“He may be exaggerating, of course,” said Platon Samsonovich as he showed me the letter, “but where there’s smoke, there’s fire. So I’d like you to go out to Walnut Springs and see for yourself what’s going on.”
He paused for a moment and then added, “I know this chairman; his name is Illarion Maximovich. He’s a pretty good manager, but a real conservative; he thinks of nothing but his tea crop.”
“As for the general line of your article,” continued Platon Samsonovich, now extending his hand into the air as if groping for the contours of my future article, “it should run pretty much as follows: ‘Tea is fine, but the meat and wool of the goatibex are even better.’ ”
“Okay,” I replied.
“Remember,” he said, stopping me as I was halfway through the door, “a lot will depend on this assignment.”
“I understand.”
Platon Samsonovich reflected for a moment.
“There was something else I wanted to tell you.… Oh yes, be sure you get up in time to make the morning bus.”
“Now really, Platon Samsonovich!” I exclaimed and with that was off to fill out my travel voucher.
On the way I stopped off at the mail and supply room and picked up a notebook, two pencils (just in case I should lose my pen), and a penknife with which to sharpen them. Nothing was to be left to chance!
III
The bus sped smoothly and powerfully along the highway. On the right side of the road, beyond the green gardens and small white houses, one could catch a glimpse of the sea, which looked warm even from the distance. It seemed to be saturated with a soothing abundance of summer heat and of swimmers — mostly girls.
On our left green foothills drifted by, covered with fields of ripening corn and tangerine trees. Every once in a while one also saw fields of lop-eared little tung trees dotted with clusters of fruit.
During the war the soldiers of a construction battalion stationed in these parts had picked and eaten the fruit of the tung tree, which looks something like unripe apples but in fact is terribly poisonous. They had been strictly forbidden to touch the fruit, but they ate it anyway. These were hungry times, of course, and probably they thought the poisonous business had been dreamed up just to scare them. Usually it was enough to pump out their stomachs, though there were instances where the poisoning was fatal.
At times a light breeze — so unexpected that it seemed to have been stirred up by the bus itself as it rounded the curve — would bring with it a distant scent of musty fern, of sunbaked manure, and the milky fragrance of ripening corn. In all of this there was something so sweetly and sadly reminiscent of my childhood, of the village and my native land, that I could not help asking myself why it is that smells wield such great power over us. Why is it that there is no memory which can evoke the past with such intensity as the familiar smells which we associate with it? Perhaps the secret lies in their uniqueness — in the fact that we cannot recall a smell in the absence of the smell itself or, in other words, cannot recreate it in our imagination. And when a smell is recreated in its natural form, it forces to the surface everything that was once associated with it. Visual and auditory impressions, on the other hand, are so frequently evoked through memory that perhaps for this very reason they eventually become dulled.
The passengers rode along on their soft, springy seats, rocking gently to the motion of the bus. The top of the bus was covered with a tinted-blue glass which turned the already blue sky into an incredibly rich and intense shade of blue. It was as if the glass were showing the sky how it should look, and the passengers how to look at it.
This particular bus had been turned over to the Public Transportation Office only recently. In the past it had transported foreign tourists around the city, and sometimes I used to catch a glimpse of it parked in front of the Botanical Gardens, the old fortress or some other scenic spot.
On this occasion it was filled with kolkhoz women on their way home from the city. Each of them carried a tightly stuffed bag or basket from which protruded the invariable cluster of bubliki-thick, ring-shaped rolls. Not without pride some of them also clasped Chinese thermos bottles, which reminded one simultaneously of a prize sports cup and an artillery shell.
Whole mountain ranges drifted slowly by on our left. The highest and most distant of them were covered with the first snow of the season, and their peaks glistened brightly against the horizon. The snow must have fallen the previous night, since these peaks had been bare the day before.
The mountains closer to us were covered with forests and shaded a dark blue. They were a long way away from the snow-covered peaks.
Suddenly, at a turn in the road and on a level with these closer mountains I saw a ridge of bare rocks. At the sight of them my heart contracted with fear and delight, for just below lay our village. As a child I had found these rocks terribly sinister and mysterious and had never ventured up to them, even though they were quite close — along a difficult route, to be sure. And now, reflecting on all the places I had been in my life, I suddenly regretted that I had never once visited these rocks.
Every summer from earliest childhood I had spent several months at my grandfather’s house in the village. And always when I was up there in the mountains, I felt homesick — not so much for home itself as for the city. How I longed to return to the city and inhale once again that peculiarly city smell of dust fused with the odor of gasoline and rubber. I find it difficult to understand now, but in those days I would gaze nostalgically in the direction of the setting sun, comforted by the knowledge that our city lay there to the west, just beyond the soft and rounded contours of the mountain. And all the while I would be counting the days till the end of vacation.
Then, when we would finally return home to the city, I remember the sensation of extraordinary lightness in my legs as I took my first joyful steps on the asphalt pavement. At the time, I attributed this sensation to the smoothness of paved city streets, but it was probably due more than anything else to my endless walks along mountain paths, to the fresh air of the mountains, and to the simple and nutritious food we ate in the village.
Nowadays, no matter where I am, I never feel a trace of that eager and joyous longing for the city. On the contrary, I have begun to miss my grandfather’s house more and more. Perhaps this is because I can no longer return to it: the old people have passed away and all their children have moved to the city, or at least closer to it. But in those years when the house still belonged to our family I was always too busy to spend much time there. It was as if I were keeping it in reserve, to be visited sometime in the future. And now that there’s no one there to visit, I cannot help feeling deprived, as if I had somehow been cut off from my roots.
Even though I seldom visited my grandfather’s house, it helped me from afar by its very existence. The smoke from its hearth, the generous shade of its trees — everything about it made me bolder and more self-confident. I was almost invulnerable because a part of my life, my roots, lived and thrived in the mountains. And when a man is aware of his roots and has some sense of continuity in his life, he can direct it more wisely and generously. And it is harder to rob or deprive him, because not all of his wealth is carried on his person.
I miss my grandfather’s house with its large green yard. And I miss the old apple tree, long overgrown with a hardy grapevine, and the walnut tree under whose green canopy we would lie stretched out on a tanned ox or ibex hide during the hottest part of the day.
How many unripe apples we shook from the old apple tree, and how many unripe walnuts with their delicate kernels and thick, green skins not yet hardened into shells.