A vagabond in the Caucasus

by Stephen Graham

EPILOGUE

ON my way back I found a cottage at Kobi for next summer. It is made of stone and has two rooms. A sparkling rivulet comes past, washing, as it were, the toes of the cottage. It will be empty if I come and claim it in the spring, and I think I shall. Now my summer draws to a close. Already the procession of autumn has commenced: the trees at the summits of the mountains have turned from green to golden. The messenger has come to Proserpine. Presently, where I used to count five snowy peaks, I shall find seven and then ten, till at last the little Sphinx mountain that squats outside Vladikavkaz will also be a peak and glisten like the rest. The thorn-apples have already burst and thrown out their crimson seed, and like dusty yellow balls the Cape gooseberries have appeared on the mountains. The glories of gold and brown have spread downwards like fire into the valleys. The leaves are falling from the trees on the hills where the wind roars, from the trees in the valleys, even from the trees in the town, where there is no wind at all, and the snow is descending in the valleys. The sleet falls in Vladikavkaz, and then snow, and then in November even Vladikavkaz is, as Moscow and St Petersburg and the whole wintry north, a snow-clad town. The cycle of seasons has gone round; winter turned to slush on Palm Sunday at Moscow, it changed to laughing spring on the hill-slopes at Vladikavkaz. Summer followed the plough over the fields and blushed in a myriad flowers. The maize fields waved, the sunflowers gazed. Then autumn was seen in the streets, whilst all the village folk threshed the corn with flails. The priest blessed the first fruits and autumn was past. Once more it became the turn of winter, the most Russian of all seasons. Quick pace the winter came just as it had passed away. As in the spring sledges gave way to wheels in a day, so now did the wheels give way and the sledge ruled the road.

A wave of intense longing came and I must see England again. So one day found me once more in the city of fog and rain. As I walked down Fleet Street in Russian attire I heard someone say, “There goes a Pole.” But when I came into the city people were not deceived, and despite my shabby soft black hat, unclipped hair, and furry overcoat, a young man in Throgmorton Street persisted in whistling behind me that Gilbert and Sullivan air:—

“Oh, he might have been a Rooshian,

A Greek, a Turk, a Prooshian,

But in spite of all temptati-on

To belong to another nati-on

He was an Englishman!”

Yes, he was.

The time comes to draw a line and strike a balance, and that is not an easy thing to do. Life to me has meant love, and, as Antony says, “there’s beggary in love that can be measured.” My gains are not to be set down. Many things are true until they are set down in words. A pressed flower is not a flower at all.

I went to Russia to see the world, to see new life, to breathe in new life. In truth it was like escaping from a prison, and now when I take a walk in London streets it seems as if I am taking the regulation exercise in a prison yard. And the dirty rags of London sky look like a tramp’s washing spread on the roots to dry. Still, it is given that we live even in prisons and under such skies for certain purposes. The towns have their beauties and mysteries even as the mountains have. I, least of all, have reason to be despondent there, for, like the companion of Christian, I have in my bosom that key which is called Promise.

At my room in the mill at Vladikavkaz I commonly looked out upon three pictures. In the foreground was a row of trembling poplars, and beyond these was a beautiful soft green hill, and beyond all a great grey mystic range of mountains. I call them the Present, the Future and the Eternal. The pleasant waving poplars were very real, very clear, and every leaf stood out distinctly, but on the green hill the trees were so many that I could not pick one out and see it clearly. It tempted me to go there and explore. The hill was full of allurement and charm, as it were, of the deep eyes of a woman as yet unknown but destined to be loved. It betrayed a mystery which it did not reveal.

Moreover, the green hill seemed to be the best standing place for looking into that vision of the eternal, of the ever-present mystery of Man and his Life. The mountains seemed to be the Ikon in God’s open-air room, His vast chamber of Nature.

Here then is the story of my life and of its gains written in the terms of these symbols. It was written at the Mill, it is a flower wreath gathered on the mountains.