Right now the moon resembled a round of smoked mountain cheese. With what pleasure I would have nibbled away at a hunk of this cheese, savoring its sharp taste and smoky aroma! And how I would have loved some hot grits along with it!
I hastened my steps. A sparse alder grove ran along both sides of the road, giving way in some places to corn and tobacco fields. The evening was very still; only the tapping of my stick broke the silence. Soon farmhouses began to appear, and I was cheered by their tiny, well-kept yards and by the warm, cozy glow of the fires which could be seen flickering through their half-open kitchen doors.
I listened eagerly to the sound of human voices coming from inside — sometimes faint and muffled, at other times surprisingly distinct.
“Let the dog out,” I heard a male voice.
The kitchen door burst open and a dog suddenly started barking in my direction. I hastened my steps and, looking back, noticed the dark figure of a girl silhouetted in the reddish square of the open door. She stood there motionless, peering into the darkness.
Not wanting to run into any dogs, I made my way past each house as stealthily as possible. Finally I came to a wide clearing, in the middle of which stood a large walnut tree encircled with wooden benches. This was a busy spot during the day, when the villagers would gather around the kolkhoz office and store. But now, in the moonlight, the place seemed empty and forlorn, even frightening.
I remembered that somewhere near the village soviet I needed to turn left from the road onto a path. But when I reached the spot, there turned out to be several paths and I couldn’t for the life of me recall which was the right one.
I stopped before one path which led off into a wild hazel grove, but couldn’t decide whether to take it. I didn’t remember there being any hazel bushes, but perhaps there had been after all. At one moment I would seem to recognize the path by a number of small details: its curve, the ditch that separated it from the road, and the hazel bushes. But then, the next moment it would seem that the ditch and the hazel bushes were not the same and the path itself would appear totally alien and unfamiliar.
As I stood there shifting form one foot to the other and listening to the chirring of the cicadas, my gaze wandered from the charmed stillness of the bushes up to the moon, which by now had risen high in the sky and shone with an almost blinding light, like that of a mirror.
Suddenly something black and glossy skidded onto the path and came running toward me. Before I had a chance to move, a large and powerful dog had thrust its moist nose between my legs and was sniffing me over unceremoniously. Seconds later a man appeared with a hatchet slung over his shoulder. He drove off the dog with such dispatch that I could understand why the animal had been in such a hurry to sniff me. The dog jumped away, then circled and yelped for a while, obviously eager to please its master. Finally it came to a halt by the hazel bushes and began sniffing the tracks of some animal.
The man had a bridle strapped around his middle and was apparently searching for his horse. He walked up to me and looked me over, obviously surprised to see an unfamiliar face.
“Who do you belong to, and what are you doing here?” he asked, quite annoyed at not being able to recognize me. I told him that I was trying to find Uncle Meksut’s house.
“What do you need to see him for?” he asked, now in a tone of happy astonishment. Realizing that it would be hard to get the better of his peasant curiosity, I decided to tell him everything.
Glancing sideways at the dog and trying not to let it out of my sight, I began filling him in on the details, while he for his part kept shaking his head and clicking his tongue. Apparently he felt sorry that a young boy like me had to be involved in such adult matters.
“Well, Meksut lives right near here,” he said, pointing down the path with his hatchet.
He began telling me the way, continually interrupting himself to express his joyful astonishment at how close Meksut’s house was and how easy it was to get to. The only thing I understood from all this was that I had to follow the path. I decided not to question him any further, however, since I was already more than grateful for our encounter and for the knowledge that Meksut’s house was close by.
The man now summoned his dog. I could hear the sound of its breathing as it approached, and seconds later its mighty body leapt forth from behind the bushes. The dog went running up to its master, then dropped back on its haunches and began beating the grass with its tail. Once again reminded of my existence, it gave me another quick sniff, but this time with the perfunctoriness of an official checking an I.D. card which he knows to be in order.
“It’s within shouting distance — just a stone’s throw away,” said the man as he started off. He seemed to be thinking out loud and rejoicing at my good fortune.
The dog rushed ahead, the man’s footsteps faded away, and I remained alone in the darkness.
I made my way along the path, which was overrun with hazel and blackberry bushes. In some places the bushes had locked together above the path, and I had to separate them with my stick. I passed through them as quickly as possible, but even so, the branches sometimes lashed at me from behind and I would shiver from their cold, tingling dampness. I walked along like this for some time until gradually the bushes began to thin out and all of a sudden it grew much lighter. Several minutes later I came onto a clearing and there, stretched out before me, was a cemetery gleaming brightly under the full white moon.
In my fright I recalled that I had once walked past this cemetery, but then it had been broad daylight and I had thought nothing of it. I had even knocked down several apples from a tree. And now as I spied this same tree off to one side, I tried my best to return to the carefree mood of that earlier summer day. But in vain! The tree looked completely different, hulking in the moonlight with its dark-blue foliage and pale-blue apples. I quickly stole past it.
The cemetery resembled a city of dwarfs. Its wrought-iron fencing, the green mounds of its graves, its small benches, and its tiny palaces with their wooden and metal roofs — everything in it was of miniscule proportions. Perhaps the cemetery’s inhabitants had themselves grown smaller after death and now, more furtive and malevolent because of their diminished size, they continued to live out their quiet, sinister lives right here.
I noticed several small stools on which food and wine had been placed. On one of the stools there was even a candle burning inside a glass jar. I had heard of the custom of offering up food and drink to the dead, but nonetheless the sight of these stools frightened me all the more.
The crickets continued their chirring and the moon cast its white light on the already white gravestones, making their black shadows look even blacker as they lay on the earth, heavy and immobile like slabs of rock.
I stole past the graves as quietly as I could, but my stick made a hollow and slightly terrifying sound as it tapped against the ground. I drew it up under my arm, but now the night became so still that I was even more frightened. Suddenly I noticed a coffin lid leaning against the wrought-iron fence enclosing one of the graves. Next to this grave was a new, freshly dug plot which had not yet been fenced in.
At the sight of the coffin lid a quiver of icy cold shot up my spine, painfully contracted the skin on the back of my neck, and actually made my hair stand on end. But I kept on walking — my eyes fastened on the coffin lid, which cast a reddish glow in the moonlight.