It was late November. I was driving to the very North of Belarus to visit the old cemetery near the Hory village where many of my ancestors and relatives are buried. I drove up a hill and had to stop. Several months before, there was a road there. And now, only a ploughed field stretched before my eyes.
I stepped out of the car and looked at the familiar landscape. The landscape I associated with hoary, mysterious, silent and secretive Belarus since my childhood. The land of ancestors. Then, I often spent summers there, in the Belarusian North, and it seemed to me that the edge of the earth was not farer than the forest on the opposite shores of the huge lake.
Later, I read a book by writer-romanticist Jan Barščeuski who lived right there 200 years ago. And what a surprise it was – I found my impressions in his books. The aura of this land hasn’t change, though centuries have passed.
“The one traveling to Belarus from the North… sees extended and dark dense forests that, just like rain clouds, overhang above the horizon. Sometimes, the eyes of the traveler grabs an iron cross of moss-covered chapel between fir-trees and two or three bells hanging on a couple of poles. Graveside crosses and stones are scattered across the vicinity. And this appearance of the land, gloomy and wild, spreads from the Lovac river to the banks of the Dzvina. Throughout this expanse, narrow stony roads cross the hilly country, pass along wild banks of lakes and then hide in thick forests.
Closer to Polack, the Nieščarda lake spreads miles away, concaves the sandy hills with its waves. Looking southwards, you will see wide meadows; here and there, rivers flow from far away in the bed of rushes and hide in the mirror-like surface of the lake.
The years of my childhood passed in that corner. The memories of old local people about the hoary past that passed from mouth to mouth told me about the history of this land, the character and feelings of the Belarusian people.
And now, these places where I saw so many miracles being a child – these groves, these green banks of the Nieščarda – rise in my memories like a wonderful orchard of my dreams”.
Jan Barščeuski described this land as sparsely inhabited. And it is quite the same nowadays. Villages with few residents stay silent for most of the year, except for summer when townspeople come here for vacations. And it seems that people don’t rule here. But if not people, then who or… what? Maybe, diligent bees carrying honey to the ancient beehive. Maybe, transparent lake water that gleams as cold quick silver even in hot summer. Maybe, a generous apple tree which’s branches bend under the strain of fruits every autumn though none comes to the orchard to taste them. Maybe, an old cemetery that once a year, on the Holy Trinity Day, attracts the local natives living in different cities and countries for commemoration of ancestors. And maybe…
Jan Barščeuski wrote down numerous local legends that are similar to horror stories: about evil witches and magicians who sold their souls to the devil, about an unknown young woman who appears on the eve of a great woe and cries sitting on a stone, about fiery dragons that can show where ancient treasures are hidden… Surprisingly, being a child, I heard very strange stories from the old people living here. They said they saw some “pillars of fire” and “mirrors of fire” in the sky, mentioned clever snakes in forests and mysterious marshes, told about a man killed by a huge bear whose grave is marked with a stone cross and about a castle that formerly stood on a lake shore. And I think now that it could be the echo of colorful and fearful stories told here long, long ago. Maybe, these stories rule here?..
I took a deep breath and looked once again into the distance where gentle hills stretched to the horizon. And I realized that they heard me from the “other bank” of the field. They, waiting for me at the cemetery, under huge birches. I turned on the engine and drove across the ploughed field on the edge of the earth…
Sincerely yours,
Volha Blazhevich
تم إعداد قضية المعلومات على أساس المواد الراديو البيلاروسية الخاصة، وكالة المعلومات بيلتا ومصادر أخرى.
