Just do not forget any of my sins, Vlasy whispered to Arseny.
I will not forget, O Vlasy. Arseny stroked his hair. Everything will be fine, do you hear?
But Vlasy no longer heard anything.
Arseny and Ambrogio set off after committing Vlasy to the earth. They rode quickly, in hopes of catching up with the caravan. Caravans are unhurried, so they actually did catch up with it around midnight. The next morning, Arseny and Ambrogio hit the road along with the caravan.
The forests again gave way to fields, and small Polish towns gave way to Russian towns. Primarily Poles lived in Busk, Russians in Neslukhov, and in Zapytov, one must suppose, half and half. It was unclear who lived in Lvov. The caravan met up with the urban tradesman Stepan on a Lvov street. Stepan was not sober and his language could not be determined. He shook his fist at the riders. He went rolling under one of the guardians’ horses after slipping in manure. The horse’s hoof came down on Stepan’s hand and broke a bone. They laid Stepan on a wagon and sent for Arseny.
What is your name, O man? Arseny asked, as he bound Stepan’s hand in linen.
Stepan motioned with his healthy hand and mumbled some gibberish.
Judging from his gesture, his name is Stepan, surmised the merchant Vladislav.
Listen, Stepan, said Arseny, God’s world is bigger than your small town. You should not shake your fist at people. Or you might lose a hand.
After Lvov they went through Yaroslav, and then Zheshov after Yaroslav.
In Zheshov, Arseny said to Ustina:
These Zheshovites’ speech surely does shine with shushing sufficient for the inspiration of sensations of sheer satiation.
After Zheshov was Tarnov, Bokhnya was after Tarnov, and Krakow was after Bokhnya. Arseny and Ambrogio parted with the merchant Vladislav in Krakow. The merchant invited them to stay and visit his city but they gratefully declined. They needed to move on. They embraced in parting. There were tears in the merchant’s eyes:
I do not like parting.
Life consists of partings, said Arseny. But you can rejoice more fully in companionship when you remember that.
But I would (the merchant Vladislav blew his nose) gather up all the good people I’ve met and never let them go.
I think then they would quickly become mean, smiled Ambrogio.
On the way out of Krakow, the caravan traveled along the Vistula. The river was not yet wide there. Winding along with the river, they reached the small town of Oświęcim. Ambrogio said:
Believe me, O Arseny, this place will induce horror in centuries. But its gravity can be felt, even now.
Silesia began further on. Arseny was still questioning the merchants about Silesia when it turned, unnoticed, into Moravia. He hurried to learn everything about Moravia, for nothing in Moravia heralded that it was any larger than Silesia. Slavic speech was equally interspersed with German and Hungarian in the mouths of those who lived there. German was ever more frequent as they progressed further to the southwest, until it completely displaced everything else. And then Austria began.
German speech was not alien to Arseny. In the utterances of the people he met, he divined the words he himself had once attempted to read in Belozersk, when he studied with the merchant Afanasy Flea. The pronunciation of German speakers turned out to differ significantly from Afanasy Flea’s pronunciation. Afanasy, however, was only partly to blame for that. Even at the time, residents of Austria were trying to speak German in their own way. At the end of the fifteenth century, Austrians still did not know for sure if they were different from Germans and—if they were—how. In the end, the specifics of pronunciation gave them answers to both questions.
In Vienna, Ambrogio went to St. Stephen’s Cathedral to take Communion. Arseny decided to accompany him. He went with Ambrogio feeling ever more certain of his decision, since there was no Orthodox church in Vienna anyway. He wanted to see a huge cathedral from within. Beyond that—and this was likely the most important thing—he had never been to a Catholic mass.
It makes a twofold impression, Arseny reported to Ustina from St. Stephen’s Cathedral. On the one hand, there is the sense of something kindred because we have common roots. On the other hand, I do not feel at home here: after all, our paths diverged. Our God is closer and warmer, theirs is higher and grander. Perhaps, my love, this impression is superficial and caused by my ignorance of Latin. But throughout the entire service I just could not determine if the Austrians themselves know it.
Hugo, a Franciscan monk from Dresden, joined the caravan in Vienna. Brother Hugo had been in Bohemia for some monastery matters and was now on his way to Rome. He was riding a donkey and even explained—counting on his fingers—why he was doing so. In the first place, Christ had ridden a donkey (the monk made the sign of the cross over himself). In the second place, a donkey is smaller than a horse and, correspondingly, requires less tending. In the third place, a donkey is a stubborn animal, exactly what a true monk needs for humility.
Everything the brother said was true. The customary donkey stubbornness was intensified by the fact that the donkey did not like Brother Hugo as a rider. The brother was good-natured and genial but also fat and impatient. He constantly drove the donkey, knocking him in the sides with his heels even though the animal most valued deliberateness and quiet. It was not surprising that Hugo’s talkativeness openly irritated him. Whenever Brother Hugo began speaking, the donkey hastened to bite him on the knee.
After speaking with various people in the caravan (this cost him several painful bites), the Franciscan latched onto Arseny and Ambrogio. Unlike many of the others, they understood German, more or less anyway. This was most likely the reason Brother Hugo felt at ease when talking with them, far more at ease than he felt with the traders in the caravan. Beyond that—and this was not insignificant—he began to think his donkey was calmer and bit him far less in the presence of the two pilgrims.
After leaving Vienna, the caravan began riding along the Alps. Fields spread between the road and the mountains. There was something soothing, almost lazy, in how the mountains lay. Despite the apparent calm, though, their motionlessness was illusory. Unlike the fields, which conscientiously stayed in their places, the mountains moved. The mountains accompanied the caravan on the right, neither nearing it nor distancing themselves. They rushed ahead at the same pace as the caravan, and those walking thought it was impossible to overtake them.
The mountains’ movement began on the far side of the fields, where wind combed at the rye, against the grain. These expanses, which remained a plain, were already moving, along with the mountains. The mountains changed as they went along. They became taller and steeper, the forest became rock, and the rock was snow-covered. Arseny saw tall mountains for the first time and now could not stop admiring them.
And so the caravan reached Graz after Vienna, then set a course from Graz to Klagenfurt. The road was already running through the mountains here, winding and adapting itself to the giant folds of the rock. Crags came together, ever more densely, over the road. Sometimes they almost joined overhead and it would get dark. Then the mountains would part again for a while, and they would make their camp in those places because there was less danger of ending up under a rockslide.