Lydia Davis - The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

In the center of this spot of ground is a square building enclosing a court. The building contains a number of cells with separate entrances. The arches of the doors are pointed, and over each is a tablet with an inscription, in characters unknown to him. In one of the cells is a small platform of clay with two pipes conveying the vapor, one of which is kept constantly burning. The inhabitant of the cell says he is a Parsee from Hindostan, the building was paid for by his countrymen, and a certain number of persons were sent from India and remained until relieved. When asked why they were sent, he answered: To venerate and adore that flame. In the center of the quadrangle is a tumulus, from an opening in which blazes out the eternal fire, surrounded by smaller spiracles of flame.

The fruits thereabout come spontaneously to perfection.

From Baku he sets off across the desert to Shamachee. After seventy versts they stop at a stream of water and scare up a large panther that escapes into the mountains. Early the next morning they come to old Baku, now in ruins, and in the evening to Shamachee. Here he sleeps in one of the cells of a ruined caravanserai. The poor peasants who live in the ruins have been ordered by Mustapha Khan to give the travelers provisions.

The next day he travels over hills covered with fruit trees, down into a valley, and up a very steep mountain near the summit of which he enters the town of Fettag, residence of Mustapha the Khan of Shirvaun. The Khan lives entirely in tents and appears to be the most unpolished, ignorant, and stupid of any of the native Princes so far.

The Khan gives them a feast where the precepts of Mohammed are totally disregarded; at the conclusion, singing and dancing girls are introduced according to the Persian custom. The Khan makes them a present of horses, carpets, etc.

In the evening of the next day they come to a camp occupied by Azai Sultan, who is gleeful because he has won a fight over stolen cattle with some mountain people belonging to the next Sultan. The following day they are received by Giafar Kouli Khan, who gives him a long account of the way he beat the Shach’s troops with an inferior number. There are puzzling things about his story but they ask no questions because it is dangerous to puzzle a potentate.

Two nights later he sleeps on the banks of the River Koor, the Cyrus of the ancients. On the road from Ganja to Teflis, his secretary Pauwells falls ill with a putrid fever. There is no cart to be procured and they are given false information that causes them to lie out for three nights exposed to the unwholesome dews of the Koor. They then reach a Cossack station, where they leave the secretary. They ride on to Teflis and send back a cart for him, but though he has medical attention he dies within four or five days.

He is glad to be at Teflis, one of the best cities in this part of Asia. The baths are supplied by a fine natural warm spring. The women deserve their reputation for beauty. Those that are sold for slaves to the Mohammedans are those that are called Circassians, for the Circassians or Tcherkesses who are themselves Mohammedans seldom sell their children.

He has a letter of introduction to the Queen of Imiretia in her capital on the banks of the Phasis. She is in fact merely a nominal sovereign. She does not live in a cave, as he had been told, but receives them in her house, in a room fitted with sofas, ornamented with looking glasses, and hung round with pictures of the imperial family.

The climate here, however, is unwholesome, singularly prejudicial to strangers, and he and his companion Poinsett go to bed with violent attacks of fever. The other three servants are ill, too.

He decides that Ispahan can’t any longer be considered the capital of Persia.

He learns that Count Gudovitch has obtained a victory near Cars over Yussuff Pacha.

He hears that there are rumors of peace between France and Russia; nobody knows if England is included.

As soon as he can sit a horse he takes leave of his Georgian friends, and rides out of the town. The snow and ice on Mount Caucasus, along with the help of some bark he gets from a Roman Catholic missionary, restore him to perfect health and strength as soon as he begins ascending the mountain.

The Caucasus is inhabited by about twenty nations, most of them speaking distinct languages, so that the inhabitants of one valley, insulated from the rest of the world, often can’t make themselves understood if they cross the mountain.

They have purchased a tent and thus avoid stopping in towns where there is plague. On this side of the Russian frontier, it almost threatens to wipe out some of the Mohammedan nations. In some of the villages he passes, all the people have died, other villages are completely deserted, they scarcely see one man in the whole country and the few they see they carefully avoid.

Some people of the tribe of the Caftouras intend to attack them but by mistake attack some Cossacks instead. One Cossack is left dead and one mortally wounded.

They make thirty-six versts to Kobia, pass by Kazbek, the highest part of the Caucasus, make twenty-eight versts in the rocky valley of Dagran, then leave the mountain and advance to the fortress of Vladi Caveass. They cross the little Cabarda entirely depopulated by the plague. On the road he sees the dead bodies of Cossacks and fragments of their lances strewn about.

Here in Mozdok, they are in quarantine.

The ground has recently been overflowed by the Terek, his tent is not waterproof and the country is famous for fevers. He lies several days on the earth with a violent fever, surrounded by basins to catch the rain, which does not stop him from being drenched by it.

A change of situation and a thorough tanning of bark make him well again, but he is detained at Georgievsk by the illness of his fellow traveler.

They will go along the Cuban to Taman, the site of the Greek colony Phanagoria, and so over the Cimmerian Bosphorus to Kerch, the ancient Panticapaeum.

At Stauropol he has a third fever that reduces him so low he cannot stand without fainting away. His optic nerves become so relaxed as to make him blind; with his right eye he can scarcely distinguish at night the flame of a candle. As he regains strength, his vision returns.

He recovers from the fever by using James’s Powder in very large doses, but remains some time very deaf, subject to alarming palpitations of the heart, and so weak that he cannot stand long.

At Taman, they are detained some time by their interpreter falling ill. They are determined to wait there for his recovery, but he grows weaker rather than stronger, being housed in a damp lodging. Fellow traveler Poinsett suffers so severely from a bilious fever and becomes so weak they are very apprehensive for him, but then all rapidly regain strength, due to some light frost, to living in the European manner, and to the great attention of General Fanshaw, the Governor of the Crimea, who is an Englishman.

They stop off in Kiev, the third city in Russia. Here the language is more Polish than Russian.

He loses another servant. The man is lethargic, refuses to exercise, secretly throws away his medicine, grows worse, is brought along lying on a bed in a kibitka toward the house of an English merchant, halfway there gets out, with the help of another servant gets in again, falls into a lethargic sleep, and on their arrival at the inn in Moscow is found dead.