The Iron Flood [antikvár]

HOW THE IRON FLOOD WAS CONCEIVED AND WRITTEN A strange thing, it was not from the plot, nor from the characters, nor from events, and not even from a clearly defined initial idea that The Iron Flood took its beginning. Shortly before the First World War broke out, my son Anatoli decided to climb the watershed of the Caucasian Range, which began near the town of Novorossiisk and towered haughtily over sea and steppe. Gray cliffs, gaping gorges and above, high in the sky, the whiteness of either shining summer clouds or of dazzling snow caps. As we climbed higher and higher, the sea was shut off by the crags rising all around us. The air became rare, and the breathing quickened. Dazzli^ white clouds floated above, all but scraping our heads. T^e heat was almost a tangible thing, the way it can only be high in the mountains. Suddenly the crags retreated. We stopped in amazement. The Caucasian Range, this mammoth watershed, had narrowed down almost to a razor-blade thinness. Both on the right and the left, there were sheer bottomless precipices. The sea on the right had reared up into a wall, an immovable wall of molten blue—we could not distinguish any ripples at that distance. To the left, far down, crowded the blue flocks of wooded foothills, and beyond these was the expanse of the Kuban Steppe. We stood in reverent silence on the narrow isthmus, not more than two metres wide, and stared at the map of the world that lay open before us. Then we went on. The narrow isthmus was left behind, the blue foothills and the far-off steppe had disappeared from view. So had the vast motionless expanse of the sea. Again there were crags all about us, again there were plane trees and rhododendron bushes, again the mighty range had squared its broad shoulders. The October Revolution had won. Moscow was already wholly Red, my own dear revolutionary city. Gaping with the black holes of windows, her streets pocked with shells, her walls riddled with bullets. And her