Volodimir Vladko - Descendants of the Scythians

Ivan Semenovich leaned over the chest. Then a light cracking sound was heard. It was enough to make the archeologist jump with horror and spring to the chest.

“Oh, my God! You’ve broken it!” he wailed as though it were he himself who was being mutilated.

“No, I haven’t. I told you everything would be all right, didn’t I?” Ivan Semenovich said reassuringly and stepped aside. The chest opened. Dmitro Borisovich began muttering, overwhelmed with excitement:

“Let me come closer, make way!… Don’t touch anything! I’ll do the rest!”

No one made even a slightest move to infringe on the sacred right of Dmitro Borisovich to be the first to examine the contents of the mysterious chest. All of them just craned their necks, moved by curiosity and the desire to see something exceptional at last. But no one really knew what to expect, no one except Artem, of course. The gold crown of a Scythian chieftain — that was what was in the chest!

“Stay where you are, stay where you are,” Dmitro Borisovich went on mumbling. “Don’t come any closer. One mustn’t… First of all the chest must be photographed the way it is now. The first one who has the right to look inside isn’t me, it’s my camera. Besides, the chest seems… it seems to be empty,” he added after he duly succumbed to the temptation to peep in.

“What?”

“Empty?”

“But it can’t be empty!”

The last of these exclamations belonged to Artem who had never thought, even remotely, of such a possibility.

But still it was empty, or very nearly empty. Dmitro Borisovich did indeed produce a roll of something that looked like paper, holding it with both hands, his elbows sticking high into the air, after he had finished photographing the opened chest. But there was really nothing else inside except for a thin layer of fine dust covering its bottom.

Artem did not even try to hide his disappointment. The crown of the Scythian chieftain, where was it? A stupid old piece of paper — and that was all? Luck positively seemed to have turned its back on the young man! All his dreams had come to naught. What was the use of photographing the chest again and the roll of parchment, as Dmitro Borisovich was now so thoroughly doing? Of what value were they now compared to what Artem had hoped they would find?

But finally the archeologist put away his camera. He leaned over the chest again, closely examining the inside. He put the roll that had been discovered in the chest on a clean sheet of paper, doing it very carefully as if it were the greatest of treasures. He even placed his hands edgewise on both sides of it as if trying to protect it against something. Dmitro Borisovich, quite unlike Artem, did not seem to show any disappointment. And what is more, his face radiated excitement, his small pointed beard moved in nervous jerks, his eyes flashed triumph. He looked round, at every one in succession.

“My good friends,” he said at last in a solemn voice. “Do you know what’s in front of you?”

Everybody kept silent. Then Artem, shrugging his shoulders, said indifferently:

“In any case, it doesn’t look to be any kind of treasure…”

The archeologist flared up:

“Ignoramus! Yes, young man, you’re an ignoramus! This — not a treasure? Not worth the greatest of attention, you think? A genuine document from the Scythian times — not treasure? The only find of its kind in the history of archeology… How dare you! Now, young man, you surely know that not a single written text, not a single word, put down by the Scythians has come down to us! Everything we know about the Scythians we have learned either from artifacts or historical references by ancient Greek and Roman historians! Surely, you must know all this since I’ve already told you about it. Lida, go ahead and tell us: didn’t I speak about all these things?”

“You did, Dmitro Borisovich,” affirmed the girl in a low voice. She was ashamed for Artem; he shouldn’t have come out with that ill-advised remark of his.

“See? So, in other words, you, young man, are of the opinion that a piece of something made of gold or studded with diamonds would be of greater importance for science than this unique document? Rubbish, and foolishness. A gold gewgaw would be just another piece of high value. But this… this is…” the archeologist’s voice faltered with indignation. Suddenly he waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Ah, it’s not worth talking about it anymore anyway. No, you’ll never make an archeologist, Artem, never. But, let’s cut this idle prattling short. I hate wasting time on it.”

Ivan Semenovich decided to help stop the altercation. He addressed the archeologist:

“Getting back to this roll, Dmitro Borisovich. What kind of paper is it?”

The archeologist immediately forgot about Artem, and turning to his friend, he said:

“Naturally at this point I cannot state anything positive about it except that it is a piece of specially cured leather. We can tentatively call it parchment. We’ll have to unroll and see what’s written there.”

“But how do you know without unrolling it that something is in fact written on the parchment? Maybe it’s blank?”

“That’s out of the question,” replied Dmitro Borisovich firmly. “I’m absolutely sure something’s written on it. You don’t believe me? You question my judgement? In just a moment, you’re going to see it with your own eyes. Lida, get a piece of paper and pencil ready. And what’s most important — one has to be extremely careful as this parchment is remarkably old. It can easily break, crumble, fall to pieces.” The archeologist grew even more agitated than before and now did not try to hide his excitement. His fingers trembled when he picked up the parchment again and began unrolling it as carefully as he could. The parchment was slow to yield: it rolled up again by itself as though it were spring-loaded the moment it straightened out. But it was enough to hold the unrolled part in the straightened position for several seconds for it to lose its elasticity and stay flat.

“Letters! Do you see them? Here they are, letters!” Dmitro Borisovich cried out in a transport.

Dark-brown letters could in fact be discerned on the inside of the parchment. They were ranged in straight lines, not even broken into separate words. What language was it?

“Those who want to find…” read Dmitro Borisovich in an undertone, at the same time unrolling the parchment a bit more.

“Oh, is that what’s written there? How can you understand these strange characters?” asked Lida in bewilderment.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” muttered the archeologist. “Yes, that’s what’s written here… in ancient Greek though there are some words of a different language… possibly Iranian, mixed in. Unusual phraseology for ancient Greek… Now, let’s see what it says further…”

The lines appeared one after another as Dmitro Borisovich kept unrolling the parchment, reading occasional phrases aloud:

“’The way is indicated by the map…’ That’s all very nice but where is the map? ‘I have found gold there…’ Gold? And who was it this ‘I’?”

At last the parchment had been completely unrolled. Dmitro Borisovich grabbed his camera again and photographed the parchment stretched out on the white piece of paper several times; the parchment was tawny with dark uninterrupted lines of letters. Dmitro Borisovich began copying them down into his notebook. He kept muttering something to himself, plucking at his heart; evidently he had come across some difficult passages in the enigmatic text. Nobody dared to disturb or distract him with questions. Lida felt Artem touching her shoulder lightly:

“Did you hear that about the gold?” he said under his breath.