The Complete Short Stories Read online

  The horse plunged under his sharp-digging stirrup, and he returned to his senses, more tired from the mental journey than the actual one.

  ‘Did I speak to myself then, Jovann?’

  ‘It is my lord’s privilege,’ said the general.

  ‘Did I speak aloud, tell me?’

  ‘My lord, no, on my oath.’ But he knew the man lied to hide his sovereign’s weakness, and bit his lip to keep silence until he had the pleasure of feeling the blood run in the hairs of his beard.

  They followed a vague track, not speaking. At last they heard the noise of a bullock-cart creaking and bumping along, and emerged onto the dusty road that would take them to Sveti Andrej. Now that the trees stood further apart, and their eyes were adjusted to the night journey, they could see the shape of the bullock-cart ahead. He was well awake now, and motioned to Jovann to follow. They rode up to the cart and hailed the driver.

  Deciding they now had no cause to go further, the two bullocks dragging the cart stopped and cropped grass in the middle of the road. With an oath, Jovann jumped to the ground, his sword again ready in his hand. The driver of the cart sprawled face up to the stars with his throat cut. Rags lay under his outspread arm which they examined after a little, and found them to be a peasant woman’s clothes.

  ‘This they dare do, so near to home, to kill one of my peasants for the sake of his wife, so near to home, so near to home!’

  In a storm of anger and weakness, he felt the tears scald from his eyes, and sat on the bank to weep. Jovann joined him, and put an arm about his shoulders, until he stopped for shame. At that, Jovann thrust a jug into his hands.

  ‘The man’s rakija, lord. We might as well profit from it, since he no longer can. Drink it, for we have not many hours’ travel left, and then we will eat the fish and pluck some of the cherries that are growing above our heads.’

  He was secretly angry that Jovann could speak of these trivial matters when the urgency of the situation was so great. But a sort of fear gripped him; he was unnerved by the way the bullock-cart had arrived so punctually to deliver its message of death, and he needed to feel the heat of the rakija as it plunged down his throat. They drank in turns, quaffing out of the jug.

  After a while, the bullocks took the cart off down the road again, creaking and bumping every inch of the way. The two men began to laugh. The king sang a fragment of song:

  ‘How happy are they who dwell in Prilep

  Where the birds nest under every eave

  And the green tree grows.’

  Although he recalled that the Turk now stood at the gates of Prilep, he sang the verse again into the leafy night. He told Jovann stories of the old days to raise his spirits, of how his grandfather Orusan had in his youth leaped across the fissure in the rock on Pelister and would not marry till he found a girl of hot enough breath to do likewise, no, not though five bare-legged maidens lost their life trying; and how he himself had swum underground a vrst in a cold and unknown river in the same region; and of his father’s day-long flight alone in the hills, with Alisto, the Shiptar prince. And then he thought of his little wife dying in Bitola, and was solemn, and reproached himself. They got to their feet and climbed once more stiffly into their saddles, though Jovann took a great bunch of cherries from the tree as they went, pulling half a branch along with him.

  So they rode on through the night, and shivered in their jackets. When dawn leapt over the hills again, they were near to the holy place that the king had mentioned, called Sveti Pantelimon.

  He halted his steed by a side track and said, ‘The way is steep here. I will leave the horses here with you and be back in only an hour, after I have consulted the holy man about the future.’

  But Jovann protested. ‘My lord, we are but two hours’ travel now from the house of your kinsmen at Sveti Andrej. Let us first carry our ill news to them and set their warlike intentions astir, and then we can return here to your holy man tomorrow, after we have rested.’

  But he was set in his course, and said so. ‘Then,’ said the faithful Jovann with a sigh, ‘I will follow after you on foot, leading the horses, that where we may ride we can. Heaven guide you, sweet lord, that you know best.’

  ‘There is no room for doubt of that,’ he said sharply, though in his own head there was room enough.

  Now they climbed amid sharp spurs of rock, on which the first lizards already crawled to sun themselves. Tortoises ambled from their path, and the progress they made was no faster than that of the tortoise, for the track led back and forth about the hillside. The noise grew of a fast mountain stream by which they could guide themselves. When they found it, they saw how it ran deep between two cliffs, and how the path to Sveti Pantelimon followed beside it as man’s paths must ever be slave to those of nature.

  Here, after a brief discussion, the horses were hobbled and left, and the king and Jovann went forward together, the one behind the other because the path was so narrow. The water rushed by their feet, making unpleasant music. The rocks above overhung dangerously, so that the trees growing slantwise from one side were often trapped in the vines growing from the other. In one place, a great boulder had fallen and wedged itself between two sides above their heads, making a bridge for any who were foolhardy enough to pass that way. At another point, where blue flowers clung to the damp rock, they had to bend double, for the path had been painfully chipped through the rock itself.

  It was thus, bent double like cripples at Bitola fair, that they reached the monastery of Sveti Pantelimon. Roses grew by it, otherwise it was a grim place, a tiny church built into the rock on a widening ledge of the rock, with a dwelling hut attached. The modest brick cupola of the church was almost scraped by fingers of rock stabbing from the cliff-face.

  The intruders were seen. Only four brothers lived here; three of them hurried out to meet their royal guest, whom they recognised. But it was the fourth the king required to see, and after taking slatko, the traditional dish of Serbian hospitality, he asked to see this priest.

  Jovann rose. ‘My lord king, I fear for your safety even here, since we know not that even now the foul-stomached muslim may be riding along this very canyon. I am a soldier. I will guard outside, and give you warning if they come – in a place like this, we might hold off an army.’

  ‘Guard well, my general,’ said the king, and was prompted to give Jovann his hand.

  The holy man he wished to see sat in the bare adjoining room. He seemed, with his wrinkled visage, to represent antiquity rather than old age; but his most notable feature was his left eye which, unlike its brown neighbour, was entirely and featurelessly white. To the king, it appeared that this priest, by name Milos, often saw best with his white eye.

  When their courtesies were concluded, the king said, ‘I am here to ask you only one question, and I need from you only one answer.’

  ‘Often, my lord king Vukasan, there is more than one answer to a question. Question and answer are not simple and complete opposites, as are black and white.’

  ‘Do not tease me, for I am weary, and the freedom of my kingdom is at stake.’

  ‘You know I will do what I can.’

  ‘I believe you are among the wisest men in my lands, and that is why I come to you now. Here is the question. Only a few years ago, in the reign of my father and grandfather, whom we all recall and bless, this our kingdom was expanding, and with it the life of our peoples. Life and knowledge and art and worship were gaining strength every day. Now we see all that we hoped for threatened with ruin, as the red-tipped muslim bites into our lands. So I ask you what will the future be, and how can we influence it for good?’

  ‘That sounds, my lord king, like two questions, both large; but I will reply to you straightly.’ Milos opened the palm of his hand and stared at it with his white eye. ‘There are as many futures as there are paths in your kingdom, my lord; but just as some paths, if followed to their end, will take you to the west and others if followed to their end will take you to the east, so t
here are futures which represent the two extremes of what may be – the best and the worst, we might say. I can, if you will, show you the best and the worst.’

  ‘Tell me what you can.’

  The priest Milos rose and stared out of his small window, which afforded a view onto the gloomy rock beyond. With his back to the king, he said, ‘First, I will tell you what I see of the good future.

  ‘I see you only a year from now. You lead a great army to a beleaguered city set under an isolated mountain, as it might be Prilep. There you smite the sacrilegious Turk, and scatter the entrails of his soldiery far over the blossoming plain, so that he does not come again to our Serbian lands. For this great victory, many petty princes turn to your side and swear allegiance to you. The Byzants, being corrupt, offer you their crown. You accept, and rule their domain even as your father hoped you might.’

  He turned to look at the king, but the king sat there at the bare table with his head bowed, as if indifferent to the burning tidings the priest bore. The latter, nodding, turned back to contemplate the rock and continued in an even tone as previously.

  ‘You rule wisely, if without fire, and make a sensible dynastic marriage, securing the succession of the house of Nemanija. The arts and religion flourish as never before in the new kingdom. Many homes of piety and learning and law are established. Now the Slavs come into their inheritance, and go forth to spread their culture to other nations. Long after you are dead, my king, people speak your name with love, even as we speak of your grandfather, Orusan. But the greatness of the nation you founded is beyond your imagining. It spreads right across Europe and the lands of the Russian. Our gentleness and our culture go with it. There are lands across the sea as yet undiscovered; but the day will come when our emissaries will sail there. And the great inventions of the world yet to come will spring from the seed of our Serbian knowledge, and the mind of all mankind be tempered by our civility. It will be a contemplative world, as we are contemplative, and the love in it will be nourished by that contemplation, until it becomes stronger than wickedness.’

  He ceased, and the king spoke, though his eyes were fixed on the bare floor. ‘It is a grand vision you have, priest. And … the other, the ill future?’

  Milos stared but with his white eye at the rock and said, ‘In the ill future, I see you leading no grand army. I see a series of small battles, with the shrieking Turk winning almost all of them by superior numbers and science. I see you, my lord king, fall face forward down into the Serbian dust, never to rise again. And I see eventually Serbia herself falling, and the other nations that are our neighbours and rivals, all falling to the braying enemy, until he stands hammering at the gates even of Vienna in the European north. So, my lord, I see nigh on six centuries in which our culture is trampled underfoot by the conqueror.’

  Silence came into the chilly room, until the king said heavily, ‘And the other lands you spoke of, and overseas, how are they in this ill future?

  ‘Perhaps you can imagine, my lord. For those six centuries, lost is the name of Serbia, and the places we know and love are regarded simply as the domain of the ginger-whiskered Turk. Europe grows into a fierce and strifeful nest of warring nations – art they have, but little comtemplation, power but little gentleness. They never know what they lack, naturally. And when Serbia finally manages to free itself from its hated bondage, the centuries have changed it until your name is lost, and the very title King no longer reverenced. And though she may grow to be a modest power in the world, the time when she might have touched the hearts of all men with her essence is long faded, even as are last year’s poppies.’

  After he had heard Milos out, the king rose to his feet, though his body trembled. ‘You give me two futures, priest, and even as you said, they differ as does a speckled trout from a bird. Now answer my question and say which of them is to be the real future, and how I can realise the good vision of which you spoke first.’

  The priest turned to face him. ‘It is not in my power to tell you which future will happen. No man can do that. All I can do is give you an omen, hoping that you will then take power into your own hands. Seers see, rulers rule.’

  ‘Give me then an omen!’

  ‘Think for yourself where the futures divide in the prospects I laid before you.’

  He groaned and said, ‘Ah, I know full well where they divide. We do not bring enough men against the devilish muslim at one time. We are as you say a contemplative people, and the floods must lap our doorstep before we take in the rug at the portal.’

  ‘Suppose it were not a question of being warlike but of being … well, too contemplative.’

  ‘Then Jovann and I must rouse the whole nation to fight. This I will do, priest, this is what I was hastening to Sveti Andrej to do.’

  ‘But you called here. Was not that a delay?’

  ‘Priest, I came bleeding from the battle at the River Babuna with all haste.’

  ‘Ah?’

  He put a weary hand to his forehead and stared at the bare wall. He recalled the long hours of delay at the monastery, the sleep under the trees, the feast of fish and cherries and rakija; and then the diversion here, and he blamed himself deeply for this ineradicable tardiness in his nature, so characteristic of his people also. But there were some more warlike than he, and on them, he saw, the new burden of militarism must rest.

  ‘Jovann,’ he said. ‘My bold General Jovann stands outside even now, defending us. He will lend metal to the Serbian arm even if I by my nature cannot.’

  Milos looked at him with the white eye and said, ‘Then there is your omen. Come now to the window, my lord king.’

  By leaning a little way out of the window, it was possible to see the path by the stream below. Jovann lay with his back to a rock, a pink rose between his teeth. All thought of the Turk had plainly left him, for he sat drawing a heart in the dust, and his sword lay some distance from him beneath a bush.

  ‘As we are contemplative, I fear it will not be a contemplative future,’ Milos said, taking the arm of the king to prevent him swooning.

  When the dizziness wore off, King Vukasan shook off the hand that held his. He saw, looking wearily up, that it was Jovann who squatted by his bed. He lay breathing heavily, conscious of the terrible weight on his chest, trying to measure where his spirit had been. He saw the wooden screen at the bottom of his couch, he regarded the still lake outside his window and he forced a few words through his swollen lips.

  ‘We should have been in Sveti Andrej today.’

  ‘My lord, do not fret yourself, there is plenty of time in the world.’

  And that, my dear unhastening Jovann, is only the truth, thought he, unable to turn the thought into words; but the fate of the coming centuries has to be decided now, and you should have left me here to die and dream of death, and hurry on with the news that my kinsmen must unite and arm … But he could only look up into the trusting and gentle face of his general and speak no word of all he feared.

  Then his focus slipped, and rested momentarily on the carved screen. He saw that among the wilderness of flowers and leaves a bird strained at a lizard, and a bullock-cart traced a path along a vine, and there were little cupolas appearing amid the buds, and shepherd boys and fat sheep, and even a wooden river. Then his head rolled to one side, and he saw instead the vast vacancy of the lake, with the rushes stirring, and the sky reflected in the lake, until it seemed to his labouring mind that all heaven stood just outside the window. He closed his eyes and went to it.

  And Jovann moved on tiptoe out to the waiting priests and said, ‘A mass must be sung, and the villagers must come at once with flowers and mourn their king as he would have it. And all arrangements must be made properly for the burial of this, our great and loved king. I will stay and arrange it for a day or so before taking the news on to Sveti Andrej. There is plenty of time, and the king would not wish us to spoil things by haste.’

  And one of the priests walked along with him along the narrow way, to summ
on mourners from the nearest village in the beleaguered hills.

  The Girl and the Robot With Flowers

  I dropped it to her casually as we were clearing away the lunch things. ‘I’ve started another story.’

  Marion put the coffee cups down on the draining board, hugged me, and said, ‘You clever old thing! When did you do that? When I was out shopping this morning?’

  I nodded, smiling at her, feeling good, enjoying hearing her chirp with pleasure and excitement. Marion’s marvellous, she can always be relied on. Does she really feel as delighted as that – after all, she doesn’t care so greatly for science fiction? But I don’t mind; she is full of love, and it may lend her enough empathy to make her feel as sincerely delighted as I do when another story is on the way.

  ‘I suppose you don’t want to tell me what it’s going to be about?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s about robots, but more than that I won’t tell you.’

  ‘Okay. You go and write a bit more while I wash these few things. We don’t have to leave for another ten minutes, do we?’

  We were planning to go and see our friends the Carrs, who live the other side of Oxford. Despite their name, the Carrs haven’t a car, and we had arranged to take them and their two children out for a ride and a picnic in the country, to celebrate the heatwave.

  As I went out of the kitchen, the fridge started charging again.

  ‘There it goes!’ I told Marion grimly. I kicked it, but it continued to growl at me.

  ‘I never hear it till you remind me,’ she said. I tell you, nothing rattles her! It’s wonderful; it means that she is a great nerve tonic, exciting though I find her.