“I found it hard to live in Poland. The people there are false and cold-blooded. And I could not speak their snake-like tongue that does nothing but hiss. Why do they hiss? God gave them a snake-like tongue because they are so false. And so I set off, I knew not for where, and saw the Poles getting ready to rise up against you Russians. I came to the town of Bochnia. There a certain Jew bought me, not for himself, but to trade with my body. I agreed to this. One has to know how to do something if he is to earn a living; I did not know how to do anything, and I paid for it with my body. But I resolved that if I could get enough money to take me back to my native town on the Birlat, I would break my bonds, however fast they were. I could not complain of my life there. Rich gentlemen came and feasted with me. That cost them big sums. They fought with each other over me and were brought to ruin. One of them tried for a long time to win my heart, and at last this is what he did: he came with his servant, who was carrying a big sack, and he emptied the sack over my head. Gold coins came showering down over me and it cheered my heart to hear their ring as they struck the floor. And yet I turned the man out. He had a fat greasy face and his belly was as puffy as a pillow. He looked like a stuffed pig. Yes, I turned him out, even though he told me he had sold all his land and his house and his horses to bring me that gold. But by that time I was in love with a worthy gentleman with a scarred face. His face was criss-crossed with scars left by Turkish sabres. He had just come back from helping the Greeks fight the Turks. There was a man for you! What were the Greeks to him, a Pole? Yet he went and helped them fight their enemy. The Turks marred him cruelly – under their blows he lost an eye and two fingers of the left hand. What were the Greeks to him, a Pole? Yet he fought for them, and he did this because he yearned to do brave deeds, and when a man yearns to do brave deeds, he will always find an opportunity. Life is full of such opportunities, and if a man does not find them, it is because he is lazy or cowardly or does not understand life, for if he understands, he is sure to want to leave some memory of himself behind him. And if everyone wished to do this, life would not gobble people up without leaving a trace of them. A very fine man he was, he with the scarred face. He would have gone to the ends of the earth to do a good deed. I am afraid your people killed him in the uprising. Why did you go to fight the Magyars? But hush, say nothing.”

And admonishing me to hold my tongue, old Izergil herself grew silent and thoughtful.

“I knew a certain Magyar. One day he left me – it was in the depths of winter – and in the spring, when the snow melted, they found him in a field with a bullet through his head. As many people die of love as of the plague – quite as many, if they were to be counted. But what was I talking about? Ah, yes, about Poland. It was there I played my last game. I happened to meet a gentleman who was very handsome, devilishly handsome. But by that time I was old. Ugh, so old! I must have been forty by then – at least forty. And he was proud and had been pampered by the women. I came to love him dearly. He thought I would be his for the asking, but I did not give myself up so easily. Never had I been the slave of anyone, and by that time I had broken off with the Jew, which cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. I was living in Krakow in fine style, with horses and gold and servants and everything else I wanted. He came to see me, the proud demon, and expected me to throw myself into his arms. A pitched battle took place between us. I grew haggard under the strain, for it lasted a long time, but at last I won. He fell on his knees before me. But no sooner had he got me than he cast me off. Then I knew I had grown old, and a bitter realization it was. Very bitter. I loved him, the fiend, and he would laugh in my face when he met me. He was a beast. And he would speak mockingly of me to others, and I knew it. Oh, how I suffered! But there he was, always near me, and I doted on him in spite of everything. And then one day he went away to fight the Russians. I could not bear it. I tried to take myself in hand, but I could not master my feelings. I decided to go to him. He was stationed in a wood near Warsaw.

“But when I got there I found out that your soldiers had beaten them and he had been taken prisoner and was being held in a village not far away.

“‘In other words, I shall never see him again!’ I thought to myself. And I wanted desperately to see him. So I thought of a way to do so. I dressed myself as a beggar-woman, pretended to be lame, covered my face, and set out for the village where he was imprisoned. I found it full of soldiers and Cossacks; it cost me dear to stay there. When I found out where the Poles were, I realized it would be very hard to reach them. But reach them I must. And so one night I set out. As I was crawling between the beds of a vegetable garden I saw a sentry standing in front of me. I could hear the Poles singing and talking in loud voices. They were singing a song to the Virgin, and my Arkadek was singing with them. And I remembered with bitterness that once men had crawled after me, and now here was I crawling like a worm after a man, perhaps crawling to my death. The sentry had pricked up his ears and was leaning forward. What was I to do? I stood up and went towards him. I did not have a knife or any other weapon with me – nothing but my hands and my tongue. I was sorry I had not taken a knife with me. The sentry levelled his bayonet at my throat, and I whispered: ‘Wait! Listen to what I have to say and spare my life if you have a heart in your breast. I have nothing to offer you, but I beg your mercy.’ He lowered his gun and whispered: ‘Go away, old woman. Go away. What brings you here?’ And I said that my son was imprisoned there. ‘My son, soldier; does that mean nothing to you? You, too, are somebody’s son. Then look at me and understand that I have a son like you, and that he is imprisoned here. Let me have one look at him. Perhaps he must die soon, and perhaps you, too, will be killed on the morrow. Will your mother not shed tears over you? And will it not be hard for you to die without a last look at her, your mother? It will be just as hard for any son. Take pity on yourself, and on him, and on me, his mother!’

“How long I stood there trying to persuade him! The rain poured down, drenching us. The wind blew and wailed, buffeting me now in the back, now in the chest. And I stood swaying in front of that stony-hearted soldier. He kept saying ‘no,’ and every time I heard that unfeeling word, the desire to see Arkadek flared up hotter within me. As I talked I measured him with my eye – he was small and thin and had a cough. At last I threw myself on the ground in front of him, and, still pleading with him, I seized him round the knees and threw him on the ground. He fell in the mud. Quickly I turned him face down and pressed his head into a puddle to keep him from crying out. He did not cry out, but he struggled to throw me off his back. I took his head in both hands and pushed it deeper into the puddle. He was suffocated. Then I rushed over to the barn where the Poles were singing. ‘Arkadek!’ I whispered through a chink in the wall. They are sly fellows, those Poles, and so they did not stop singing on hearing me. But suddenly I saw his eyes opposite mine. ‘Can you get out of here?’ I asked. ‘Yes, under the wall,’ he said. ‘Then come quickly.’ And so four of them crawled out of the barn, my Arkadek among them. ‘Where is the sentry?’ asked Arkadek. ‘There he lies.’ Then they crept away as quietly as possible, bent almost double. The rain kept coming down and the wind wailed loudly. We reached the end of the village and walked on through the woods for a long time without saying a word. We walked quickly. Arkadek held my hand in his, and his hand was hot and trembling. Oh, how good it was to walk there beside him as long as he kept silent! They were my last moments – the last happy moments of an insatiable life! But at last we came to a meadow, and there we stopped. All four of them thanked me for what I had done. They talked on and on – I thought they would never stop – and as I listened to them I kept feasting my eyes on Arkadek. How would he treat me now? And he put his arms about me and said something in a very pompous tone, I do not remember just what he said, but it was something to the effect that he would love me for having set him free, and he knelt before me and said with a smile: ‘My queen!’ Ugh, what a false dog he was! I gave him a kick and would have slapped him in the face, but he sprang aside and leapt to his feet. And he stood before me, very grim and white. And the other three stood there looking sullen and saying not a word. I stared back at them. And I remember that a great weariness and indifference came over me. And I said to them: ‘Go your way.’ And they said to me, the dogs: ‘And will you go back and tell them in what direction we have gone?’ That is what beasts they were. But they went away. And I, too, went away. And on the next day your soldiers caught me, but they did not keep me long. Then I realized it was time for me to make a home for myself – the life of a cuckoo was a thing of the past. My body had grown heavy, my wings feeble, my feathers dull. I was old, I was old. And so I went to Galicia, and from there to Dobruja. For the last thirty years I have been living here. I had a husband, a Moldavian, but he died about a year ago. And I go on living. All alone. No, not alone – with them —” and the old woman pointed to the waves. They were quiet now. Now and again there would be a faint suggestion of sound that died away as soon as it was born.

“They love me. I tell them many tales, and they like them. They are so young. I feel happy with them. I gaze at them and think: ‘Time was when I was as they are. But in my day people had more strength and fire, and that made life gayer and more worth while. It did indeed.’”

She relapsed into silence again. I felt sad, sitting there beside her. Soon she dozed off, nodding her head and muttering something, perhaps a prayer, under her breath.

A thick dark cloud with the jagged outlines of a mountain range rose out of the sea and moved towards the steppe. A wisp was torn off its highest tip and went flying ahead, putting out the stars one by one. The sea began to murmur. A sound of kissing, of whispering, and of sighing came from the grape-arbour not far away. A dog howled out in the steppe. The air was filled with a strange odour that pricked the nostrils and made one’s nerves tingle. The clouds cast dark clusters of shadow which crept over the earth, now fading, now growing sharply distinct. Nothing remained of the moon but a vague opalescent glow that at times was completely blotted out by a bit of cloud. Tiny blue lights flickered far out in the steppe, which now had become dark and lowering, as if something fearful were lurking there. The lights flared up as if people were wandering over the steppe in search of something, lighting matches which the wind instantly blew out. They were very strange, these blue lights, and suggested the fantastic.

“Do you see any sparks out there?” asked Izergil.

“Those little blue lights?” said I, pointing out to the steppe.

“Blue? Yes, those little lights. So they are still to be seen! But not by my eyes. There are many things I do not see any more.”

“Where do they come from?” I asked the old woman.

I had already heard one explanation of them, but I wanted to hear what old Izergil would say.

“They come from the flaming heart of Danko. Once upon a time there was a heart that broke into flame, and those sparks are what is left of it. I shall tell you that tale. It, too, is old. Everything is old. See how many fine things there were in olden times! Today there is nothing – no men, no deeds, no tales – that can be compared with those of olden times. Why is that so? Come, tell me. Ah, you cannot. What do you know? What do any of you young people know? If you searched the past you would find the answer to all life’s riddles. But you do not, and so you know nothing. Think you I do not see what is happening? I see only too well, even if my eyes have grown weak. And I see that instead of living, people spend their whole lives getting ready to live. And when they have robbed themselves by wasting all that time, they blame it on fate. What has fate to do with it? Each man is his own fate. There are all sorts of people in the world today, but I see no strong ones among them. What has become of them? And the handsome ones are growing fewer and fewer.”

The old woman stopped to reflect on what had become of the strong and the handsome, and as she mused she gazed out into the dark steppe, as if searching for the answer there, I waited in silence until she should begin her tale, fearing that any comment would distract her. And presently she began.