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provided him with some additional pretext for argument.
I believe he acquired this red sling to give his arm a soldierly,
partisan appearance. Whenever he was summoned by the management board he
would put his arm in its sling before leaving. Mounted on horseback with a
black sheepskin cloak draped over his shoulders and his arm in a red sling,
he certainly did have the rather dashing air of the partisan fighter.
All was well in the village, when suddenly it became known that the
chairman of the village Soviet had received an anonymous letter against
Crooked Arm. The letter declared that the planting of a tung tree on a grave
was an insult to this new industrial crop, a hint that the plant was of no
use to living collective farmers, and that its proper place was in the
village cemetery.
The chairman of the village Soviet showed this letter to the chairman
of the collective farm, who, they say, was properly scared by it, because
someone might think that he had given Crooked Arm the idea of transplanting
the tung tree to his own grave.
In those days I just couldn't understand why things had taken such a
threatening turn--after all, everyone had known before the letter was sent
that Crooked Arm had planted the tung tree on his grave. In those days I
didn't realise that a letter was a document, and a document had to be
presented on demand, had to be answered for.
To be sure, some people say that the chairman of the village Soviet
need not have passed it on, but that he had a grudge against Crooked Arm,
and that was why he showed it to the chairman of the farm.
In short, the letter was set in motion and one day a man arrived from
the district centre to find out the truth of the matter. Crooked Arm tried
to laugh it off, but, so they say, he had clearly lost his nerve because
afterwards he had a shave, put his arm in the red sling and went about the
village staring at it as if it was just about to blow up and the only thing
he and everyone else around could do would be to dodge the splinters.
"Now you've done it," said Mustafa, an old horseman, the friend and
eternal rival of Crooked Arm. "Now you'd better guzzle your tung apples and
jump into your grave, otherwise they'll pack you off to Siberia."
"I'm not afraid of Siberia. I'm afraid you'll step into my grave while
I'm away," Crooked Arm replied.
"In Siberia, they say, they ride on dogs," Mustafa suggested meanly.
"You'd better take a bridle with you and try breaking in a dog for
yourself."
The long-standing rivalry between Crooked Arm and Mustafa was over
horses and horsemanship. They both had their feats and failures behind them.
Crooked Arm had covered himself with undying glory by stealing a famous
stallion at a certain race meeting in full view of thousands of spectators
(personally, I doubt whether there were thousands). They say that Crooked
Arm had been mounted on such a wretched, broken-winded nag and had looked so
pathetic that when he asked the owner of the stallion permission to put his
famous race-horse through its paces, the latter had granted the permission
as a joke, because he was sure the stallion would throw Crooked Arm right
away and thus add still further to its renown.
Crooked Arm, they say, slithered awkwardly off his doleful jade and, as
he passed the reins to the owner of the stallion, said, "Let's count it that
we've swopped."
"Done," the owner replied, taking the reins from him.
"Whatever you do, don't let this one throw you first time, or he'll
trample you to death," Crooked Arm warned him, and went over to the
stallion.
"I'll be careful," the owner is said to have replied and, as soon as
Crooked Arm mounted the stallion, gave a sign to a lad standing in the
background, and the lad gave the stallion a tremendous whack with his whip.
The stallion reared and galloped off towards the River Kodor, and
Crooked Arm, they say, hung on at first like a drunken mullah on a galloping
donkey.
Everyone was expecting him to fall off, but he went on and on and the
owner's jaw began to drop as Crooked Arm reached the end of the field and,
instead of following the bend of the race-course, went careering on towards
the river. For another few minutes they hesitated, thinking the horse had
taken the bit between its teeth and he could not make it turn, but then they
realised that this was a robbery of quite unprecedented daring. Fifteen
minutes later a dozen horsemen were galloping in pursuit, but it was too
late.
Crooked Arm had leapt headlong down the cliff to the river and by the
time his pursuers reached the edge he was climbing out on the far bank; for
an instant, the stallion's wet crupper gleamed in the alders at the water's
edge. The bullets flew wide and no one dared take a flying leap down the
cliff. Since then the spot has been known as Crooked Arm Cliff. Crooked Arm
himself never told this story in my presence, but he allowed others to tell
it, listening with pleasure and making a few corrections. He would always
wink at Mustafa if he was present, and Mustafa would pretend not to be
listening, until in the end he could not refrain from trying to belittle or
ridicule the exploit.
Mustafa would say that a man with one arm shot through was disabled
anyway, so he had not risked all that much for the sake of his exploit. And
if he had jumped down the cliff he had done it, first, because he was scared
and, secondly, because there was nothing else he could do, since he would
have been shot dead in any case if he had been caught by his pursuers.
In short, there was a deep and long-standing rivalry between them. In
their young days they used to thresh it out at the races; now, in old age,
though they still kept horses, they solved their disputes theoretically, in
the course of which they would become involved in a jungle of
ominous-sounding riddles.
"If a man shoots at you from over there and you, say, are riding down
that path, where would you turn your horse at the sound of the shot--and,
mind you, there's not a single tree around?"
"Suppose you're galloping down a hill with someone chasing you. Ahead
on the right there's some scrub, and on the left there's a ravine. Where do
you turn your horse then?"
Such were the disputes these two men would hold as they trudged home
with hoes or axes on their shoulders, after a long day's work.
These disputes had been going on for many years, although it was a long
time since anyone had done any shooting round our way, and certainly not at
these old men for people had learned how to avenge an insult by safer
methods. And to one of these methods, namely, the anonymous letter, it is
now time for us to return.
The representative from the district centre tried to make the old man
say what his real purpose had been in moving the tung tree, and, above all,
to reveal who had instigated him to do so. Crooked Arm replied that no one
had instigated him, that he himself had suddenly wanted to have a tung tree
growing at his head when he lay dead and buried, because he had long since
taken a fancy to this plant that till recently had been quite unknown in our
district. The man from the centre did not believe him.
Then Crooked Arm confessed he had been relying on the poisonous
properties not only of the fruit but of the roots of the tree; he had been
hoping that its roots would kill all the grave worms and he would lie in
peace and cleanliness because he had had enough trouble from the fleas in
this world.
But at this point, they say, the man from the centre asked what he
meant by fleas. Crooked Arm replied that by fleas he means dog's fleas,
which should not be confused with poultry lice, which did not worry him in
the least, any more than buffalo ticks did. But if there was one thing that
he couldn't stand it was the horse flies, and if he did throw a couple of
handfuls of superphosphate under a horse's tail during the heat of the day,
it was no great loss to the collective farm and the horse had a rest from
the flies. The man from the centre realised that he couldn't draw blood
there either, so he went back to the subject of the tung.
In short, no matter what excuses Crooked Arm produced, things began to
look black for him. The next day he was not even summoned before the comrade
from the district centre. Ready for anything, he sat in the yard of the
management office in the shade of a mulberry tree and, keeping his arm in
the red sling all the time, smoked and waited for his fate to be decided.
Then it was, they say, that Mustafa turned up and walked straight into the
management office, where the chairman of the collective farm, the chairman
of the village Soviet and the man from the district centre were conferring
together. As he walked past Crooked Arm, he looked at him and said, "I've
thought of something. If it doesn't help, you'd better lie down quietly in
your grave, just as you are, with your sling on, and I'll shake some tung
fruit down on you."
Crooked Arm made no reply to these words. He merely glanced sadly at
his arm as much as to say that he was ready to put up with any amount of
suffering but why should his arm, which had already suffered enough from the
Menshevik's bullet, suffer again?
Mustafa had a great reputation with the local authorities for being the
shrewdest man on the farm. His house was the biggest and finest in the
village, so if any top people came to visit us they were promptly dispatched
to Mustafa's hospitable house.
What Mustafa had thought of was splendidly simple. The man from the
centre was an Abkhazian, and if a man is an Abkhazian, even if he has come
from Ethiopia, he is bound to have relatives in Abkhazia.
That night, apparently, Mustafa had secretly assembled all the old men
of the village at his house, dined them and wined them, and with their help
thoroughly investigated the family origins of the comrade from the district
centre. Careful and all-round analysis had shown quite clearly that the
comrade from the district centre was through his great aunt, once a town
girl and now living in the village of Merkheul, related by blood to my Uncle
Meksut. Mustafa was quite satisfied with the results of this analysis.
With this trump card in his pocket he marched past Crooked Arm into the
management office. They say that when Mustafa informed the comrade from the
district centre of this fact, the latter turned pale and began to deny his
being related to the great aunt from Merkheul village and particularly to
Uncle Meksut. But the trap had worked. Mustafa merely laughed at his denials
and said, "If he's not a relative of yours, why are you so pale?"
He said no more and left the office.
"What shall I do?" Crooked Arm asked when he saw Mustafa.
"Wait till evening," Mustafa replied.
"Make up your mind soon," Crooked Arm said, "or my arm will wither away
altogether in this sling."
"Till evening," Mustafa repeated, and walked off.
The fact of the matter was that in denying his relationship with Uncle
Meksut the comrade from the district centre had mortally insulted my uncle.
But Uncle Meksut kept his temper. Without saying a word to anyone he merely
saddled his horse and rode away to the village of Merkheul.
By evening he returned on his sweating mount, reined up at the
management office, and handed the bridle to Old Crooked Arm, who was still
waiting there in suspense. The chairman was standing on the veranda, smoking
and surveying Crooked Arm and the surrounding scenery.
"Come in," the chairman said at the sight of Uncle Meksut.
"Just a minute," Uncle Meksut replied and, before mounting the steps,
ripped the red sling off the old man's arm and tucked it without a word into
his pocket.
They say the old man just stood there with his arm suspended in midair,
as though unable to comprehend this symbolic gesture.
Uncle Meksut placed in front of the comrade from the district centre
the yellowed, crumbling birth certificate of his great aunt of Merkheul,
issued by the notary public's office of the Sukhumi Uyezd in the days before
the revolution. At the sight of this birth certificate the comrade from the
district centre, they say, again turned pale, but could no longer offer any
denials.
"Or shall I bring you your great aunt here over my saddle bow?" Uncle
Meksut asked him.
"You needn't do that," the comrade from the district centre answered
very quietly.
"Will you take your brief-case with you or put it in the safe?" Uncle
Meksut asked.
"I'll take it with me," the comrade replied.
"Come along then," Uncle Meksut said and they left the office.
That evening there was a party at Uncle Meksut's house and the whole
case was considered. The next morning after a long discussion in Uncle
Meksut's house a statement was drawn up in Russian-Caucasian officialese and
dictated to me personally.
"At last this parasite has come in useful," Crooked Arm said, when I
moved the inkstand towards me and sat poised to take the dictation.
The leaders of the collective farm discussed the statement with the
comrade from the district centre. Crooked Arm listened attentively and asked
for every phrase to be translated into the Abkhazian language. Moreover, he
made several amendments to the wording which, as I realise now, were
designed to enhance his social and practical merits.
The passage dealing with his crooked arm gave rise to particularly
furious disputes. Crooked Arm demanded that it should be stated that he had
suffered from the bullet of a Menshevik hireling in view of the fact that
the prince who had wounded him had afterwards gone off with the Mensheviks.
The comrade from the district centre clutched his temples and begged them to
stick to the facts because he also had to answer to his superiors, even
though he did respect his relatives. In the end they arrived at a version
that satisfied everyone.
The statement took so long to draft that while I was writing it down in
my wavering hand I actually learned it off by heart. Its authors asked me to
read it out loud, which I did with great feeling. After this it was given to
the secretary of the village Soviet to be copied. This is what it said:
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, a
nickname he acquired some time before the revolution together with a
prince's bullet, which later turned out to he a Menshevik bullet, has ever
since the organisation of the collective farm worked actively on the farm in
spite of the handicap of his partly withered arm (left).
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has a son
who at the present time is fighting at the front in the Patriotic War and
has won government decorations (field post-office number indicated in
brackets).
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, despite
his advanced age, is in these difficult times working without respite in the
collectivised fields, giving his above-mentioned arm no rest. Every year he
does the equivalent of not less than four hundred work-day units.
"The collective farm management together with the chairman of the
village Soviet affirms that, being a pre-revolutionary and uneducated old
man, he transplanted the said tung tree to the site of his fictitious grave
by mistake, for which he will be fined in accordance with collective farm
regulations. The management of the collective farm affirms that the
transplantation of tung trees from collective farm plantations to the
communal cemetery and particularly to home allotments has never been
practised on a mass scale and is in the nature of an individual lapse of
consciousness.
"The collective farm management affirms that old man Shchaaban Larba,
otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has never poured scorn on collective farm
affairs but in accordance with his gay and peppery character (Abkhazian
pepper) has poured scorn on certain individuals, which include quite a few
parasites of the collective farm fields, who are heroes in quotation marks
and advanced workers, without quotation marks, on their own home allotments.
But we have been eradicating such heroes and advanced workers and shall
continue to do so in accordance with the collective farm regulations up to
and including expulsion from the collective farm and confiscation of home
allotments.
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, thanks to his inborn folk talent, mimics
the local cocks, in the course of which he exposes the most harmful Moslem
customs of olden times and also entertains the collective farmers without
interrupting work in the fields."
The statement was signed and sealed by the chairman of the collective
farm and the chairman of the village Soviet.
When the work was done, the guests went out on to the veranda, where
farewell glasses of Isabella were drunk and the comrade from the district
centre passed a hint through one of the members of the management board that
he would not be averse to listening to Crooked Arm mimicking the cocks.
Crooked Arm did not have to be asked twice. He raised his immortal hand to
his mouth and gave such a cock-a-doodle-doo that all the cocks in the
vicinity broke loose like dogs from the chain. Only the host's cock, before
whose very eyes the whole deception took place, was at first struck dumb
with indignation, and then burst into such a fit of crowing that it had to
be chased out of the yard on to the vegetable patch because it offended the
ear of the comrade from the district centre and prevented him from making
himself heard.
"Does it work on all cocks or only on the local ones?" the comrade from
the district centre asked, having waited for the cock to be chased out of
hearing.
"On all of them," Crooked Arm replied readily. "Try it out anywhere you
like."
"A real folk artist," said the comrade from the district centre, and
everyone started saying goodbye to Uncle Meksut, who accompanied them to the
gate and a little further.
The chairman of the collective farm carried out to the letter what had
been promised in the statement. He fined Crooked Arm twenty work-day units.
In addition, he ordered him to move the tung tree back to the plantation and
to fill in the grave forever as a precaution against accidents to cattle.
Crooked Arm dug up the tree and moved it to the plantation, but its
sufferings had been too great and it declined into a half-withered state.
"Like my arm," said Crooked Arm. But he managed to defend his grave by
surrounding it with a rather handsome stake fence with a gate and a latch.
After the business of the anonymous letter had died down Crooked Arm's
relative once again, through an intermediary, cautiously reminded him about
the calf.
Crooked Arm replied that he couldn't be bothered with the calf just now
because he had been disgraced and slandered, and was busy day and night
looking for the slanderer and even took his gun with him to work. He would
know no peace until he had driven the slanderer into his grave and would not
even grudge him his own grave if he was not too big for it. Finally, he
wanted his relative to keep his ear to the ground and his eyes peeled so
that at the slightest suspicion he could give Crooked Arm the signal and
Crooked Arm would know what to do. Only when he had fulfilled his Manly Duty
would he be able to settle the business of the calf and other minor
misunderstandings that were quite natural between relatives.
After that, they say, the relative fell silent altogether and never
mentioned the calf again and tried to keep out of Crooked Arm's way. None
the less they did run into one another at a celebration of some kind. It was
late at night and Crooked Arm had plenty of drink inside him, and during the
performance of a drinking song that allowed of some improvisation, he
started repeating the same couplet over and over again:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
Who sold his kinsman for a calf...
He went on singing without looking in the direction of his relative,
with the result that the latter gradually became sober and in the end,
unable to bear it any longer, asked Crooked Arm across the table:
"What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing," Crooked Arm replied, and looked at him as though taking his
measurements, "just singing."
"Yes, but it's a funny kind of song," said the relative.
"In our village," Crooked Arm explained to him, "everyone sings it
except one man."
"What man?" the relative asked.
"Guess," Crooked Arm suggested.
"I wouldn't even try," the relative said hastily.
"Then I'll tell you," Crooked Arm threatened.
"Go on, then!" the relative challenged recklessly.
"The chairman of the village Soviet," declared Crooked Arm.
"Why doesn't he sing it?" the relative asked pointblank.
"He's not allowed to drop hints," Crooked Arm explained.
"Can you prove anything?" the relative asked.
"No, I can't, so for the time being I'm just singing," said Crooked Arm
and once again surveyed the relative, as though taking his measurements.
By this time they had attracted the anxious attention of their host,
who did not want them to spoil the feast he was giving to celebrate the
decoration of his son with the Order of the Red Banner.
Again someone struck up the song and everyone sang, and Crooked Arm
sang with the others without any particular variations because he felt the
host's eye upon him. But when the host relaxed, Crooked Arm seized his
chance, and invented another line:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
With a fence the dear one is protected...
But the host did hear him nevertheless and came over to the two men
with a horn full of wine.
"Crooked Arm!" he cried. "Swear by our sons who are shedding their
blood in the country's defence that you will be forever reconciled at this
table."
"I've forgotten about the calf," the relative said.
"And high time you did," Crooked Arm corrected him, then turned to the
host: "For the sake of our children I'd eat dirt--be it as you wish, Amen!"
And he threw back his head and drank a litre horn of wine in a single
draught, leaning further and further back to the accompaniment of a general
chorus helping him to drink: "Uro, uro, uro, u-r-o-o..."
Then the whole table again burst into song and the relative, so they
say, waited anxiously to see how he would sing the passage that could be
improvised. And when Crooked Arm sang:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
O heroes, advancing under fire...
the relative listened intently for a few seconds, considering the words
from all points of view, and finally, having decided that he bore no
resemblance whatever to a hero advancing under fire, felt entirely relieved
and joined in the singing.
In the autumn we gathered a rich harvest from our allotment and
returned to town with maize, pumpkins, nuts and an enormous quantity of
dried fruit. In addition, we had laid in a store of about twenty bottles of
bekmez, fruit honey, in this case, made of apples.
We had struck a bargain with one of the workteam leaders on the farm
that we would pick the apples in an old orchard, giving half the harvest to
the farm and keeping the other half for ourselves.
Because of the shortage of labour at the farm there was simply no one
to pick the apples; everyone was busy with the main crops--tea, tobacco and
tung.
Having obtained permission to pick the apples, mother in her turn
struck a bargain with three soldiers in a pioneer battalion stationed close
by that they would help us to pick, crush and boil the bekmez out of the
apples and in exchange receive half of our half of the harvest.
In a week the operation was brilliantly completed. We acquired twenty
bottles of thick golden bekmez (clear profit), which provided us with a
substitute for sugar for the whole of the next winter.
Thus, having given everyone a splendid lesson in commercial enterprise,
we left the collective farm and Crooked Arm's voice faded away into the
distance.
___
Many years later, during a hunting trip I again found myself in that
village.
While waiting for a passing lorry to give me a lift, I stood outside
the management office in the shade of the same old mulberry tree. It was a
hot August day. I looked at the deserted school building, at the school yard
covered with succulent grass, grass of oblivion for me, at the eucalyptus
trees that we had once planted, at the old gymnastics bar which we used to
make a dash for every break between lessons, and with a traditional sense of
sorrow I breathed the fragrance of years gone by.
Occasional passers-by greeted me as everyone does in the country, but
none of them recognised me, nor I them. A girl came out of the office
carrying two water bottles, lazily let the bucket down the well and filled
it. Slowly she wound the bucket up again and started filling both bottles at
once, splashing water over them as though taking a delight in the sudden
abundance of cool. Then she tipped out the rest of the water on the grass
and walked lazily back to the office, carrying the wet bottles.
When she mounted the steps and went in through the door I heard the
wave of voices rise to meet her, and suddenly subside as the door closed. A
feeling came over me that this had all happened before.
A lad wearing a jacket and with one leg of his trousers rolled up, rode
past me on a rustily squeaking bicycle, then turned round, his thoughts
still riveted on something else, and rode up to me to ask for a light.
He had two large loaves of bread tied to his carrier. I gave him a
light and asked him if he knew Yashka, the grandson of Crooked Arm.
"Of course, I do," he replied. "Yashka the postman. Just wait here.
He'll soon be coming along on his motorbike."
I started watching the road and quite soon I did hear the chugging of a
motor-cycle. I recognised Yashka only because I was expecting him. On his
lightweight mount he looked like Gulliver on a children's bicycle.
"Yashka!" I shouted. He looked in my direction and the motor-cycle came
to a startled halt, then he seemed to press it down into the earth and the
engine gave up altogether.
Yashka wheeled the bike out from under him. We walked away from the
road and in about fifteen minutes were lying in dense fern thickets.
A big, burly fellow, with a lazy smile on his face, he lay beside me,
still very much like the Yashka who used to sit behind his grandfather on
horseback and gaze absent-mindedly around him. Until a short while ago,
apparently, he had been one of the farm's team-leaders but he had slipped up
somewhere and had now been given the job of postman. He told me this with
the same lazy smile. Even at school it had been obvious that ambition was
not one of his weaknesses.
His grandfather, it seems, had expended the whole supply of family
frenzy himself, so that there just was nothing left for Yashka to work
himself into a frenzy with. What difference did it make whether he was a
team-leader or a postman, a postman or a team-leader? His voice, however,
seemed as deep and powerful as his grandfather's, but without those choking
high notes. I asked him, of course, about his grandfather.
"You mean to say you never heard?" Yashka asked in surprise, and stared
at me with his big round eyes.
"Heard what?" I asked.
"But everyone knows about that affair. Where have you been?"
"In Moscow," I said.
"Ah, so it hasn't got to Moscow," Yashka drawled, expressing his
respect for the distance between Abkhazia and Moscow; if a story like that
had not reached Moscow yet, it really must be a very long way.
Yashka raked in some more fern and packed it under him, settled his
head more comfortably on his postman's bag and told me about his
indefatigable grandfather's last adventure. I heard the story later from
several other people, but the first person to tell me was Yashka.
I was still marvelling at this, the final mighty splash of Old Crooked
Arm's imagination, when all of a sudden...
"Zhuzhuna! Zhuzhuna!" Yashka called out without so much as a pause
after his story, and not even raising his head from the ground.
"What's the matter?" a girl's voice responded from somewhere. I raised
myself on my elbow and looked round. Beyond the fern thickets there was a
small beech grove. Through the trees I made out a fence and, beyond that, a
field of maize. The voice had come from there.
"There's a letter for you, Zhuzhuna! A letter!" Yashka called again,
and winked at me.
"Are you making it up?" I whispered.
Yashka nodded joyfully and listened. The hushed grasshoppers cautiously
began buzzing to each other again.
"Humbug!" the girl's voice rang out at last, and I sensed that the
postman's ruse had flushed the hind.
"Hurry up, Zhuzhuna, hurry, or I'll be gone!" Yashka called
delightedly, intoxicated either with the sound of his own voice or by the
sound of the girl's name.
I realised it was time for me to go and began to say goodbye. Still
listening for a reply, Yashka urged me to stay the night but I refused; both
because I was in a hurry and because, if I did so, I would offend my own
folk, whom I had not been to see. I knew that if I stayed the night there
would be no hunting trip for me, because it would take me another two days
to recover.
As I made my way up the path to the road I again heard the girl's
voice; now it sounded more distinct.
"Tell me who it's from--then I'll come!" she was calling invitingly.
"Come, and then I'll tell you, Zhuzhuna, Zhuzhuna!" floated back on the
hot August air for the last time, and with a vague sense of melancholy or,
to put it more plainly, envy, I stepped out into the deserted village
street.
Well, anyway, I thought, Old Crooked Arm's traditions are not dying
out. Half an hour later I left the village and have not been there since;
but I still hope to go and pay our folk a visit, if only to find out where
Yashka's shouts got him with his Zhuzhuna.
___
I will tell Crooked Arm's last adventure as I now have it in my head.
Crooked Arm had lived to see the end of the war and the return of his
son and had gone on living splendidly until quite recently. But a year or so
ago, the time had come for him to die, and this time it was the real thing.
That day he was, as usual, lying on the veranda of his house and
watching his horse grazing in the yard when Mustafa rode up. Mustafa
dismounted and walked up the steps on to the veranda. A chair was brought
out for him and he sat down beside Crooked Arm. As usual, they recalled
times gone by. Crooked Arm would lapse for an instant into forgetfulness or
doze, but as soon as he awoke he would always resume from exactly where he
had left off.
"So you're really leaving us?" Mustafa asked, with a sharp glance at
his friend and rival.
"Yes, I am," Crooked Arm replied. "I'll soon be bathing the other
world's horses in the other world's rivers."
"We'll all be there one day," Mustafa sighed politely. "But I didn't
think you'd be the first."
"There were other times when you didn't think I'd be first, at the
races," Crooked Arm said so clearly that the relatives waiting at his
bedside all heard him and even had a little laugh, although they concealed
it with their hands, because it was not quite appropriate to laugh in the
presence of a dying man, even if that man happened to be Crooked Arm.
Mustafa felt slighted, but it would have been impolite to argue,
because the man was dying. And yet, it was somehow particularly humiliating
for a man who was alive and well to be laughed at by a dying man, because if
a dying man laughed at you, it meant you must be in an even more disastrous
or pitiful state than he--and how much worse could that be!
It would, of course, have been impolite to argue, but at least one
could tell a story. So he told one.
"As you're going away on this journey, I had better tell you
something," Mustafa said, bending over Crooked Arm.
"Tell me then, if you must," Crooked Arm replied, not looking round
because he was watching the yard, where his horse was grazing. In the time
left to him his greatest interest was in watching his horse.
"Don't be angry, Crooked Arm, but it was I who rang up the farm and
told them you had died," Mustafa said, as though sorrowing that
circumstances did not permit him now, as then, to launch that false rumour
again, and wishing it to be understood that he regretted this as a true
friend should.
"How could you, when they spoke Russian?" Crooked Arm asked in surprise
and looked at him.
Mustafa knew no Russian and, in spite of his great managerial talents,
was so illiterate that he had been obliged to invent his own alphabet or, at
least, introduce for his own use certain quaint hieroglyphs with the help of
which he kept a note of all the people who were in debt to him, and also a
set of accounts based on complex, multi-stage barter operations. So,
naturally, Crooked Arm was surprised to hear of his speaking on the
telephone, particularly in Russian.
"Through my nephew in town. I was standing beside him," Mustafa
explained. "As they had cured you I decided to have a joke, and besides who
would have sent a lorry for you but for that," he added, recalling the
difficulties of those far-off days.
They say Crooked Arm closed his eyes and for a long time was silent.
Then he slowly opened them again and said without looking at Mustafa:
"Now I see you are a better horseman than I am."
"It looks like it," Mustafa admitted modestly and glanced round at
those who were attending the dying man.
But at this point the close relatives gave way to tears because it was
the first time in his life that Crooked Arm had ever acknowledged himself
beaten, and this was more like death than death itself that was so near.
Crooked Arm silenced them and nodded in the direction of the horses.
"Give them some water. They're thirsty."
One of the girls took two pails and went for water. She came back with
the pails full of clear spring water and placed them in the middle of the
yard. Crooked Arm's horse went up to one of the pails and began to drink,
and Mustafa's horse turned its head and pulled at the halter. The girl
untethered the horse and, holding the bridle, stood by while it drank. The
horses reached down with their long necks, drinking quietly, and Crooked Arm
watched them with pleasure, and his Adam's apple, they say, moved up and
down as though he himself were drinking.
"Mustafa," he said at length, turning to his friend, "now I admit that
you knew more about horses than I did, but you know that I loved horses and
had some understanding of them."
"But, of course! Who doesn't know that!" Mustafa exclaimed generously,
and again turned round to look at everyone who was on the veranda.
"In a few days I shall die," Crooked Arm continued. "My coffin will
stand where those empty pails are standing now. When the weeping is over, I
want you to do something for me."
"What is it?" Mustafa asked, and with a hiss at the members of the
family, because they had again tried to sob, bent over his friend. It looked
as if Crooked Arm was expressing his last will.
"I want you to take your horse and jump three times over my coffin.
Before they put the lid down I want to feel the smell of a horse over me.
Will you do that?"
"I will, if our customs see in this no sin, " Mustafa promised.
"I don't think they do," Crooked Arm said a little more slowly and
closed his eyes--either he had fallen asleep or was just musing. Mustafa
rose and walked quietly down from the veranda. He rode away, considering the
last will of the dying man.
That evening Mustafa gathered the elders of the village, gave them all
plenty to eat and drink and told them of Crooked Arm's request. The elders
discussed the matter and reached a decision.
"You'd better jump, if that's his dying wish, because you're the best
horseman now."
"He admitted that himself," Mustafa interpolated.
"There's no sin in it because a horse doesn't eat meat and its breath
is clean," they concluded.
Crooked Arm heard of the elders' decision the same night and so they
say, was well pleased. Two days later he died.
Once again, as during the war, the messengers of woe were sent out to
the neighbouring villages. Some received the news of his death with
suspicion, and the relative who had brought the calf in those days said that
it would do no harm to jab him with the sharp end of a crook to make sure he
really was dead and not just shamming.
"There's no need to jab him," the messenger of woe replied patiently,
"because horseman Mustafa is going to jump over him. That was his dying
wish."
"Then I'll go," the relative said with relief. "Crooked Arm wouldn't
let anyone jump over him while he was still alive."
They say there were even more people at the funeral this time than
before, when no one had any doubt that Crooked Arm was dead. Many of them,
of course, were attracted by the promised spectacle of a funeral
steeplechase. They all knew of the great rivalry between the two friends,
and it was said that even though Crooked Arm was dead he wouldn't let the
matter rest there.
Afterwards some people claimed to have seen Mustafa practising in his
yard with a trough propped on chairs. But Mustafa denied with a frenzy
worthy of Crooked Arm himself that he had been jumping over any such trough.
He said his horse could easily leap a gate if necessary and Crooked Arm
wouldn't be able to reach him even if he tried to do so with his famous arm.
And so, on the fourth day after the old man's death, when everyone had
finished taking final leave of their relative and fellow villager, Mustafa
stationed himself by the coffin awaiting his finest hour, sorrowful and at
the same time impatient.
When the time came he delivered a short speech, full of a solemn
dignity. He recounted the heroic life of Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as
Crooked Arm, from one horse to the next, right up to his dying wish. As a
brief reminder to the young, Mustafa mentioned the feat of the stolen
stallion and how Crooked Arm had not been afraid to leap down the cliff,
giving it to be understood in passing that if he had yielded to fear it
would have been a great deal worse for him. He said that he recalled the
incident not in order to detract from Crooked Arm's exploit but to offer the
young folk yet another proof of the advantage of bold decisions.
And then, in accordance with the dead man's wish, and his own wish, he
addressed the assembled elders in a thunderous voice and again asked them if
it were not wicked to jump over a coffin.
"There is no sin in that," the elders replied. "A horse eats no meat,
so its breath is clean."
After that Mustafa walked to the tethering post, untied his horse,
leapt into the saddle, flourished his whip and charged along the corridor
formed by the crowd towards the coffin.
While he had been walking to the tethering post the space beyond the
coffin had been cleared and the people moved back so that the horse should
not ride anyone down. Someone had suggested covering the dead man with the
tent cape to protect him from any earth that might be scattered from the
horse's hooves. But one of the elders had said there would be no sin in that
either because he was going to lie in the earth anyway.
Well, Mustafa's horse charged up to the coffin and suddenly stopped
dead. Mustafa shouted and lashed it on both flanks with his whip. The horse
twisted its head round and bared its teeth, but stubbornly refused to jump.
Mustafa swung it round, galloped back, dismounted, for some reason
tested the saddle girths, and once again swooped on the coffin like a hawk.
But again the horse balked and, no matter how Mustafa whipped it, refused to
jump, although it did rear.
There was about a minute of tense silence in which only the crack of
the whip and Mustafa's laboured breathing could be heard.
And then one of the elders said:
"It strikes me the horse won't jump over a dead man."
"That's right," recalled one of the others. "A good dog won't bite his
master's hand and a good horse won't jump over a dead man."
"Down you get, Mustafa," somebody shouted. "Crooked Arm has proved to
you that he knew more about horses than you."
Mustafa turned his horse and, parting the crowd as he went, rode out of
the yard. And then a tremendous burst of laughter went up among the
mourners, such as one would be unlikely to hear even at a wedding, let alone
a funeral.
The laughter was so loud and long that when the chairman of the village
Soviet heard it in his office he dropped his rubber stamp and exclaimed:
"Upon my word, I believe Crooked Arm has jumped out of his grave at the
last moment!"
It was a merry funeral. The next day Crooked Arm's posthumous joke was
being told and retold in nearly every corner of Abkhazia. In the evening
Mustafa was somehow persuaded to attend the funeral supper, for though it
was no sin to jump over a dead man it was considered a sin to bear a grudge
against the dead.
When an old man dies in our country the funeral feast is a lively
affair. Men drink wine and tell each other funny stories. Custom forbids
only drinking to excess and the singing of songs. Someone may inadvertently
strike up a drinking song, but he is soon stopped and falls into an
embarrassed silence.
It seems to me that when an old man dies there is place for
merry-making and ritual splendour at his funeral feast. A man has completed
life's journey and, if he dies in old age, having lived his span, it means
there is cause for the living to celebrate his victory over fate.
And ritual splendour, if it is not taken to the absurd, did not spring
from nowhere. It says to us: something tremendous has happened--a man has
died. And if he was a good man, there will be many who wish to mark and
remember the event. And who deserves to be remembered of men, if not Crooked
Arm, who all his life enriched the earth with labour and merriment, and in
his last ten years, it might be said, actually tended his own grave and made
it bear fruit and gathered from it quite a good crop of peaches.
You must agree that not everyone manages to pick a crop of peaches from
his own grave; many may try but they lack the imagination and daring that
Old Crooked Arm possessed.
And may the earth be soft as swan's down for him, as indeed it should
be, considering that it was a good dry spot they chose for him, a fact he
was very fond of mentioning while he lived.
--------
The man who wants to touch you for a loan sends no telegram in advance.
Everything happens suddenly.
He begins by discussing certain cultural matters of wide general
interest, possibly even outer space, listens to all you have to say on the
subject with the greatest attention and, when a warm human relationship has
developed between you in this abstract sphere, he takes advantage of the
first pause in the conversation to splash down gently from the cosmic
heights, and say:
"Incidentally, you couldn't lend me a tenner for a fortnight, could
you?"
Such a swift change of subject cripples the imagination and always
leaves me at a loss. What I really cannot understand is why this should be
incidental. But that is the way of borrowers. They can turn any incident to
their advantage.
For the first few precious seconds I am confused. And confusion spells
disaster. The mere fact of not answering promptly indicates that I have
money, and once that is established, it is the hardest thing in the world to
prove that you need that money yourself. The only thing to do is to fork
out.
Of course, there are some odd characters who pay back what they borrow.
Actually they do a lot of harm. If they didn't exist, the whole tribe of
chronic defaulters would have died out long ago. But, as things are, it
continues to prosper, profiting by the moral credit of these eccentrics.
I did once refuse an obvious cadger. But I soon repented.
We met in a cafe. I might never have noticed him but for a revolting
I believe he acquired this red sling to give his arm a soldierly,
partisan appearance. Whenever he was summoned by the management board he
would put his arm in its sling before leaving. Mounted on horseback with a
black sheepskin cloak draped over his shoulders and his arm in a red sling,
he certainly did have the rather dashing air of the partisan fighter.
All was well in the village, when suddenly it became known that the
chairman of the village Soviet had received an anonymous letter against
Crooked Arm. The letter declared that the planting of a tung tree on a grave
was an insult to this new industrial crop, a hint that the plant was of no
use to living collective farmers, and that its proper place was in the
village cemetery.
The chairman of the village Soviet showed this letter to the chairman
of the collective farm, who, they say, was properly scared by it, because
someone might think that he had given Crooked Arm the idea of transplanting
the tung tree to his own grave.
In those days I just couldn't understand why things had taken such a
threatening turn--after all, everyone had known before the letter was sent
that Crooked Arm had planted the tung tree on his grave. In those days I
didn't realise that a letter was a document, and a document had to be
presented on demand, had to be answered for.
To be sure, some people say that the chairman of the village Soviet
need not have passed it on, but that he had a grudge against Crooked Arm,
and that was why he showed it to the chairman of the farm.
In short, the letter was set in motion and one day a man arrived from
the district centre to find out the truth of the matter. Crooked Arm tried
to laugh it off, but, so they say, he had clearly lost his nerve because
afterwards he had a shave, put his arm in the red sling and went about the
village staring at it as if it was just about to blow up and the only thing
he and everyone else around could do would be to dodge the splinters.
"Now you've done it," said Mustafa, an old horseman, the friend and
eternal rival of Crooked Arm. "Now you'd better guzzle your tung apples and
jump into your grave, otherwise they'll pack you off to Siberia."
"I'm not afraid of Siberia. I'm afraid you'll step into my grave while
I'm away," Crooked Arm replied.
"In Siberia, they say, they ride on dogs," Mustafa suggested meanly.
"You'd better take a bridle with you and try breaking in a dog for
yourself."
The long-standing rivalry between Crooked Arm and Mustafa was over
horses and horsemanship. They both had their feats and failures behind them.
Crooked Arm had covered himself with undying glory by stealing a famous
stallion at a certain race meeting in full view of thousands of spectators
(personally, I doubt whether there were thousands). They say that Crooked
Arm had been mounted on such a wretched, broken-winded nag and had looked so
pathetic that when he asked the owner of the stallion permission to put his
famous race-horse through its paces, the latter had granted the permission
as a joke, because he was sure the stallion would throw Crooked Arm right
away and thus add still further to its renown.
Crooked Arm, they say, slithered awkwardly off his doleful jade and, as
he passed the reins to the owner of the stallion, said, "Let's count it that
we've swopped."
"Done," the owner replied, taking the reins from him.
"Whatever you do, don't let this one throw you first time, or he'll
trample you to death," Crooked Arm warned him, and went over to the
stallion.
"I'll be careful," the owner is said to have replied and, as soon as
Crooked Arm mounted the stallion, gave a sign to a lad standing in the
background, and the lad gave the stallion a tremendous whack with his whip.
The stallion reared and galloped off towards the River Kodor, and
Crooked Arm, they say, hung on at first like a drunken mullah on a galloping
donkey.
Everyone was expecting him to fall off, but he went on and on and the
owner's jaw began to drop as Crooked Arm reached the end of the field and,
instead of following the bend of the race-course, went careering on towards
the river. For another few minutes they hesitated, thinking the horse had
taken the bit between its teeth and he could not make it turn, but then they
realised that this was a robbery of quite unprecedented daring. Fifteen
minutes later a dozen horsemen were galloping in pursuit, but it was too
late.
Crooked Arm had leapt headlong down the cliff to the river and by the
time his pursuers reached the edge he was climbing out on the far bank; for
an instant, the stallion's wet crupper gleamed in the alders at the water's
edge. The bullets flew wide and no one dared take a flying leap down the
cliff. Since then the spot has been known as Crooked Arm Cliff. Crooked Arm
himself never told this story in my presence, but he allowed others to tell
it, listening with pleasure and making a few corrections. He would always
wink at Mustafa if he was present, and Mustafa would pretend not to be
listening, until in the end he could not refrain from trying to belittle or
ridicule the exploit.
Mustafa would say that a man with one arm shot through was disabled
anyway, so he had not risked all that much for the sake of his exploit. And
if he had jumped down the cliff he had done it, first, because he was scared
and, secondly, because there was nothing else he could do, since he would
have been shot dead in any case if he had been caught by his pursuers.
In short, there was a deep and long-standing rivalry between them. In
their young days they used to thresh it out at the races; now, in old age,
though they still kept horses, they solved their disputes theoretically, in
the course of which they would become involved in a jungle of
ominous-sounding riddles.
"If a man shoots at you from over there and you, say, are riding down
that path, where would you turn your horse at the sound of the shot--and,
mind you, there's not a single tree around?"
"Suppose you're galloping down a hill with someone chasing you. Ahead
on the right there's some scrub, and on the left there's a ravine. Where do
you turn your horse then?"
Such were the disputes these two men would hold as they trudged home
with hoes or axes on their shoulders, after a long day's work.
These disputes had been going on for many years, although it was a long
time since anyone had done any shooting round our way, and certainly not at
these old men for people had learned how to avenge an insult by safer
methods. And to one of these methods, namely, the anonymous letter, it is
now time for us to return.
The representative from the district centre tried to make the old man
say what his real purpose had been in moving the tung tree, and, above all,
to reveal who had instigated him to do so. Crooked Arm replied that no one
had instigated him, that he himself had suddenly wanted to have a tung tree
growing at his head when he lay dead and buried, because he had long since
taken a fancy to this plant that till recently had been quite unknown in our
district. The man from the centre did not believe him.
Then Crooked Arm confessed he had been relying on the poisonous
properties not only of the fruit but of the roots of the tree; he had been
hoping that its roots would kill all the grave worms and he would lie in
peace and cleanliness because he had had enough trouble from the fleas in
this world.
But at this point, they say, the man from the centre asked what he
meant by fleas. Crooked Arm replied that by fleas he means dog's fleas,
which should not be confused with poultry lice, which did not worry him in
the least, any more than buffalo ticks did. But if there was one thing that
he couldn't stand it was the horse flies, and if he did throw a couple of
handfuls of superphosphate under a horse's tail during the heat of the day,
it was no great loss to the collective farm and the horse had a rest from
the flies. The man from the centre realised that he couldn't draw blood
there either, so he went back to the subject of the tung.
In short, no matter what excuses Crooked Arm produced, things began to
look black for him. The next day he was not even summoned before the comrade
from the district centre. Ready for anything, he sat in the yard of the
management office in the shade of a mulberry tree and, keeping his arm in
the red sling all the time, smoked and waited for his fate to be decided.
Then it was, they say, that Mustafa turned up and walked straight into the
management office, where the chairman of the collective farm, the chairman
of the village Soviet and the man from the district centre were conferring
together. As he walked past Crooked Arm, he looked at him and said, "I've
thought of something. If it doesn't help, you'd better lie down quietly in
your grave, just as you are, with your sling on, and I'll shake some tung
fruit down on you."
Crooked Arm made no reply to these words. He merely glanced sadly at
his arm as much as to say that he was ready to put up with any amount of
suffering but why should his arm, which had already suffered enough from the
Menshevik's bullet, suffer again?
Mustafa had a great reputation with the local authorities for being the
shrewdest man on the farm. His house was the biggest and finest in the
village, so if any top people came to visit us they were promptly dispatched
to Mustafa's hospitable house.
What Mustafa had thought of was splendidly simple. The man from the
centre was an Abkhazian, and if a man is an Abkhazian, even if he has come
from Ethiopia, he is bound to have relatives in Abkhazia.
That night, apparently, Mustafa had secretly assembled all the old men
of the village at his house, dined them and wined them, and with their help
thoroughly investigated the family origins of the comrade from the district
centre. Careful and all-round analysis had shown quite clearly that the
comrade from the district centre was through his great aunt, once a town
girl and now living in the village of Merkheul, related by blood to my Uncle
Meksut. Mustafa was quite satisfied with the results of this analysis.
With this trump card in his pocket he marched past Crooked Arm into the
management office. They say that when Mustafa informed the comrade from the
district centre of this fact, the latter turned pale and began to deny his
being related to the great aunt from Merkheul village and particularly to
Uncle Meksut. But the trap had worked. Mustafa merely laughed at his denials
and said, "If he's not a relative of yours, why are you so pale?"
He said no more and left the office.
"What shall I do?" Crooked Arm asked when he saw Mustafa.
"Wait till evening," Mustafa replied.
"Make up your mind soon," Crooked Arm said, "or my arm will wither away
altogether in this sling."
"Till evening," Mustafa repeated, and walked off.
The fact of the matter was that in denying his relationship with Uncle
Meksut the comrade from the district centre had mortally insulted my uncle.
But Uncle Meksut kept his temper. Without saying a word to anyone he merely
saddled his horse and rode away to the village of Merkheul.
By evening he returned on his sweating mount, reined up at the
management office, and handed the bridle to Old Crooked Arm, who was still
waiting there in suspense. The chairman was standing on the veranda, smoking
and surveying Crooked Arm and the surrounding scenery.
"Come in," the chairman said at the sight of Uncle Meksut.
"Just a minute," Uncle Meksut replied and, before mounting the steps,
ripped the red sling off the old man's arm and tucked it without a word into
his pocket.
They say the old man just stood there with his arm suspended in midair,
as though unable to comprehend this symbolic gesture.
Uncle Meksut placed in front of the comrade from the district centre
the yellowed, crumbling birth certificate of his great aunt of Merkheul,
issued by the notary public's office of the Sukhumi Uyezd in the days before
the revolution. At the sight of this birth certificate the comrade from the
district centre, they say, again turned pale, but could no longer offer any
denials.
"Or shall I bring you your great aunt here over my saddle bow?" Uncle
Meksut asked him.
"You needn't do that," the comrade from the district centre answered
very quietly.
"Will you take your brief-case with you or put it in the safe?" Uncle
Meksut asked.
"I'll take it with me," the comrade replied.
"Come along then," Uncle Meksut said and they left the office.
That evening there was a party at Uncle Meksut's house and the whole
case was considered. The next morning after a long discussion in Uncle
Meksut's house a statement was drawn up in Russian-Caucasian officialese and
dictated to me personally.
"At last this parasite has come in useful," Crooked Arm said, when I
moved the inkstand towards me and sat poised to take the dictation.
The leaders of the collective farm discussed the statement with the
comrade from the district centre. Crooked Arm listened attentively and asked
for every phrase to be translated into the Abkhazian language. Moreover, he
made several amendments to the wording which, as I realise now, were
designed to enhance his social and practical merits.
The passage dealing with his crooked arm gave rise to particularly
furious disputes. Crooked Arm demanded that it should be stated that he had
suffered from the bullet of a Menshevik hireling in view of the fact that
the prince who had wounded him had afterwards gone off with the Mensheviks.
The comrade from the district centre clutched his temples and begged them to
stick to the facts because he also had to answer to his superiors, even
though he did respect his relatives. In the end they arrived at a version
that satisfied everyone.
The statement took so long to draft that while I was writing it down in
my wavering hand I actually learned it off by heart. Its authors asked me to
read it out loud, which I did with great feeling. After this it was given to
the secretary of the village Soviet to be copied. This is what it said:
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, a
nickname he acquired some time before the revolution together with a
prince's bullet, which later turned out to he a Menshevik bullet, has ever
since the organisation of the collective farm worked actively on the farm in
spite of the handicap of his partly withered arm (left).
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has a son
who at the present time is fighting at the front in the Patriotic War and
has won government decorations (field post-office number indicated in
brackets).
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, despite
his advanced age, is in these difficult times working without respite in the
collectivised fields, giving his above-mentioned arm no rest. Every year he
does the equivalent of not less than four hundred work-day units.
"The collective farm management together with the chairman of the
village Soviet affirms that, being a pre-revolutionary and uneducated old
man, he transplanted the said tung tree to the site of his fictitious grave
by mistake, for which he will be fined in accordance with collective farm
regulations. The management of the collective farm affirms that the
transplantation of tung trees from collective farm plantations to the
communal cemetery and particularly to home allotments has never been
practised on a mass scale and is in the nature of an individual lapse of
consciousness.
"The collective farm management affirms that old man Shchaaban Larba,
otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has never poured scorn on collective farm
affairs but in accordance with his gay and peppery character (Abkhazian
pepper) has poured scorn on certain individuals, which include quite a few
parasites of the collective farm fields, who are heroes in quotation marks
and advanced workers, without quotation marks, on their own home allotments.
But we have been eradicating such heroes and advanced workers and shall
continue to do so in accordance with the collective farm regulations up to
and including expulsion from the collective farm and confiscation of home
allotments.
"The old man Shchaaban Larba, thanks to his inborn folk talent, mimics
the local cocks, in the course of which he exposes the most harmful Moslem
customs of olden times and also entertains the collective farmers without
interrupting work in the fields."
The statement was signed and sealed by the chairman of the collective
farm and the chairman of the village Soviet.
When the work was done, the guests went out on to the veranda, where
farewell glasses of Isabella were drunk and the comrade from the district
centre passed a hint through one of the members of the management board that
he would not be averse to listening to Crooked Arm mimicking the cocks.
Crooked Arm did not have to be asked twice. He raised his immortal hand to
his mouth and gave such a cock-a-doodle-doo that all the cocks in the
vicinity broke loose like dogs from the chain. Only the host's cock, before
whose very eyes the whole deception took place, was at first struck dumb
with indignation, and then burst into such a fit of crowing that it had to
be chased out of the yard on to the vegetable patch because it offended the
ear of the comrade from the district centre and prevented him from making
himself heard.
"Does it work on all cocks or only on the local ones?" the comrade from
the district centre asked, having waited for the cock to be chased out of
hearing.
"On all of them," Crooked Arm replied readily. "Try it out anywhere you
like."
"A real folk artist," said the comrade from the district centre, and
everyone started saying goodbye to Uncle Meksut, who accompanied them to the
gate and a little further.
The chairman of the collective farm carried out to the letter what had
been promised in the statement. He fined Crooked Arm twenty work-day units.
In addition, he ordered him to move the tung tree back to the plantation and
to fill in the grave forever as a precaution against accidents to cattle.
Crooked Arm dug up the tree and moved it to the plantation, but its
sufferings had been too great and it declined into a half-withered state.
"Like my arm," said Crooked Arm. But he managed to defend his grave by
surrounding it with a rather handsome stake fence with a gate and a latch.
After the business of the anonymous letter had died down Crooked Arm's
relative once again, through an intermediary, cautiously reminded him about
the calf.
Crooked Arm replied that he couldn't be bothered with the calf just now
because he had been disgraced and slandered, and was busy day and night
looking for the slanderer and even took his gun with him to work. He would
know no peace until he had driven the slanderer into his grave and would not
even grudge him his own grave if he was not too big for it. Finally, he
wanted his relative to keep his ear to the ground and his eyes peeled so
that at the slightest suspicion he could give Crooked Arm the signal and
Crooked Arm would know what to do. Only when he had fulfilled his Manly Duty
would he be able to settle the business of the calf and other minor
misunderstandings that were quite natural between relatives.
After that, they say, the relative fell silent altogether and never
mentioned the calf again and tried to keep out of Crooked Arm's way. None
the less they did run into one another at a celebration of some kind. It was
late at night and Crooked Arm had plenty of drink inside him, and during the
performance of a drinking song that allowed of some improvisation, he
started repeating the same couplet over and over again:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
Who sold his kinsman for a calf...
He went on singing without looking in the direction of his relative,
with the result that the latter gradually became sober and in the end,
unable to bear it any longer, asked Crooked Arm across the table:
"What are you trying to say?"
"Nothing," Crooked Arm replied, and looked at him as though taking his
measurements, "just singing."
"Yes, but it's a funny kind of song," said the relative.
"In our village," Crooked Arm explained to him, "everyone sings it
except one man."
"What man?" the relative asked.
"Guess," Crooked Arm suggested.
"I wouldn't even try," the relative said hastily.
"Then I'll tell you," Crooked Arm threatened.
"Go on, then!" the relative challenged recklessly.
"The chairman of the village Soviet," declared Crooked Arm.
"Why doesn't he sing it?" the relative asked pointblank.
"He's not allowed to drop hints," Crooked Arm explained.
"Can you prove anything?" the relative asked.
"No, I can't, so for the time being I'm just singing," said Crooked Arm
and once again surveyed the relative, as though taking his measurements.
By this time they had attracted the anxious attention of their host,
who did not want them to spoil the feast he was giving to celebrate the
decoration of his son with the Order of the Red Banner.
Again someone struck up the song and everyone sang, and Crooked Arm
sang with the others without any particular variations because he felt the
host's eye upon him. But when the host relaxed, Crooked Arm seized his
chance, and invented another line:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
With a fence the dear one is protected...
But the host did hear him nevertheless and came over to the two men
with a horn full of wine.
"Crooked Arm!" he cried. "Swear by our sons who are shedding their
blood in the country's defence that you will be forever reconciled at this
table."
"I've forgotten about the calf," the relative said.
"And high time you did," Crooked Arm corrected him, then turned to the
host: "For the sake of our children I'd eat dirt--be it as you wish, Amen!"
And he threw back his head and drank a litre horn of wine in a single
draught, leaning further and further back to the accompaniment of a general
chorus helping him to drink: "Uro, uro, uro, u-r-o-o..."
Then the whole table again burst into song and the relative, so they
say, waited anxiously to see how he would sing the passage that could be
improvised. And when Crooked Arm sang:
O, raida, siua raida, ei,
O heroes, advancing under fire...
the relative listened intently for a few seconds, considering the words
from all points of view, and finally, having decided that he bore no
resemblance whatever to a hero advancing under fire, felt entirely relieved
and joined in the singing.
In the autumn we gathered a rich harvest from our allotment and
returned to town with maize, pumpkins, nuts and an enormous quantity of
dried fruit. In addition, we had laid in a store of about twenty bottles of
bekmez, fruit honey, in this case, made of apples.
We had struck a bargain with one of the workteam leaders on the farm
that we would pick the apples in an old orchard, giving half the harvest to
the farm and keeping the other half for ourselves.
Because of the shortage of labour at the farm there was simply no one
to pick the apples; everyone was busy with the main crops--tea, tobacco and
tung.
Having obtained permission to pick the apples, mother in her turn
struck a bargain with three soldiers in a pioneer battalion stationed close
by that they would help us to pick, crush and boil the bekmez out of the
apples and in exchange receive half of our half of the harvest.
In a week the operation was brilliantly completed. We acquired twenty
bottles of thick golden bekmez (clear profit), which provided us with a
substitute for sugar for the whole of the next winter.
Thus, having given everyone a splendid lesson in commercial enterprise,
we left the collective farm and Crooked Arm's voice faded away into the
distance.
___
Many years later, during a hunting trip I again found myself in that
village.
While waiting for a passing lorry to give me a lift, I stood outside
the management office in the shade of the same old mulberry tree. It was a
hot August day. I looked at the deserted school building, at the school yard
covered with succulent grass, grass of oblivion for me, at the eucalyptus
trees that we had once planted, at the old gymnastics bar which we used to
make a dash for every break between lessons, and with a traditional sense of
sorrow I breathed the fragrance of years gone by.
Occasional passers-by greeted me as everyone does in the country, but
none of them recognised me, nor I them. A girl came out of the office
carrying two water bottles, lazily let the bucket down the well and filled
it. Slowly she wound the bucket up again and started filling both bottles at
once, splashing water over them as though taking a delight in the sudden
abundance of cool. Then she tipped out the rest of the water on the grass
and walked lazily back to the office, carrying the wet bottles.
When she mounted the steps and went in through the door I heard the
wave of voices rise to meet her, and suddenly subside as the door closed. A
feeling came over me that this had all happened before.
A lad wearing a jacket and with one leg of his trousers rolled up, rode
past me on a rustily squeaking bicycle, then turned round, his thoughts
still riveted on something else, and rode up to me to ask for a light.
He had two large loaves of bread tied to his carrier. I gave him a
light and asked him if he knew Yashka, the grandson of Crooked Arm.
"Of course, I do," he replied. "Yashka the postman. Just wait here.
He'll soon be coming along on his motorbike."
I started watching the road and quite soon I did hear the chugging of a
motor-cycle. I recognised Yashka only because I was expecting him. On his
lightweight mount he looked like Gulliver on a children's bicycle.
"Yashka!" I shouted. He looked in my direction and the motor-cycle came
to a startled halt, then he seemed to press it down into the earth and the
engine gave up altogether.
Yashka wheeled the bike out from under him. We walked away from the
road and in about fifteen minutes were lying in dense fern thickets.
A big, burly fellow, with a lazy smile on his face, he lay beside me,
still very much like the Yashka who used to sit behind his grandfather on
horseback and gaze absent-mindedly around him. Until a short while ago,
apparently, he had been one of the farm's team-leaders but he had slipped up
somewhere and had now been given the job of postman. He told me this with
the same lazy smile. Even at school it had been obvious that ambition was
not one of his weaknesses.
His grandfather, it seems, had expended the whole supply of family
frenzy himself, so that there just was nothing left for Yashka to work
himself into a frenzy with. What difference did it make whether he was a
team-leader or a postman, a postman or a team-leader? His voice, however,
seemed as deep and powerful as his grandfather's, but without those choking
high notes. I asked him, of course, about his grandfather.
"You mean to say you never heard?" Yashka asked in surprise, and stared
at me with his big round eyes.
"Heard what?" I asked.
"But everyone knows about that affair. Where have you been?"
"In Moscow," I said.
"Ah, so it hasn't got to Moscow," Yashka drawled, expressing his
respect for the distance between Abkhazia and Moscow; if a story like that
had not reached Moscow yet, it really must be a very long way.
Yashka raked in some more fern and packed it under him, settled his
head more comfortably on his postman's bag and told me about his
indefatigable grandfather's last adventure. I heard the story later from
several other people, but the first person to tell me was Yashka.
I was still marvelling at this, the final mighty splash of Old Crooked
Arm's imagination, when all of a sudden...
"Zhuzhuna! Zhuzhuna!" Yashka called out without so much as a pause
after his story, and not even raising his head from the ground.
"What's the matter?" a girl's voice responded from somewhere. I raised
myself on my elbow and looked round. Beyond the fern thickets there was a
small beech grove. Through the trees I made out a fence and, beyond that, a
field of maize. The voice had come from there.
"There's a letter for you, Zhuzhuna! A letter!" Yashka called again,
and winked at me.
"Are you making it up?" I whispered.
Yashka nodded joyfully and listened. The hushed grasshoppers cautiously
began buzzing to each other again.
"Humbug!" the girl's voice rang out at last, and I sensed that the
postman's ruse had flushed the hind.
"Hurry up, Zhuzhuna, hurry, or I'll be gone!" Yashka called
delightedly, intoxicated either with the sound of his own voice or by the
sound of the girl's name.
I realised it was time for me to go and began to say goodbye. Still
listening for a reply, Yashka urged me to stay the night but I refused; both
because I was in a hurry and because, if I did so, I would offend my own
folk, whom I had not been to see. I knew that if I stayed the night there
would be no hunting trip for me, because it would take me another two days
to recover.
As I made my way up the path to the road I again heard the girl's
voice; now it sounded more distinct.
"Tell me who it's from--then I'll come!" she was calling invitingly.
"Come, and then I'll tell you, Zhuzhuna, Zhuzhuna!" floated back on the
hot August air for the last time, and with a vague sense of melancholy or,
to put it more plainly, envy, I stepped out into the deserted village
street.
Well, anyway, I thought, Old Crooked Arm's traditions are not dying
out. Half an hour later I left the village and have not been there since;
but I still hope to go and pay our folk a visit, if only to find out where
Yashka's shouts got him with his Zhuzhuna.
___
I will tell Crooked Arm's last adventure as I now have it in my head.
Crooked Arm had lived to see the end of the war and the return of his
son and had gone on living splendidly until quite recently. But a year or so
ago, the time had come for him to die, and this time it was the real thing.
That day he was, as usual, lying on the veranda of his house and
watching his horse grazing in the yard when Mustafa rode up. Mustafa
dismounted and walked up the steps on to the veranda. A chair was brought
out for him and he sat down beside Crooked Arm. As usual, they recalled
times gone by. Crooked Arm would lapse for an instant into forgetfulness or
doze, but as soon as he awoke he would always resume from exactly where he
had left off.
"So you're really leaving us?" Mustafa asked, with a sharp glance at
his friend and rival.
"Yes, I am," Crooked Arm replied. "I'll soon be bathing the other
world's horses in the other world's rivers."
"We'll all be there one day," Mustafa sighed politely. "But I didn't
think you'd be the first."
"There were other times when you didn't think I'd be first, at the
races," Crooked Arm said so clearly that the relatives waiting at his
bedside all heard him and even had a little laugh, although they concealed
it with their hands, because it was not quite appropriate to laugh in the
presence of a dying man, even if that man happened to be Crooked Arm.
Mustafa felt slighted, but it would have been impolite to argue,
because the man was dying. And yet, it was somehow particularly humiliating
for a man who was alive and well to be laughed at by a dying man, because if
a dying man laughed at you, it meant you must be in an even more disastrous
or pitiful state than he--and how much worse could that be!
It would, of course, have been impolite to argue, but at least one
could tell a story. So he told one.
"As you're going away on this journey, I had better tell you
something," Mustafa said, bending over Crooked Arm.
"Tell me then, if you must," Crooked Arm replied, not looking round
because he was watching the yard, where his horse was grazing. In the time
left to him his greatest interest was in watching his horse.
"Don't be angry, Crooked Arm, but it was I who rang up the farm and
told them you had died," Mustafa said, as though sorrowing that
circumstances did not permit him now, as then, to launch that false rumour
again, and wishing it to be understood that he regretted this as a true
friend should.
"How could you, when they spoke Russian?" Crooked Arm asked in surprise
and looked at him.
Mustafa knew no Russian and, in spite of his great managerial talents,
was so illiterate that he had been obliged to invent his own alphabet or, at
least, introduce for his own use certain quaint hieroglyphs with the help of
which he kept a note of all the people who were in debt to him, and also a
set of accounts based on complex, multi-stage barter operations. So,
naturally, Crooked Arm was surprised to hear of his speaking on the
telephone, particularly in Russian.
"Through my nephew in town. I was standing beside him," Mustafa
explained. "As they had cured you I decided to have a joke, and besides who
would have sent a lorry for you but for that," he added, recalling the
difficulties of those far-off days.
They say Crooked Arm closed his eyes and for a long time was silent.
Then he slowly opened them again and said without looking at Mustafa:
"Now I see you are a better horseman than I am."
"It looks like it," Mustafa admitted modestly and glanced round at
those who were attending the dying man.
But at this point the close relatives gave way to tears because it was
the first time in his life that Crooked Arm had ever acknowledged himself
beaten, and this was more like death than death itself that was so near.
Crooked Arm silenced them and nodded in the direction of the horses.
"Give them some water. They're thirsty."
One of the girls took two pails and went for water. She came back with
the pails full of clear spring water and placed them in the middle of the
yard. Crooked Arm's horse went up to one of the pails and began to drink,
and Mustafa's horse turned its head and pulled at the halter. The girl
untethered the horse and, holding the bridle, stood by while it drank. The
horses reached down with their long necks, drinking quietly, and Crooked Arm
watched them with pleasure, and his Adam's apple, they say, moved up and
down as though he himself were drinking.
"Mustafa," he said at length, turning to his friend, "now I admit that
you knew more about horses than I did, but you know that I loved horses and
had some understanding of them."
"But, of course! Who doesn't know that!" Mustafa exclaimed generously,
and again turned round to look at everyone who was on the veranda.
"In a few days I shall die," Crooked Arm continued. "My coffin will
stand where those empty pails are standing now. When the weeping is over, I
want you to do something for me."
"What is it?" Mustafa asked, and with a hiss at the members of the
family, because they had again tried to sob, bent over his friend. It looked
as if Crooked Arm was expressing his last will.
"I want you to take your horse and jump three times over my coffin.
Before they put the lid down I want to feel the smell of a horse over me.
Will you do that?"
"I will, if our customs see in this no sin, " Mustafa promised.
"I don't think they do," Crooked Arm said a little more slowly and
closed his eyes--either he had fallen asleep or was just musing. Mustafa
rose and walked quietly down from the veranda. He rode away, considering the
last will of the dying man.
That evening Mustafa gathered the elders of the village, gave them all
plenty to eat and drink and told them of Crooked Arm's request. The elders
discussed the matter and reached a decision.
"You'd better jump, if that's his dying wish, because you're the best
horseman now."
"He admitted that himself," Mustafa interpolated.
"There's no sin in it because a horse doesn't eat meat and its breath
is clean," they concluded.
Crooked Arm heard of the elders' decision the same night and so they
say, was well pleased. Two days later he died.
Once again, as during the war, the messengers of woe were sent out to
the neighbouring villages. Some received the news of his death with
suspicion, and the relative who had brought the calf in those days said that
it would do no harm to jab him with the sharp end of a crook to make sure he
really was dead and not just shamming.
"There's no need to jab him," the messenger of woe replied patiently,
"because horseman Mustafa is going to jump over him. That was his dying
wish."
"Then I'll go," the relative said with relief. "Crooked Arm wouldn't
let anyone jump over him while he was still alive."
They say there were even more people at the funeral this time than
before, when no one had any doubt that Crooked Arm was dead. Many of them,
of course, were attracted by the promised spectacle of a funeral
steeplechase. They all knew of the great rivalry between the two friends,
and it was said that even though Crooked Arm was dead he wouldn't let the
matter rest there.
Afterwards some people claimed to have seen Mustafa practising in his
yard with a trough propped on chairs. But Mustafa denied with a frenzy
worthy of Crooked Arm himself that he had been jumping over any such trough.
He said his horse could easily leap a gate if necessary and Crooked Arm
wouldn't be able to reach him even if he tried to do so with his famous arm.
And so, on the fourth day after the old man's death, when everyone had
finished taking final leave of their relative and fellow villager, Mustafa
stationed himself by the coffin awaiting his finest hour, sorrowful and at
the same time impatient.
When the time came he delivered a short speech, full of a solemn
dignity. He recounted the heroic life of Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as
Crooked Arm, from one horse to the next, right up to his dying wish. As a
brief reminder to the young, Mustafa mentioned the feat of the stolen
stallion and how Crooked Arm had not been afraid to leap down the cliff,
giving it to be understood in passing that if he had yielded to fear it
would have been a great deal worse for him. He said that he recalled the
incident not in order to detract from Crooked Arm's exploit but to offer the
young folk yet another proof of the advantage of bold decisions.
And then, in accordance with the dead man's wish, and his own wish, he
addressed the assembled elders in a thunderous voice and again asked them if
it were not wicked to jump over a coffin.
"There is no sin in that," the elders replied. "A horse eats no meat,
so its breath is clean."
After that Mustafa walked to the tethering post, untied his horse,
leapt into the saddle, flourished his whip and charged along the corridor
formed by the crowd towards the coffin.
While he had been walking to the tethering post the space beyond the
coffin had been cleared and the people moved back so that the horse should
not ride anyone down. Someone had suggested covering the dead man with the
tent cape to protect him from any earth that might be scattered from the
horse's hooves. But one of the elders had said there would be no sin in that
either because he was going to lie in the earth anyway.
Well, Mustafa's horse charged up to the coffin and suddenly stopped
dead. Mustafa shouted and lashed it on both flanks with his whip. The horse
twisted its head round and bared its teeth, but stubbornly refused to jump.
Mustafa swung it round, galloped back, dismounted, for some reason
tested the saddle girths, and once again swooped on the coffin like a hawk.
But again the horse balked and, no matter how Mustafa whipped it, refused to
jump, although it did rear.
There was about a minute of tense silence in which only the crack of
the whip and Mustafa's laboured breathing could be heard.
And then one of the elders said:
"It strikes me the horse won't jump over a dead man."
"That's right," recalled one of the others. "A good dog won't bite his
master's hand and a good horse won't jump over a dead man."
"Down you get, Mustafa," somebody shouted. "Crooked Arm has proved to
you that he knew more about horses than you."
Mustafa turned his horse and, parting the crowd as he went, rode out of
the yard. And then a tremendous burst of laughter went up among the
mourners, such as one would be unlikely to hear even at a wedding, let alone
a funeral.
The laughter was so loud and long that when the chairman of the village
Soviet heard it in his office he dropped his rubber stamp and exclaimed:
"Upon my word, I believe Crooked Arm has jumped out of his grave at the
last moment!"
It was a merry funeral. The next day Crooked Arm's posthumous joke was
being told and retold in nearly every corner of Abkhazia. In the evening
Mustafa was somehow persuaded to attend the funeral supper, for though it
was no sin to jump over a dead man it was considered a sin to bear a grudge
against the dead.
When an old man dies in our country the funeral feast is a lively
affair. Men drink wine and tell each other funny stories. Custom forbids
only drinking to excess and the singing of songs. Someone may inadvertently
strike up a drinking song, but he is soon stopped and falls into an
embarrassed silence.
It seems to me that when an old man dies there is place for
merry-making and ritual splendour at his funeral feast. A man has completed
life's journey and, if he dies in old age, having lived his span, it means
there is cause for the living to celebrate his victory over fate.
And ritual splendour, if it is not taken to the absurd, did not spring
from nowhere. It says to us: something tremendous has happened--a man has
died. And if he was a good man, there will be many who wish to mark and
remember the event. And who deserves to be remembered of men, if not Crooked
Arm, who all his life enriched the earth with labour and merriment, and in
his last ten years, it might be said, actually tended his own grave and made
it bear fruit and gathered from it quite a good crop of peaches.
You must agree that not everyone manages to pick a crop of peaches from
his own grave; many may try but they lack the imagination and daring that
Old Crooked Arm possessed.
And may the earth be soft as swan's down for him, as indeed it should
be, considering that it was a good dry spot they chose for him, a fact he
was very fond of mentioning while he lived.
--------
The man who wants to touch you for a loan sends no telegram in advance.
Everything happens suddenly.
He begins by discussing certain cultural matters of wide general
interest, possibly even outer space, listens to all you have to say on the
subject with the greatest attention and, when a warm human relationship has
developed between you in this abstract sphere, he takes advantage of the
first pause in the conversation to splash down gently from the cosmic
heights, and say:
"Incidentally, you couldn't lend me a tenner for a fortnight, could
you?"
Such a swift change of subject cripples the imagination and always
leaves me at a loss. What I really cannot understand is why this should be
incidental. But that is the way of borrowers. They can turn any incident to
their advantage.
For the first few precious seconds I am confused. And confusion spells
disaster. The mere fact of not answering promptly indicates that I have
money, and once that is established, it is the hardest thing in the world to
prove that you need that money yourself. The only thing to do is to fork
out.
Of course, there are some odd characters who pay back what they borrow.
Actually they do a lot of harm. If they didn't exist, the whole tribe of
chronic defaulters would have died out long ago. But, as things are, it
continues to prosper, profiting by the moral credit of these eccentrics.
I did once refuse an obvious cadger. But I soon repented.
We met in a cafe. I might never have noticed him but for a revolting