Undiscovered Russia

A STRANGE CHRISTMAS PARTY

DECEMBER and the year had almost unwound themselves. We were among the scantily clothed days at the end of the year. There was now no snow on the ground, or if there were any, it was not of the time; it survived from earlier days when the skies had been prodigal. It rained a little and froze a little and the feeble air blew up in little gusts or lay exhausted in mists. The mists trailed over the withered maize fields or lay listlessly about the green roofs of the village houses, or cleared for a few hours to show the bases of the mountains. I was living in the far South of Russia.

I stood one morning in the little cemetery and looked around me. It seemed the mist had just cleared a space. The graves and the stones and the crosses, the grass and last summer’s withered flowers could be seen quite clearly, and even the low green paling that fenced the graveyard in. But beyond these the mist had dominion. My world had for the time shrunk, and the unknowable boundlessly increased. As I stood there I felt the mist encroaching, encroaching — like oblivion upon memory; as if it would limit even to the seven feet of shadow I cast upon the ground.