Сергей Огольцов – Rascally Romance. The Vagabond Cherub (страница 5)

The view from the clearing informed that I'd nearly completed the circle around the summit, but somewhere along the way, the passage onto the next bumb was overlooked. Below me, the cliffs were sheer, and in the distance loomed a pair of dilapidated roofs, noticed back at the approach to the forest, shortly before consulting with the woodcutters.

That's it! I've had enough of searching for imaginary paths. But where is the descent to the real, abandoned village of Skhtorashen?…

Soon, among the cliffs, there turned up a path revolving downwards. It led me into a mulberry grove of two-hundred-year-old Mulberries, from where I walked to the village spring of impossibly delicious water—the one by Old Sycamore can’t hold a candle to it!

After the spring there followed 30 meters of a street cobbled with hefty boulders and rocks to connect 2 houses drown in the jungle of blackberries up to their rooftops.

The street ended abruptly, transformed into a barely discernible track in the grass across the slope that curved into the Karmir Shuka valley.

(… the village of Skhtorashen was abandoned before the Karabakh War of the 1990s, so its houses weren't burned down, and the tin roofs survived to rot under the blackberry wraps.

The village that once stood here fell, like many others, victim to the Soviet leadership's senile decision "On the Resettlement of Residents of Highland Settlements to Lowland Areas".

At that moment, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics became already over seventy years old and commenced slipping into senile slumber—dementia knows no mercy, even political systems are doomed to repeat the life cycle of man, their creator.

The ever-accommodating authorities of the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, like other political entities in the Caucasus Mountains, slavishly carried out the directive of their deranged Big Brother and destroyed more than one village.

That is, with all due respect for those over 70, I'll refrain from attending their "We’re Classy and Sage!" club parties…)

Climbing down the long slope, incurably faithful to Bolshevik traditions, I tried a couple of shortcuts, at least a little bit! However, both detours ended in deep gorges and sheer cliffs, so the highway waited for me precisely where I'd left it two days earlier—near the "Platan Tnchreni" snack bar and pavilion.

(… fate gently leads the humble child, but drags the impudent ones with attitude by their hair, both to the very same destination…)

~ ~ ~

After a couple of spacious serpentine bends, the highway settled into a rigidly straight course toward the pass from the vast Karmir Shuka valley.

Along the tilted roadside, I trudged through the repulsive, yet—strangely enough!—somehow alluring stench of overheated asphalt.

Panting, drenched in sweat, I walked and walked and walked through the heat.

The straps of my backpack shifted more and more frequently, in search for a place where they wouldn't hurt so much…

Hopelessly… A couple of steps later, their fangs sank sharply back, right down to the bone, cutting with the full weight of my pack and gear.

The salt of sweat ate at the mucous membranes of my eyes, which had forgotten to frisk about, looking for new delights in the enchanting beauty of nature.

What? Who would but flutter around, little birdies?!

Their dulled gaze slid along the dusty, coarse asphalt, barely managing to bounce aside from under my scuffed army boots, that kept pressing my slowly lengthening shadow into the pavement.

But still, my gaze occasionally shot up of its own accord, hoping to glimpse, through the stinging drops on my eyelashes, the saving shadow of a tree by the road… Although I knew 100% that such miracles weren't expected anywhere before the pass.

I made two attempts to deviate from the straight line and quench my thirst with the blackberries growing along the base of the road embankment. But I couldn't spot any there. It looks like we're in for a blackberry crop failure this year…

(… though, let's hope it was just a barren stretch I just happened to stumble upon, because I hate sowing even justified panic…)

And again, along the inexorably tilted asphalt, the boots on my feet walked and walked and walked… further… higher…

~ ~ ~

To develop any, at least tentative skills of foresight (looking into the future is sometimes useful, as long as you don’t abuse the thing but observe moderation, overdoing is not good, you know), look for no better coach than the mountains. They are the second to none…

When the straight line of the endless climb ended at the pass, and turned into horizontal curves, slavishly obedient to the dictates of the terrain in thexxx caravan of tumbs wandering away from the wide valley, I could already predict (and not just easily, but with certainty) how, half an hour later, the road would finally melt into the distance (if you watch not leaving this here spot) where the indistinct speck of me (who is still right here—see? it’s me, I am here) will take the final turn, disappearing behind the outermost slope of that far off tumb over there…

And another fifteen minutes later, half a kilometer short of the village of Sarushen, located among further tumbs, I will leave the highway and take a dirt road in a subtle slant down to the very bottom of the local valley, created by the Varanda River. And there all will definitely be fine: you may enjoy shade to your heart’s content under the trees nearby a spring of cool water on the basalt bank of the river…

My prediction came true to a T, and when the dirt road reached a shallow ford over a pebbly stretch, so that on the other side it would begin the steep climb to the village of Sarkisashen, two kilometers further on, I split ways with the road and walked along a tunnel—living, rustling, long—through the thicket of Hazel. The far end of the tunnel duly opened onto a flat (rarely met in mountains) field along a bend in the river, skirting a giant tumb on the opposite bank…

Imagine a football stadium where the grass has been replaced by a broad-leaved forest, and the entire arena suddenly reared up, almost vertical. And beneath the hooves… well, that is… and at the foot of the tumb, the Varanda River roars…

Because of so great gradient, the treetops don't screen each another, but climb up in alternating rows. Moreover, every treetop has its own unique shade of green, one of its two hundred—slightly different from the other 199.

Can you visualize this whole daydream? If so, then you'll easily spot me here, too. There I am—lying under a gnarled Walnut tree by the field, waving my hand—just in case… I stretch luxuriously out over a thick bedding of leaves, fallen who knows how many years back—dry, fine, brittle softness.

Ahoy, here am I! Enjoying the orgy of the green stream, gently flowing up the postament beyond the river. I watch the bright blue sky and the Walnut’s catches of the flying disks of sunlight (sent by the slightly rustling breeze) with its long green palms of leaves. Some dextrous catcher!…

It's so damn wonderful—just to live, stretched out like this, your nose pointed into the sky, and thinking about this or that, or something absolutly other…

Cool! Everything's fine… Well, at most, it, maybe, nags a little that there's no one around, no one to share this beauty with…

(… damn! Forget it! I never said that… the circumstance not new to me, on the contrary, I’ve used that moments of the kind only happen when I'm alone.

The main thing is to keep my megalomania in check, not allow it a tiniest peep, or twitch, or try at coming up with a sabotage idea (quite harmless, by its appearance). Like, the more space allotted to a person, the higher their significance and rank… But if we start talking in terms of the Table of Ranks, then—get lost! O, Lord, keep me out!…)

. .. .

A long time ago, I happened to be leafing through a glossy German magazine, or rather, the remnants of one, in a rather tattered state. The cover story survived intact to tell me—who speaks practically no German—about Mr. Herzog, the owner of a large chemical concern.

(One of those lords who consider it below themselves to meddle in political games; they leave this rat race to presidents, prime ministers, rival parties, and so on. However, the slightest turn of the steering wheel within their fiefdoms determines the entire political course of Germany (at that time not yet reunited with the GDR).

The article was full of colorful photographs, on the double-page spread: a close-up of Herr Herzog, with his personal park in the background: a two-hectare lawn: grass trimmed with a comb, pedicured trees from the century before last; a couple of grandchildren, blond herzoglets in curls, shooting arrows between two trees – under his left ear – like cupids from Robin Hood's gang.

His ancestors, wandering Jewish peddlers, walked the entire Silk Way, back and forth, They brought in Chinese consumer goods to sell to feudal dukes, barons, and other titled bandits of the Middle Ages. And those barbaric scum inflicted all sorts of atrocities and torture on the side-curling traders.