The dog, honoured by human speech, became still more excited, and Vuk could see him dimly as, having rushed to the top of a high rock, he stood open-mouthed, wagging his tail.
Now, there was no one either in Langaza or Kirekoj who was more bound by conscience to his work than Vuk Karadjitch, and it was very strange that on this night he should, without effort, have left his master’s orchards to wander up the mountains. He did not know where he was going or, indeed, why he was “going” at all. But I have no doubt that something in his brain—one of the many selves that were Vuk—was urging him forward to some secret purpose of its own.
Stillness and the moon’s rays held the night, and though the moon falsified distance and misled even Vuk who was used to the moon’s deceit, he reached the top of the mountains sooner than he had expected. There, unseen, Langaza lay beneath him. Looking in Langaza’s direction, he suddenly became aware of his motive in coming thither. Turning to the dog, he muttered threateningly:
“Go away! Go away!”
But though he threw stones at the animal, it refused to leave him. So, muttering to himself, Vuk proceeded down the other side of the mountain, making his way to Langaza with impatient strides.
Langaza is a lake without banks, and even a careful investigator will find it difficult to determine where dry land ends and water begins. Rushes and grasses, tropically luxuriant, grow from dry earth, mud, and the lake’s bed. In hot weather the air is miasmatic, and millions of mosquitoes make with their wings high shrieks as they fly their way through the air.
When Vuk found himself on the edge of this poisoned richness, he was covered with sweat, and the fumes of the afternoon’s wine had left his brain. For a little time he stood looking at the moon—not at the moon in the sky, for that was too far away, and its very distance mocked him; but at the moon in the lake that was so near. Man cannot without wings soar into the sky, but his own weight will carry him to the bottom of the deepest abyss.
He walked into the rushes and grasses and, in a moment, was surrounded by them; they towered above his head, and soon his feet began to sink in the slime and mud of the lake’s true edge. The dog, with velvet paws, followed a pace behind him. Vuk had forgotten him, for Vuk’s mind was now full of the moon and inflamed by it.
In a very short time walking became laborious and slow, for Vuk’s feet sank into the mud until it covered his ankles, and it was with a great effort that he drew them out again. The sucking, explosive sound they made, and the Moon Man’s heavy breathing startled many large water-birds that, with flopping wings and raucous throats, announced their fear as they rushed away.
Guided by the moon, Vuk at length reached the inner edge of the rushes. In his journey he had fallen many times, and his clothes, his hands, and his face were thick with ooze; the spiky rushes had pierced his flesh, and his face and neck were bleeding. The water now reached his thighs. He stood still while he undressed. His impatient hands feverishly unwound the long cloth that circled his stomach many times. When naked, he waded still further into the lake, and then, lifting his feet and pressing his chest against the water, he swam towards the moon lying in the lake. The dog, devoted and dumb, and seemingly driven by the same fate, followed him.