Short Fiction Vsevolod Garshin (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

In a certain large town there was a botanical garden, and in this garden an enormous greenhouse of glass and iron. It was a very handsome building. Graceful spiral columns supported the whole structure, and on them rested ornamented arches interwoven by a whole web of iron frames, in which panes of glass were set. This greenhouse was especially beautiful when the setting sun was reflected redly against it. Then the whole building seemed alight. Crimson rays played and transfused just as in some gigantic, delicately-cut, precious stone.

Through the thick, but transparent, panes could be discerned the captive plants. Notwithstanding the size of the greenhouse its inmates felt cramped for space. Roots interlaced and robbed each other of moisture and sustenance. The branches of the trees interfered with the enormous leaves of palms, rotted and broke them, and pressing against the iron framework themselves rotted and snapped. The gardeners were constantly lopping off boughs and binding the palm-leaves with wires, so that they should not grow where they wished. But these efforts were of little avail. They needed space, their homeland and freedom. They were natives of hot climes, tender, luxurious creations. They remembered with longing the lands of their birth. However transparent the glass roof it was not the clear heavens. Occasionally in wintertime the panes became frosted, and then the greenhouse became quite dark. The wind would howl and beat against the iron framework, causing it to vibrate. The roof would be covered with drift-snow. The plants standing within would listen to the beating of the wind, and recall another wind, warm and moisture-laden, which used to give them life and health. And then they would long to feel its breath once more so that it might sway their boughs and play with their leaves. But in the greenhouse the air was motionless, excepting when winter storms shattered some of the glass panes; then a cutting cold current, a veritable icicle, would burst in on them, leaving faded, shrivelled leaves in its wake.

But the broken panes were always promptly mended. The Director of the gardens was a most learned man, who allowed no disorder of any kind, notwithstanding that the greater part of his time was spent with a microscope in a special little glass sentry-box situated in the main greenhouse.

Amongst the plants there was one palm taller and more beautiful than all the others. The Director, sitting in his sentry-box, called it in Latin Attalea Princeps. But this name was not its native name. Botanists had evolved this name. Botanists did not know its native name, which was not the name painted in black on the white board fastened to the trunk of the palm. Once a native from that hot country visited the gardens. When he saw this palm he laughed because it reminded him of home.

“Ah,” said he, “I know this tree,” and he called it by its home name.

“Excuse me,” called out from his sentry-box the Director, who at that moment had carefully performed some operation with a razor on a little stalk, “you are mistaken. There is no such tree as you were pleased to mention. That palm is Attalea Princeps, a native of Brazil.”

“Oh yes,” said the Brazilian, “I quite believe you. I quite believe that botanists call it Attalea, but it has a proper native name.”

“The proper name is that which is given by science,” replied the botanist frigidly, and he locked the door of his little sentry-box so that he should not be disturbed by people incapable even of understanding that if a man of science says something they must keep silence and listen.

But the Brazilian long stood and gazed at the palm, and he became more and more sad. He recalled his native land, its sunny skies, its luxuriant forests with their wondrous denizens, its birds, its open prairies, and magic southern nights. And he recalled that he had never been really happy outside the land of his birth although he had toured the world. He touched the palm with his hand as if bidding it farewell, and left the garden. The next day he started off by steamer for “home.”

But the palm remained. Life became even more burdensome to it now, although before this incident it had been very grievous. It towered five sajenes above the tops of all the other plants, and those other plants did not love it. They were jealous, and considered the palm proud. This growth caused the palm nothing but sorrow. Apart from the fact that the other plants were all together and it was alone, the palm best of all remembered its native skies, and mourned for them more than any of the others, because it was the nearest of all to that which supplanted those skies⁠—a disgusting glass roof. Through it the palm occasionally saw something blue; it was the sky, strange and pale, yet for all that genuine blue sky. And when the plants talked amongst themselves Attalea always kept silent, fretted, and thought only of how good it would be to stand even under this pitiful heaven.

“Tell me, please, will they soon water us?” inquired a sago-palm which was very fond of moisture. “I really think I shall wither up today.”

“Your words, my dear neighbour, astonish me,” said a potbellied cactus. “Do you really mean that the enormous quantity of water which they pour over you every day is insufficient? Look at me! They give me very little, but all the same I am fresh and full of sap.”

“We are not accustomed to be overcareful,” replied the sago-palm. “We cannot grow in such dry and vile soil as do certain cacti. We are not accustomed to live in hand-to-mouth style; moreover,