d
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Vsevolod Ivanov
been home. He’d been young and strong then, but now his wounds
and battle scars were considered a liability and he’d been discharged
from King Cassander’s army—now all his strength was gone.
‘For whom are my wounds a liability? By the gods, for you, my
king, I swear it. One day little Alexander will grow up to be as warlike
as his father, and you’re afraid of that, aren’t you? Veterans like me
are just what he’ll need. All you can think about, my king, is keeping
Alexander the Great’s conquests for yourself, but you’ll never be able
to keep his son down, Cassander.’
While muttering to himself like this he was keeping a wary eye on
the Sciron road. He really didn’t want to climb it. He’d had enough
trouble as a soldier. He’d had enough of omens. All he wanted now
was to lead the peaceful life of a solid citizen—the life of a cloth-dryer, for instance.
Suddenly, from the old days, he remembered a short-cut to
Corinth: a side path, more difficult walking, perhaps, but at least
there weren’t any omens and portents of doom along the way.
‘Hey, you!’
Some peasants from a nearby village, working in a field beside the
road, were watching him respectfully. Because of the heat he had
taken off his armour, but his chest was so broad that it looked as if he
were still wearing it. His arms were spread wide, for he was
accustomed to carrying a shield and spear and to wearing armour
that was a little too big for him, so much so that he had even got into
the habit of sleeping flat on his back with his mouth hanging open.
His eyes, like those of all seasoned travellers, had a quizzical expres-
sion: they were greenish, about the same shade as mowed grass about
to turn into hay—dry and mature, but retaining something of the
colour and aroma of youth.
He stood there like a statue, posed majestically as befitted a soldier
of Alexander the Great, who had marched with his king from the
borders of Thrace to icy Lake Mesta, where it is always winter; to the
Caucasus Mountains, the end of the world, where the Kingdom of
Darkness begins; to Memphis, Damascus, Suez and Ectabana and the
rockbound hill fortresses of Persia; and to the banks of the Hydaspes
and the Indus marshes, where he had held his ground against the
narrow-eyed, strong-tusked fighting elephants of King Porus of India.
Wishing the peasants a good harvest, and expressing his hope that
Zeus and Athene would help them, he asked for a drink. An alert-
looking fourteen-year-old girl, with thick, badly cut brown hair,
brought him a pitcher of warm water. There was a smell of grain in
Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus
217
the air from the nearby threshing floor. A mule, puffing quietly, stood
twitching his tail. A well-fed village girl, whose round, full thighs
were a testimonial to the nearness of the rich commercial city of
Corinth, bent over and resumed her work, quickly and skilfully
separating the full, shiny ears of grain and putting them into baskets.
Another girl was stacking the baskets, notched sides southwards, on
the deep-violet beaten-earth threshing floor. A light dust rose above
them, kicked up by some approaching pack mules and a couple of
heavy, solid-wheeled threshing carts pulled by oxen.
Returning the pitcher, Polyander spoke again:
‘By the gods, the girls of Corinth are as hospitable and good-looking
as ever. The artists are right to show them off so often on vases, in
bronze and on columns adorned with acanthus leaves.’
The peasants smiled at this; the girl who had given him the water,
struck dumb with amazement, began to suck her thumb.
‘I want to get to Corinth as quickly as possible’, he told them. ‘I’ve
had enough of fame and fortune—now it’s the peaceful life for me. I
have some genuine purple dye—it comes from shellfish. I saw them
myself from a boat, I swear it by the gods, and the Phoenicians
themselves taught me how to dye fabrics purple. I learned from the
best dye-masters of Tyre, Cos and Byzantium.’
He showed them his sinewy fingers, the long hairs of which were
dyed the colour of blood. The villagers shuddered and backed away in
fright, while an old man with a thick, bulbous nose spoke to him:
‘You asked about the Sciron road. There it is in front of you.’
‘Is it safe?’, asked Polyander.
‘Safer than a lot of other roads.’
‘In my time’, the soldier spoke reticently, ‘strong walkers in a hurry
used a short-cut. They turned off onto a side path called the Alma.
Mules and oxen couldn’t manage it, but my feet still remember the
way.’
The peasants glanced at each other. The soldier read the fear in
their faces.
‘Has there been a rockslide?’, he asked. ‘Has some new cliff been
discovered since my time, or have the gods blocked off the path with a
waterfall?’
His question was answered by the old man with the big nose.
‘It’s a bad place.’
‘Robbers?’, asked the soldier with a laugh, showing the peasants his
short throwing spear and his long, narrow sword with its silver-
studded ivory hilt. ‘Ha! Are there many of them? Ha-ha!’
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Vsevolod Ivanov
The old man scratched himself between his shoulders with a
hooked staff and somewhat reluctantly spoke again:
‘It’s a bad place. Take the Sciron road—it’s been years since anyone
has used the Alma path.’
‘Where are there more omens?’, the soldier asked with an air of
determination.
‘On the Sciron.’
‘Then what am I supposed to be afraid of?’
‘The son of Aeolus’, the old man answered, looking around
nervously.
The soldier began to laugh.
‘The son of Aeolus? The son of the god of the winds? What is he? A
breeze?’
‘You’ll see’, the old man answered, walking away. The other
peasants, afraid to listen in on a conversation about such a dangerous
subject, had already deserted the two men.
Purposely laughing out loud again, Polyander picked up his helmet
with its split horsehair plumes and his battered cuirass and backplate,
which were joined together by dented metal shoulder-pieces. He
noted sadly that moths had eaten away the felt lining. ‘But I can
still get a good price for my armour in Corinth. I’ll fix it up with a nice piece of Greek felt; it won’t be too hard to manage, although the truth
is that Greek felt isn’t worth a damn and all the thick, beautiful
Persian felt is gone. What if the moths are an omen?’
Grumbling, he hoisted his sun-warmed harness and weapons onto
his shoulders, and taking big strides, as if he
were eager to come face
to face with the danger, he headed for the Alma path.
As he walked along, his feet comfortably clad in cork-soled leather
sandals, the clanking of his weapons and armour reminded him of
marches and friends from the past, all long since swallowed up by
time as completely as a drowned sailor by the bottomless sea.
Leaving the village behind, he came upon a dried-up stream hidden
by some shrubbery. A few scrawny goats, standing on their hind legs,
were nibbling the leaves. The stream bed was strewn with dark
greyish-blue stones. Hanging motionlessly just overhead, a barely
perceptible mist exuded an evil, deathlike gloom. Some sand, stream-
ing down the steep banks of the stream, made a sound something like
someone using a knife to shave the bark off a tree. The soldier began
to feel uneasy. He stood watching the goats for a while; before very
long he started to get hungry.
He took a flat piece of bread from his knapsack. Nibbling at it with
Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus
219
his front teeth the way goats do, both to prolong the pleasure and to
give himself time to think things over, he shifted his gaze across the
bare, stony ground to the place where he should have been. ‘Why
didn’t I take the Sciron road?’, he asked himself. ‘Maybe I should turn
back. But as a soldier how can I, especially after bragging about
storming the hill fortresses of Persia? It would be dishonourable for a
soldier of Alexander the Great to do such a thing!’
He began reminiscing about the Alma path, which he had first
climbed some thirty years before—maybe even more. His uncle, then
young and powerful, had carried him on his shoulders. Uncle’s long,
thick hair had smelled of butter, his tunic had been wet, and the
young boy had leaned carefully on his sloping shoulders. Every once
in a while Uncle would turn around, glaring at the child with mock
seriousness, then shoving him a flat chunk of bread that smelled of
smoke and olive oil. In those days you never heard a bad word about
the Alma path, much less about the merciless son of Aeolus.
‘Why merciless? Since when? By the gods, who stuck him with a
tag like that—it’s such a damned painful word, it makes you sit up
and pay attention, like a tight collar on a dog!’
He stopped, rested his equipment on a rock, and looked downward
in annoyance.
View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction Page 35
