Eternal, divine life. This is a tale of immortal life. Should I be sitting here, chattering of my infantile adventures, if I did not know that I was speaking for thousands? Should you be sitting there, attending to my chatter, while the world's work waits, if you did not know that I spoke also for you? I might say "you" or "he" instead of "I." Or I might be silent, while you spoke for me and the rest, but for the accident that I was born with a pen in my hand, and you without. We love to read the lives of the great, yet what a broken history of mankind they give, unless supplemented by the lives of the humble. But while the great can speak for themselves, or by the tongues of their admirers, the humble are apt to live inarticulate and die unheard. It is well that now and then one is born among the simple with a taste for self-revelation. The man or woman thus endowed must speak, will speak, though there are only the grasses in the field to hear, and none but the wind to carry the tale.
It is fun to run over the bridge, with a clatter of stout little shoes on resounding timbers. We pass a walled orchard on the right, and remind each other of the fruit we enjoyed here last summer. Our next stopping-place is farther on, beyond the wayside inn where lives the idiot boy who gave me such a scare last time. It is a poor enough place, where we stop, but there is an ice house, the only one I know. We are allowed to go in and see the greenish masses of ice gleaming in the half-light, and bring out jars of sweet, black "lager beer," which we drink in the sunny doorway. I shall always remember the flavor of the stuff, and the smell, and the wonder and chill of the ice house.
I vaguely remember something about a convent out in that direction, but I was tired and sleepy after my long walk, and glad to be returning home. I hope they carried me a bit of the way, for I was very tired. There were stars out before we reached home, and the men stopped in the middle of the street to bless the new moon.
It is pleasant to recall how we went bathing in the Polota. On Friday afternoons in summer, when the week's work was done, and the houses of the good housewives stood shining with cleanliness, ready for the Sabbath, parties of women and girls went chattering and laughing down to the river bank. There was a particular spot which belonged to the women. I do not know where the men bathed, but our part of the river was just above Bonderoff's gristmill. I can see the green bank sloping to the water, and the still water sliding down to the sudden swirl and spray of the mill race.
The woods on the bank screened the bathers. Bathing costumes were simply absent, which caused the mermaids no embarrassment, for they were accustomed to see each other naked in the public hot baths. They had little fear of intrusion, for the spot was sacred to them. They splashed about and laughed and played tricks, with streaming hair and free gestures. I do not know when I saw the girls play as they did in the water. It was a pretty picture, but the bathers would have been shocked beyond your understanding if you had suggested that naked women might be put into a picture. If it ever happened, as it happened at least once for me to remember, that their privacy was outraged, the bathers were thrown into a panic as if their very lives were threatened. Screaming, they huddled together, low in the water, some hiding their eyes in their hands, with the instinct of the ostrich. Some ran for their clothes on the bank, and stood shrinking behind some inadequate rag. The more spirited of the naiads threw pebbles at the cowardly intruders, who, safe behind the leafy cover that was meant to shield modesty, threw jeers and mockery in return. But the Gentile boys ran away soon, or ran away punished. A chemise and a petticoat turn a frightened woman into an Amazon in such circumstances; and woe to the impudent wretch who lingered after the avengers plunged into the thicket. Slaps and cuffs at close range were his portion, and curses pursued him in retreat.
Among the liveliest of my memories are those of eating and drinking; and I would sooner give up some of my delightful remembered walks, green trees, cool skies, and all, than to lose my images of suppers eaten on Sabbath evenings at the end of those walks. I make no apology to the spiritually minded, to whom this statement must be a revelation of grossness. I am content to tell the truth as well as I am able. I do not even need to console myself with the reflection that what is dross to the dreamy ascetic may be gold to the psychologist. The fact is that I ate, even as a delicate child, with considerable relish; and I remember eating with a relish still keener. Why, I can dream away a half-hour on the immortal flavor of those thick cheese cakes we used to have on Saturday night. I am no cook, so I cannot tell you how to make such cake. I might borrow the recipe from my mother, but I would rather you should take my word for the excellence of Polotzk cheese cakes. If you should attempt that pastry, I am certain, be you ever so clever a cook, you would be disappointed by the result; and hence you might be led to mistrust my reflections and conclusions. You have nothing in your kitchen cupboard to give the pastry its notable flavor. It takes history to make such a cake. First, you must eat it as a ravenous child, in memorable twilights, before the lighting of the week-day lamp. Then you must have yourself removed from the house of your simple feast, across the oceans, to a land where your cherished pastry is unknown even by name; and where daylight and twilight, work day and fête day, for years rush by you in the unbroken tide of a strange, new, overfull life. You must abstain from the inimitable morsel for a period of years,—I think fifteen is the magic number,—and then suddenly, one day, rub the Aladdin's lamp of memory, and have the renowned tidbit whisked upon your platter, garnished with a hundred sweet herbs of past association.
Do you think all your imported spices, all your scientific blending and manipulating, could produce so fragrant a morsel as that which I have on my tongue as I write? Glad am I that my mother, in her assiduous imitation of everything American, has forgotten the secrets of Polotzk cookery. At any rate, she does not practise it, and I am the richer in memories for her omissions. Polotzk cheese cake, as I now know it, has in it the flavor of daisies and clover picked on the Vall; the sweetness of Dvina water; the richness of newly turned earth which I moulded with bare feet and hands; the ripeness of red cherries bought by the dipperful in the market place; the fragrance of all my childhood's summers.
Abstinence, as I have mentioned, is one of the essential ingredients in the phantom dish. I discovered this through a recent experience. It was cherry time in the country, and the sight of the scarlet fruit suddenly reminded me of a cherry season in Polotzk, I could not say how many years ago. On that earlier occasion my Cousin Shimke, who, like everybody else, was a storekeeper, had set a boy to watch her store, and me to watch the boy, while she went home to make cherry preserves. She gave us a basket of cherries for our trouble, and the boy offered to eat them with the stones if I would give him my share. But I was equal to that feat myself, so we sat down to a cherry-stone contest. Who ate the most stones I could not remember as I stood under the laden trees not long ago, but the transcendent flavor of the historical cherries came back to me, and I needs must enjoy it once more.
I climbed into the lowest boughs and hung there, eating cherries with the stones, my whole mind concentrated on the sense of taste. Alas! the fruit had no such flavor to yield as I sought. Excellent American cherries were these, but not so fragrantly sweet as my cousin's cherries. And if I should return to Polotzk, and buy me a measure of cherries at a market stall, and pay for it with a Russian groschen, would the market woman be generous enough to throw in that haunting flavor? I fear I should find that the old species of cherry is extinct in Polotzk.