The Garnet Bracelet

In mid August, before the new moon, there suddenly came a spell of bad weather, of the kind peculiar to the north coast of the Black Sea.

Dense, heavy fog lay on land and sea, and the huge lighthouse siren roared like a mad bull day and night.

Then a drizzle, as fine as water dust, fell steadily from morning to morning and turned the clayey roads and foot-paths into a thick mass of mud, in which carts and carriages would be bogged for a long time And then a fierce hurricane began to blow from the steppeland in the north-west; the tree-tops rocked and heaved like waves in a gale, and at night the iron roofing of houses rattled, as if someone in heavy boots were running over it; window-frames shook, doors banged, and there was a wild howling in the chimneys.

Several fishing boats lost their bearings at sea, and two of them did not come back; a week later the fishermen's corpses were washed ashore.

The inhabitants of a suburban seaside resort — mostly Greeks and Jews, life- loving and over-apprehensive like all Southerners — were hurrying back to town.

On the muddy highway an endless succession of drays dragged along, overloaded with mattresses, sofas, chests, chairs, wash-stands, samovars.

Through the blurred muslin of the drizzle, it was a pitiful and dismal sight — the wretched bag and baggage, which looked so shabby, so drab and beggarly; the maids and cooks sitting atop of the carts on soaked tarpaulin, holding irons, cans or baskets; the exhausted, panting horses which halted every now and again, their knees trembling, their flanks steaming; the draymen who swore huskily, wrapped in matting against the rain.

An even sorrier sight were the deserted houses, now bare, empty and spacious, with their ravaged flowerbeds, smashed panes, abandoned dogs and rubbish — cigarette ends, bits of paper, broken crockery, cartons, and medicine bottles.

But the weather changed abruptly in late August.

There came calm, cloudless days that were sunnier and mellower than they had been in July.