UPROOTED

_An Incident of My Travels_

I WAS on my way back from evening service. The clock in the belfry
of the Svyatogorsky Monastery pealed out its soft melodious chimes
by way of prelude and then struck twelve. The great courtyard of
the monastery stretched out at the foot of the Holy Mountains on
the banks of the Donets, and, enclosed by the high hostel buildings
as by a wall, seemed now in the night, when it was lighted up only
by dim lanterns, lights in the windows, and the stars, a living
hotch-potch full of movement, sound, and the most original confusion.
From end to end, so far as the eye could see, it was all choked up
with carts, old-fashioned coaches and chaises, vans, tilt-carts,
about which stood crowds of horses, dark and white, and horned oxen,
while people bustled about, and black long-skirted lay brothers
threaded their way in and out in all directions. Shadows and streaks
of light cast from the windows moved over the carts and the heads
of men and horses, and in the dense twilight this all assumed the
most monstrous capricious shapes: here the tilted shafts stretched
upwards to the sky, here eyes of fire appeared in the face of a
horse, there a lay brother grew a pair of black wings. . . . There
was the noise of talk, the snorting and munching of horses, the
creaking of carts, the whimpering of children. Fresh crowds kept
walking in at the gate and belated carts drove up.

The pines which were piled up on the overhanging mountain, one above
another, and leaned towards the roof of the hostel, gazed into the
courtyard as into a deep pit, and listened in wonder; in their dark
thicket the cuckoos and nightingales never ceased calling. . . .