A MAN IS GONE
What a strange night it was. The
fishermen were frightened and returned with empty nets.
… Two stars played above. One said that
it would be clear tomorrow--you lay down, I will cover you.
… From that side the apples were in
bloom. But near Petrino, either a strong wind had blown or something had
burned the land--everything was black. People were lying down the entire
night to warm the land.
… At first there was neither dry land nor
fruit. In the morning everyone gathered around a cross and buried a child.
When the sun rose, a lake was created from all those who had cried.
And above Petrino--two stars shine: one
is felt, and the other one will foretell a bad omen somewhere.
The spirit rises and falls, travels
around the shore, looks at itself in the clear water and wanders from
Labino to Plaoshnik, climbs to Mokra, descends to Trpeytsa, and the sources
of the lake do not dry up. In the water the childhood times of the
residents of the city are refracted, birds extend their wings, the mobile
heads of the waves are overtaken. The great eye of the lake flickers.
The shore is being uncovered more and
more.
The light was spread abundantly
everywhere. The city was as if it lived for only one season of the year.
The sunlight was diffused--whiteness, rosiness, whiteness, whiteness,
whiteness, long dream and insomnia and pure whiteness again, like a spring
which flows whiteness, like white dew, like a white maiden, like a white
morning which offers promises.
Only shores everywhere, with neither
beginning nor end.
With daybreak, through the flight of
birds, through the light of the first fervor, it is as if something great
smiles, as if it talks and then again smiles on the roofs of the city and
on the wandering of the waves.
*
Every year the eels travel on a
honeymoon, and in a distant bay, beyond the ocean, they discard their eggs.
The young eels, accompanied by a few older ones, reach the lake.
At first the people wanted to dry out the
lake. Somebody had said: "Let's transfer the lake to another place; it will
be better there."
The citizens of the city grabbed
pickaxes, sickles, rakes, and pitchforks, stood on the shore, and did not
allow those few people to dry up the lake.
They said it and they did it.
In one summer they raised a large dam far
from the lake. The inhabitants of the lake, busy from morning to dusk with
work, did not discover that a great earthen dam was being constructed. When
they found out, it was late: at dawn they discovered that the lake had
dried up.
Eels travel in schools. One lone eel
became bored with going along with the group and decided to separate, to
live alone and to travel alone. It chose a sharp rock deep in the ground
and hit its head on it, injuring the part which drew it towards the school.
The eel with the injured head wandered blindly.
All the eels and all the trout watched
that eel. The first day they were amazed. The second day they were afraid.
The third day they began to avoid the injured eel. The fourth day the two
schools approached it, and the fifth day all eels and trout followed behind
the injured eel. Thus, injured Eel became the leader of all eels and all
trout.
Eel wandered from one side of the lake to
the other. It crept through seaweed, through underwater meadows, hid in the
grass, endured cold depths. Like an arrow it would rush straight up and
straight down all the way to cold currents, and never did it come up to the
surface where the water was warm in the summer and could cure its body so
that it would again be capable of returning to the depths of the lake.
The night was horrible. A great amount of
water had flowed through the riverbed during the night. Eel proceeded
through the current. All eels and all trout followed it. Along with the
floodwaters of the river, the eels and trout reached the dam. Eel fell and
then felt that it was helpless without water. All eels and all trout threw
themselves after Eel--the Eel-leader, when it had fallen behind the dam,
immediately turned around and wanted to return to the lake. The dam was
very high, smooth and inaccessible. Eel tried to climb up. It ascended and
fell. Again it climbed. Who knows how many times it got halfway up the dam
and fell into the shallow water--it was completely stunned. Behind Eel fell
all eels and all trout. They climbed and fell. Once, a hundred times, a
thousand times. Finally, Eel realized that it could not climb up the dam.
It left the river water and proceeded through the meadow. For the first ten
meters the meadow was wet and crawling was not so difficult. Eel gasped in
dry breaths, but somehow moisture in the meadow was drying. Eel-leader
continued to crawl. The eels and trout strained behind Eel-leader. Inch by
inch in the grass they were somehow succeeding, but all at once in front of
them an old, dusty country road appeared. Eel-leader returned to the meadow
and there its last ounce of strength failed. It stopped and did not budge.
All eel and all trout stopped with Eel-leader. They moved close to one
another, hugging each other in a pile, and remained motionless.
The moon was full. That summer night was
hot; it had never been as hot as it was then. The pile shrank, and by
morning all eels and trout had fallen apart and not a trace of them
remained.
In the morning when Big Vrshnik, the
groom who had traveled the whole world during the night, rushed to get
there and to show how handsome he was, two stalks of willow had already
appeared in the meadow. All branches and leaves around were hanging towards
the ground as if they were dreaming the prayer of the residents of the
lake.
Lito had then been bear-hunting and was
amazed when he saw two slender willows, entwined and fastened to one
another, had grown in the meadow overnight.
When Lito vent to the city, he told the
residents what he had seen. The residents of the city then told him that
the lake water had dried up and that the eels and trout had disappeared.
Translated by Carolyn Kilkka
