Short Fiction - Vladimir Korolenko (easy books to read in english txt) 📗

at the feet of Purana. While the sad gaze of Kassapa was directed upon this, a stone broke off from the heated cliff and rolled down to the bank of a brook, where a large lizard was resting at this moment.⁠ ⁠… Every day at the same hour it crawled to this spot. Straightening its front legs and closing its protruding eyes, it apparently listened to the discourse of the sages. It was easy to imagine that its green body contained the soul of some wise Brahmin. But this day that stone released this soul from its green envelope, so that it might enter upon new transformations.⁠ ⁠…

A bitter smile spread over Kassapa’s face.

“Come now, ye kindly sages,” he said, “ask this leaf, if it wished to fall from the tree, or the stone, if it wished to break off from the cliff, or the lizard, if it wished to be crushed by the stone. The hour came, the leaf fell, the lizard heard the last of your conversations. For all that we know could not be otherwise. Or do ye say that it should and could have been otherwise than it was?”

“It could not,” answered the sages. “What has been had to be in the great chain of events.”

“Ye have spoken. Therefore, the welts on the back of Jebaka had to be in the great chain of events, and every one of them has been written since eternity in the book of necessity. And you wish me, the same kind of a stone, the same kind of a lizard, the same kind of a leaf on the great tree of life, the same kind of an insignificant stream as this brook which is driven by an unknown power from source to mouth.⁠ ⁠… You wish me to struggle against the current which is carrying me onward.⁠ ⁠…”

He kicked the bloody stone which fell into the water and he again sank back on the earth beside the good sages. The eyes of Kassapa again became dull and sad.

Old Darnu said nothing; old Purana shook his head; but the cheerful Ulaya merely laughed and said:

“In the book of necessity, it is also manifestly written, Kassapa, that I should tell to you what happened once to the two sages, Darnu and Purana, whom you see before you.⁠ ⁠… And in the same book it is written that you shall listen to the tale.”

Then he told the following strange story about his companions and they listened smilingly, but neither confirmed or denied a word.

II

“In the land,” he said, “where blooms the lotus and the sacred stream flows upon its course⁠—there were no Brahmins more wise than Darnu and Purana. No one had learned the Shastras better and no one had dipped more deeply into the ancient wisdom of the Vedas. But when both approached the end of the mortal span of life and the storms of approaching winter had touched their hair with snow, both were still dissatisfied. The years were passing, the grave was coming nearer and nearer, and truth seemed to recede further and further.⁠ ⁠…”

Both then, well aware that it was impossible to escape the grave, decided to draw truth nearer to themselves. Darnu was the first to put on a wanderer’s robe, to hang a gourd of water on his belt, to take a staff in his hand and to set out. After two years of difficult traveling, he came to the foot of a lofty mountain and on one of its peaks, at an altitude where the clouds love to pass the night, he saw the ruins of a temple. In a meadow near the road shepherds were watching their flocks, and Darnu asked them what sort of a temple it was, what people had built it, and to what god they had offered sacrifices.

The shepherds merely looked at the mountain and then at Darnu, their questioner, for they did not know what answer to make. Finally they said:

“We inhabitants of the valleys, do not know how to answer you. There is among our number an old shepherd Anuruja, who ages ago used to pasture his flocks on these heights. He may know.”

They called this old man.

“I cannot tell you,” he said, “what people built it, when they did it, and to what god they here sacrificed. But my father heard from his father and told me that my great grandfather had said that there once lived a tribe of sages on the slopes of these mountains and that they have all perished, since they have erected this temple. The name of the deity was ‘Necessity.’ ”

“Necessity?” exclaimed Darnu, greatly interested. “Don’t you know, good father, what form this deity had and whether or not it still resides in this temple?”

“We are simple people,” answered the old man, “and it is hard for us to answer your wise questions. When I was young⁠—and that was years and years ago⁠—I used to pasture my flock on these mountain sides. At that time there stood in the temple an idol wrought out of a gleaming black stone. At rare intervals, when a storm overtook me in the vicinity⁠—and storms are very terrible among these crags⁠—I used to drive my flock into the old temple for shelter. Rarely, too, Angapali, a shepherdess from a neighboring hillside, would run in, trembling and frightened. I warmed her in my arms and the old god looked down at us with a strange smile. But he never did us any evil, perchance because Angapali always adorned him with flowers. But they say.⁠ ⁠…”

The shepherd stopped with a doubtful look at Darnu and was apparently ashamed to tell him more.

“Say what? My good man, tell me the whole story,” requested the sage.

“They say, all the worshippers of the old god have not perished.⁠ ⁠… Some are wandering around the world.⁠ ⁠… And, sometimes, of course rarely, they come here and ask like you the road to the temple and they go there to question the old god. These he turns to stone.