"I know, I know," observed the Tsaritsa, "but merely at the wishes of your wife who sent you."
"How did you know?" asked the astonished priest.
"I just know.
Why don't you stop by, neighbour?
We'll play sixty-six.
What about it?"
She gave a laugh and flew off, letting off firecrackers into the night sky as she went.
The day after, Father Theodore began preaching to the birds.
For some reason he tried to sway them towards Lutheranism.
"Birds," he said in a sonorous voice, "repent your sins publicly."
On the fourth day he was pointed out to tourists from below.
"On the right we have Tamara's castle," explained the experienced guides, "and on the left is a live human being, but it is not known what he lives on or how he got there."
"My, what a wild people!" exclaimed the tourists in amazement. "Children of the mountains!"
Clouds drifted by.
Eagles cruised above Father Theodore's head.
The bravest of them stole the remains of the sausage and with its wings swept a pound and a half of bread into the foaming Terek.
Father Theodore wagged his finger at the eagle and, smiling radiantly, whispered:
"God's bird does not know Either toil or unrest, He leisurely builds His long-lasting nest."
The eagle looked sideways at Father Theodore, squawked cockadoodledoo and flew away.
"Oh, eagle, you eagle, you bitch of a bird!"
Ten days later the Vladikavkaz fire brigade arrived with suitable equipment and brought Father Theodore down.
As they were lowering him, he clapped his hands and sang in a tuneless voice:
"And you will be queen of all the world, My lifelo-ong frie-nd!"
And the rugged Caucuses re-echoed Rubinstein's setting of the Lermontov poem many times.
"Not for personal gain, but merely at the wishes . . ." Father Theodore told the fire chief.
The cackling priest was taken on the end of a fire ladder to the psychiatric hospital.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE EARTHQUAKE
"What do you think, marshal," said Ostap as the concessionaires approached the settlement of Sioni, "how can we earn money in a dried-up spot like this?"
Ippolit Matveyevich said nothing.
The only occupation by which he could have kept himself going was begging, but here in the mountain spirals and ledges there was no one to beg from.
Anyway, there was begging going on already-alpine begging, a special kind.
Every bus and passenger car passing through the settlement was besieged by children who performed a few steps of a local folk dance to the mobile audience, after which they ran after the vehicle with shouts of:
"Give us money!
Give money!"
The passengers flung five-kopek pieces at them and continued on their way to the Cross gap.
"A noble cause," said Ostap. "No capital outlay needed. The income is small, but in our case, valuable."
By two o'clock of the second day of their journey, Ippolit Matveyevich had performed his first dance for the aerial passengers, under the supervision of the smooth operator.
The dance was rather like a mazurka; the passengers, drunk with the exotic beauty of the Caucasus, took it for a native lezginka and rewarded him with three five-kopek bits.
The next vehicle, which was a bus going from Tiflis to Vladikavkaz, was entertained by the smooth operator himself.
"Give me money!
Give money," he shouted angrily.
The amused passengers richly rewarded his capering about, and Ostap collected thirty kopeks from the dusty road.
But the Sioni children showered their competitors with stones, and, fleeing from the onslaught, the travellers made off at the double for the next village, where they spent their earnings on cheese and local flat bread.
The concessionaires passed their days in this way.
They spent the nights in mountain-dwellers' huts.
On the fourth day they went down the hairpin bends of the road and arrived in the Kaishaur valley.
The sun was shining brightly, and the partners, who had been frozen to the marrow in the Cross gap, soon warmed up their bones again.
The Daryal cliffs, the gloom and the chill of the gap gave way to the greenery and luxury of a very deep valley.
The companions passed above the Aragva river and went down into the valley, settled by people and teeming with cattle and food.