“Well, enough chatter. To work, to work.... I don’t suppose that we need go galloping along a cliff-face, arrantaparranta, as Homer said about the mules. Here, right here”; the figure of a woman appeared at one of the rear gates, and came towards them almost running; “this here outcrop of rocks right here, they are certainly a genuine part of the mountains —” The woman began waving her apron at them. Eszterhazy peered at her, wondering. “Surely that is your old wet-nurse,” he said. “Madamka. I wonder what she wants.”
“Wants to poke her hairy nose into what is none of her business, I am sure. Never mind her. Here. Get your back up against this big clump of rock just as ye see me doing. Reach behind and grab aholt of it, just dig in your fingers, so — ”
Eszterhazy followed the directions. But before the next set might be given, the once-wet-nurse arrived, the very figure of fury.
“No!” exclaimed the old woman, screwing up her features, so that they looked even more unattractive than usual. “No! No! This is not right! His Reverence may have done it; then again he may not have. He would have good reason — you have not! This is not right, this is not right!” and she clenched her jaws and face-muscles, and she rolled her eyes, performing in a few seconds a “scene” which might have taken others minutes, quarter- hours, or longer.
His Vigor, the Prince Yohan Popoff, said, with controlled forcefulness, “Wet-woman! Old nurse! Do not interfere! Be quiet —”
“No!” she screamed. “No! I won’t be quiet! It is not right! The manners of our mountains do not like it! The —”
“Smudgy old woman,” cried her long-ago nurseling. “Ye know little enough of what is meant by ‘the manners of our mountains’! Be gone, I say!
Be gone! Or I shall send your sons away to the cities! No law obliges me to retain them here on retainer because long ago I nursed their mammy’s pap! Leave off, I say! Be gone!”
She was gone.
She being gone, a gesture from the prince, and again they huddled close to the mass of rock. “Remember,” urged Popoff, “what the Romi, Lucretius, said about the atoms. You must conceive of these with the most strong conception of which you are capable. Conceive of yourself as amongst the atoms of these rocks. Then conceive of yourself as moving them, these atoms of the rocks, mounds, and mountains. If you but have faith that you can, you can push and press and shove atoms A and B — atoms A and B can then move atoms C and D and E and F — and, if you do not yield, atoms C and D and E and F can move atoms G and H and I and / and K —
“Move! Move! Move! Move!”
Eszterhazy had thought and conception and belief and faith. He pushed. He did push. He shoved. He did shove. He moved. He did move. And the rocks, did they move? The rocks moved, too.
Did the boulders move? The boulders trembled, shuddered; seemed to move. Did the mountains move?
The mountains moved.
(In the chapel of the Armenian Merchants’ Guild in Bella long ago a traveller safely returned from Africa had hung up near the high altar an ostrich- egg in a container of golden filigree on a golden chain, as a thanks offering. Now, suddenly, it began slowly to swing like a pendulum. The phenomenon was duly recorded in the records of the congregation; Eszterhazy, learning of this phenomenon, was moved to make certain researches, and to convey the results to certain of his correspondents; why indeed do we not speak of an eszterhaziograph instead of a seismograph? who indeed can say?)
The Grumpkin Gorge, long unrecognized as a gorge, the roadbed of the Official Northern Remote Route Road, from (and to) Austria, was now blocked. Not entirely blocked, to be sure. Individuals, individual men, as individuals, might and could have moved therethrough, carefully picking their way. But no mass or group of men might now move through swiftly. And, certainly, through these mounds of lichen-crusted rocks, schist, granite, what-have-you, no carriages and no baggage-wagons might move at all.
Which left, in that part of the country — unless one wished to carry no baggage other than an alpenstock — only the Official Southern Remote Route Road from Austria.
From (and to) Austria.
Eszterhazy, as he pushed and strained and heaved, and “conceived,” had an impression that they appeared like a pair of piano-movers: he knew, though, that it was no mere piano that they were moving. It did not surprise him that there was an intermittent fall of smaller stones and rocks rolling
and raining down upon them; but he paid not much attention to it until he heard his co-mover, Popoff, cry out in pain.
“Keep on, keep on, do not stop,” said the prince, grimacing.
Dr. E. did not stop; but, looking down, and perceiving some large shadow, he did look up. Immediately his impression was that of an enormous bird flying overhead. Almost instantly he realized that it was no bird. Whatever it was, was almost at once out of sight — he could hardly stop what he was doing to run forward and look up to see better. But in a moment the shape came again into sight and view. The old woman did not look down at him. She did not say anything. He had never seen her before — he had not? — yes, of course, he had — but never at such an angle. Far high and above, she was, and she was riding on something. She was riding sidesaddle, as what woman would not? — for if not, her skirts would bunch up, and Heaven forbid one might observe in daylight with one’s eyes that which, properly, one ought to observe only at night-time, with one’s hands and fingers. Yes, side-saddle she rode, angry was her face; who was she and on what was she riding?
A few more passing flights she made, she did not swoop, merely she flew riding by, she sat upon a branch of a tree, God have mercy on us, and a bunch or bundle of shrubbery, sticks, twigs, was fastened at the end of it. As he now watched, straining upward as well as straining backward, he saw a rock come falling down. And it did not fall from higher up on the outcrop of rock against which the two men were still straining.
There came to Eszterhazy anyway some of the words of an old text he had seen once — a part of a reply of the then-monarch of part of what subsequently became the Empire, in response to an alleged fall of what would now be called meteorites — it had begun We, Isidore Salvador, Vigorously Christian King of all the Scythias, and had gone on to say that Reports of stones falling from the skies must suppose that there are stones in the skies, and, as it is well-enough known that there are no stones in the skies, We must reject such reports out of hand . . .
They were no meteorites which had now fallen; therefor
“We must stop now,” said Popoff. “Here. Help me back. Oh.”
Popofflay reclining with one leg bandaged. Von Shtrumpf and Shtruwel- peyter were playing another of their endless, two-handed games of cards. Everyone was, in theory, waiting: but everyone had almost forgotten what it was which they were waiting for . . . Enter another rough-looking fellow with a leather arm-band.