View from Another Shore : European Science Fiction

by Rottensteiner, Franz(Author)

He had already come quite a distance along the Alma, he realized,

  recognizing the path even though it was now so overgrown with

  thickets that it required intense concentration to keep on the trail.

  Far below the villages merged with the olive trees and vineyards

  and the whole valley took on the colour of rough-hewn stone. He

  began to feel a strong desire to climb as high as possible. He was alone

  among the indestructible, eternal stones, and there was an indestruc-

  tible, eternal silence all around him.

  But not inside him! He still felt the same foreboding and was

  beginning to sense an impending evil that it would be impossible to

  evade—or to endure.

  Like a horse nervously drumming his hoofs, the soldier kicked the

  ground several times, brushing his foot against the stone on which he

  had placed his weapons. The sword clanked. He fastened it to his

  waistband, repacked the rest of his equipment, and put his knapsack

  on his back.

  The walking was easier now, and as he strode along he reflected

  that impatience, as wise men so truly say, is closely related to

  rashness. If only he had taken the Sciron road! He would have

  joined up with some caravan or other and told the merchants how

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  Vsevolod Ivanov

  he had dyed garments for all the monarchs of the East. They would

  have welcomed him eagerly, glad to have the protection of a soldier

  on their journey, and in the evenings they would have regaled him

  with big, thick slices of juicy mutton. At night, warmed by the

  campfire, he would have felt as relaxed as if he’d just spent a day

  in the marketplace.

  But here, even though it was daytime, he felt anxiety, as if the

  dome of the night sky were hanging overhead. Suddenly remember-

  ing the dyestuff, he asked himself a question: ‘Are you really such a

  skilled dyer?’ Now that he was so close to Corinth he wasn’t sorry he

  had spent the last of his money on a tiny flask containing three grains

  of the precious purple powder. He opened the flask and began to tint a

  bit of cloth torn from the four-cornered cloak slung over his left

  shoulder. The hair on his arms ended up the colour of blood and the

  cloak, to his surprise, turned a pumice grey. What the—Wasn’t this

  the tinting compound the dye-masters at Tyre had sold him? Had he

  paid them so many drachmas for nothing?

  In his mind’s eye he saw the cellar with the wide, low vats of

  steaming purple; the glassy-eyed, dissipated-looking master dyers

  circling around the vats; the two slaves swaying rhythmically at the

  door, the clay squealing between their toes as they kneaded it with

  their feet . . . Damn it, the Tyrian dyers had cheated him, all right!

  Down in that dingy little cellar they had succeeded in tricking a man

  who had been to Cassander’s court and to the four corners of the

  earth.

  And here he was on his way to Corinth—Corinth, the cruel city of

  hucksters and seamen—so near and yet so far away. What awaited

  him there?

  Both to keep his hopes up and to overcome more quickly his

  unexplainable sense of fear, he speeded up his pace. In the end, it

  seemed to him, all memory of his journey would be lost in oblivion.

  Cheered by this thought, he looked upwards and noticed a huge grey

  rock, tinged violet at its base and shaped like a tree stump. Quickly

  skirting around it, he found himself in a shady glen overgrown with

  oak trees. Far below, where the oaks came to an end, there was an

  open field, and in the stony area below that, a roaring torrent hurtled

  downward, its green waters churning up an angry white foam. The

  oaks, the field, the stones, the green waters were all baking in the

  heat of the sun.

  The path finally disappeared, swallowed up by the oaks. The trees

  were close to each other, offering a dense shade, and as the soldier

  Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus

  221

  walked through it he felt as uncomfortable as he would have at the

  bottom of a constricted, foul-smelling ravine. The roaring of the

  torrent was relentless and deafening. Overhead, the solid, unmoving

  oaks stretched upward as far as the eye could see, while the short,

  dried-up branches on the lower part of their trunks caught at the

  soldier’s cloak, sword, knapsack and water bottle.

  Stooped over so that his knapsack began slipping off his shoulder,

  neither willing nor able to stop long enough to adjust it, the soldier

  whispered a prayer and ran out of the grove into the field, beyond

  which still more rocks could be seen.

  No longer even trying to find the path, he leaped over the stones in

  his way, stumbled and fell. Some of the stones tore loose and crashed

  downward. As soon as the stones came to rest he braced his foot in a

  hole, but the sides of the hole began to give and he jumped out of it in

  desperation. His hands and legs were covered with scratches and cuts.

  Letting his feet do the thinking—the feet that had crossed the

  Euphrates at Zevgem and endured the march from the Euxine Sea

  to the farthest boundary of Fergana—he was soon completely lost.

  He began sweating profusely, a pungent, burning sweat. He

  couldn’t think. His normally keen powers of observation were gone

  and he was barely able to see more than ten spear-lengths ahead. The

  only thing that kept him moving forward was the training he had

  received as a soldier of Alexander the Great, for he had been taught to

  advance in all circumstances and against any odds, a virtue that every

  human being should strive to attain—even the gods envy it.

  The sun, admiring the submissiveness of the rocks, the fields, and

  the oak trees, as well as the soldier’s singular nobility of spirit and

  perseverance, withdrew its deadening, vicious heat, which eats away

  human strength as persistently as water undermines a wall, leaving

  soft, moist, violet shadows behind. Refreshed by a drink of water, the

  soldier took heart. ‘By the gods’, he exclaimed; ‘I’ll find that path yet.’

  All of a sudden, from just behind the very rock he was about to step

  past, he heard a sound—a weird, peculiar sound that was completely

  out of place in the mountains. It was something like the whirring,

  humming noise of a discus flying through the air—a sound the soldier

  knew well, for he had been taught discus throwing, not only for the

  games, but also to build up strength for hurling missiles at the enemy.

  He leaned against the rock and listened.

  The sound became louder, came closer, and suddenly, with a

  tremendous crash as if it had smashed through something solid, it

  stopped completely—disappeared.

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  Vsevolod Ivanov

  A teasing silence enveloped the rocks—a piercing, burning silence

  that was even more alarming than the sound.

  The soldier felt a sudden need to hear his own voice, to shout out

  loud the way he and all the other soldiers had shouted when they

  were hauling a siege engine or charging the enemy.

  Finally coming to a decision, he circled around to the other side o
f

  the rock. There was nothing there but a field, much the same as all

  the others he had passed. All at once it seemed as if he had been

  enveloped by a wind. He shuddered, remembering what the old man

  had said about the son of Aeolus. The very thought thundered around

  him like a blast from a huge trumpet. He sat down on a stone, gasping

  hoarsely.

  After a while he climbed past still another rock and crossed still

  another field. His sword drawn, and calling on all the gods, including

  Aeolus, he made his way up to the rocks at the opposite end of the

  field and rounded them cautiously, pausing, just before he emerged

  from the cover they gave him, to sharpen his sword against the side of

  a stone.

  Suddenly the noise began again. Only this time it wasn’t anything

  like the sound of a metal discus hurtling through the air. It was more

  like the roaring of ocean waves, which begin far out at sea, then break

  on the beach, and end up playing gently with the pebbles they find

  there. The noise was coming from somewhere up above him,

  although the sky seemed as serene as before. Intensifying with such

  speed and strength that the soldier had to jump out of its way, the

  noise swept past the rock, then bounced back off some stones like a

  handle flying off a knife that has been brandished too forcefully.

  Polyander was frightened, but having been a soldier he resolved to

  meet his enemy face to face, deriving a certain amount of comfort

  from this decision, even though he was staggering from fear and

  barely able to move his rubbery legs when he began working his way

  around to the other side of the rock.

  There was no field behind this one. Instead, a small valley came

  into view, and in the valley, moving swiftly away from the moun-

  tains, a cheerful little brook with oak and fruit trees growing along its banks. Off in the distance the brook abruptly ran into a river, whose

  sound was barely audible to him.

  Alongside the brook, Polyander noticed, there was a road, shaded

  by a lane of oak trees. It was like no road he had ever seen before. Its

  surface was the colour of wet cork, and it was worn into the stony

  ground like a gutter or an infinitely long, narrow grooved channel,

  Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus

  223

  beginning somewhere high in the mountains and ending up far below

  at the edge of a glen, in a small marsh that looked as if it had been

  trampled up by the hooves of a gigantic horse.

  In among the oaks that lined this grooved channel, the shadows of

  their branches darkening his broad, muscular back, there appeared a

  hairy giant with huge, powerful shoulders, an animal hide wrapped

  around his waist. He was pushing a round black boulder the size of

  three full-grown men—it was worn smooth and polished as brilliantly

  as a pebble from the sea. The giant was breathing deeply and his huge,

  sagging belly, looking something like a wine cask, now rammed

  against the stone, then pulled itself away from it. His toes dug into

  the bed of the stream and Polyander noted that they had worn out

  footholds for themselves.

  ‘By the gods’, he said to himself in amazement, ‘I’ve seen a lot of

  strange things, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. This

  giant, whoever he is, shoves that boulder around as easily as a storm

  at sea tosses a ship.’

  Meanwhile, the giant heard Polyander approaching. He turned his

  huge, red-bearded face towards the soldier and spoke, though clearly

  it was something of an effort for him to do so.

  ‘Praise the gods, a traveller. G-g-glad! Go into the hut. G-g-glad! See

  to the fire. Serve the beans. Mix the wine. G-g-glad!’ Setting the beat

  with the word ‘glad’ each time he braced his foot in one of the

  depressions his toes had worn into the rocky ground, the giant kept

  pushing the stone forward.

  ‘Who are you, mighty one?’, Polyander asked.

  ‘I’ll be back soon’, the giant answered, then growled, ‘G-g-glad!

  Behind the hut—the well. Go down into it. On one side—a hole. G-g-

  glad! In the hole—snow. Mix some with the wine. Oh, I’m g-g-glad.’

  He glanced back at Polyander again, and the soldier took this

  opportunity to study his face. It was old and wrinkled, but possessed

  that rarely seen confidence that comes from fullness of years and

  suggests, more than anything, extraordinary strength used skilfully

  and with patience.

  Backing away, Polyander moved towards the hut; the giant kept

  pushing the stone, which, as if on a pivot, rolled quickly upwards,

  diminishing in size as it did so and increasing in brilliance, so that it seemed afterwards as if the giant had flung an ingot of burning

  orange-yellow metal at the bright blue sky.

  Inside the hut Polyander found a big pot filled with beans—they

  were already tender. He rekindled the charred embers in the hearth

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  Vsevolod Ivanov

  and put in some firewood. Next he found the well near the hut and

  went down into it, walking with care on the cold, wet steps.

  Slightly above the level of the water he found two recesses in the

  wall. There were some earthenware jars of wine in the first; the

  second was solidly packed with compressed snow. Polyander tried to

  lift the nearest wine jar onto his shoulder, getting it up with some

  difficulty and in the process tipping it sideways. Soon the whole area

  began to smell of wine.

  ‘By the gods, I think I’ll stick with him for a while’, Polyander said

  to himself.

  It was hard work, but he managed to carry the smallest wine jar up

  to the hut, then went back for the snow. In it he found some wild goat

  meat wrapped in the leaves of various aromatic herbs. He put the

  meat into the pot with the beans and mixed the wine with some

  water, seasoning it a bit with some spices from the precious handful

  he’d brought back from the East.

  He had barely finished preparing the wine when he again heard

  that terrible noise—the combined whistling and droning that sounded

  like a metal discus hurled by a giant—only this time it was much

  closer. Polyander rushed out of the hut. The branches of an over-

  hanging oak cast quivering shadows across the threshold. Far away,

  bobbing up and down in a cloud of iridescent dust, a round boulder

  was rushing downwards in its grooved channel. The massive stone

  sphere ran to the end of its appointed course and slammed into the

  marsh, splattering grassygreen mud in all directions.

  Shading his eyes with one of his big hands, the giant glanced at the

  sun, then waddled down the mountain. As he drew near the hut he

  wiped his hands on the goat skin wrapped around his hips and smiled

  awkwardly.

  ‘Are you glad, traveller?’, he asked in a hoarse bass voice. ‘I’m

  g-g-glad! G-glad. Where you from? Where?’

  Polyander felt a tenseness in the air, so he responded cautiously.

  ‘By the gods, isn’t this the way to Corinth?’

  ‘To Corinth?’, the giant asked with some effort. ‘G-g-glad. To

  Corinth.’
r />   He passed his guest some water and watched as the soldier washed

  his feet and hands. The giant’s broad, square face was furrowed with

  wrinkles from a life of peasant troubles and hard work, and he appeared

  to be deep in thought, as if wondering what a Corinth might be. And

  seeing this, the soldier realized that it might not be as easy as he’d

  expected to come to a friendly understanding with the giant.

  Sisyphus, the Son of Aeolus

  225

  ‘To Corinth! I’m going to see my family!’, the soldier said in a loud

  voice, as if talking to a deaf man.

  ‘To Corinth? G-glad! Sit down. Eat.’

  They ate the beans in silence. Then the host, apparently indifferent

  to the heat, scooped the goat meat out of the pot with his bare hands

  and placed it on a board. He salted it liberally and pointed to the wine.

  ‘Salt? G-glad! We’ll drink plenty.’

  Clasping his stomach with his hands he began laughing. It was clear

  that talking did not come easy to him and that the words he had just

  uttered had given him a great deal of pleasure—he was intoxicated by

  them just as if he had been drinking strong wine.

  After they had wiped their hands clean with some rolled-up soft

  bread, the host pulled himself over to the jar of wine and melted

  snow. His obvious delight with the aroma of the spices was another

  sign that he hadn’t been in human company for quite a while. Noting

  this, the soldier finished the meat, greedily crunching the bones with

  his strong teeth. He was pleased with himself for having brought the

  giant’s long period of solitude to an end, and this gave his spirits a lift.

  ‘By the gods’, he said, raising his cup, ‘we’ll have a good time

  together!’

  From the old days he knew all the best wines—Phasian, Lesbian,

  Naxian, even the famous Chian—and this was the best he had ever

  tasted. He was effusive in expressing his delight.

  ‘Glad!’, said his host, giving him some more wine from the pitcher.

  ‘G-glad. Drink. G-glad!’

  He himself drank little, however. For him it was pleasure enough

  just to see a human being. The wine soon made the soldier garrulous,

  and he wanted to tell the giant about all that he had won and lost and

  squandered in his time.

  ‘Is it really so long since anyone else has passed by here?’

  ‘Long time’, his host answered, smiling broadly. ‘I’m glad.’