Very leisurely I made that walk. Ten miles is only a short distance at night, and I did not wish to arrive too early at Dushet. I promised myself hot tea, and I must not come too early for it.
It was a strange night, starless, dark, full of flower odours. I wished to drink, but every mountain stream was chalky. I sat on many stones and scanned the sky, hoping for the dawn. Dogs barked at me, and even made to attack me, but of human kind I saw none. I passed a beautiful dusky plum tree laden with blossom—she was a woman.
About half-past four I came into the district town of Dushet, and at five o’clock behold me sitting in an inn waiting for the samovar. “It will be ready at once, in an hour,” the innkeeper had said. On the wall of the inn was a large coloured picture of the Last Judgment, the good being led by angels to heaven, and the bad being clawed down into hell by fiends; it was very realistic, and caused me to recall the lines:
“Hear all the pedants’ screeds and strictures
And don’t believe in anything
Which can’t be told in coloured pictures.”
The Georgians keep a good hot material hell in their conception of the hereafter.
The innkeeper was evidently only just up, and didn’t intend to serve customers before he had washed himself and put his shop in order. Accordingly, I watched his proceedings. He had a small wash, and combed his brown hair and moustache with two inches of comb, swept up the refuse from the floor, and put the empty bottles away. Large joints of mutton and beef hung from the roof—the man was also a butcher—and these he removed to a stall outside the shop. His wife slept in a bed in a gallery above the counter, and evidently slept too long, for her good man seemed to hurl imprecations at her from time to time.
At about half-past six the samovar, which had been “drawing” in the yard outside the shop, was brought in boiling, and I received what I had promised myself—four glasses of hot tea, the innkeeper’s charge for which was ten copecks—twopence halfpenny.
I had no intention of walking this day. When I had finished my breakfast I went half a mile along the road and then sat down by the wayside. A quarter of an hour later a van carrying hay came along, and the driver offered to take me to Tiflis for a rouble. I lay down on two bags of chaff and soon fell fast asleep.