As they went out to face their Great Adventure

Teodor Parnicki, Koniec Zgody Narodów

As they went out to face their Great Adventure, it seemed to them at first -- to Heliodoros and Dioneia -- no more than another ordinary business trip down the Great River, which they called the Oxos, and which the men who were to come many, many centuries later would call the Amu Daria.

That river was to the Greek kingdom in the heart of Asia like the Nile was to Egypt – with the significant difference being that to them – to Heliodoros and Dioneia – “traveling down the river” could never have meant traveling to its estuary; because more or less in that spot where the middle course of the Oxos became its lower course, the kingdom of the Greek Euthydemid family ended and another one began: the so-called Scythia, by which name the Greeks were inclined (and the more so the further they found themselves from the Oxos) to call all those vast spaces, mainly steppe, inhabited by numerous races, half-settled and half-nomad, and linguistically akin to the people of Iran which the Greeks then ruled.

Of those Scythian tribes, perhaps a dozen, or a dozen and a half, were united into super-tribal unions, and one of those unions, which called themselves the Massagetai, equipped itself with a significant navy and prevented any and all Greek ships from reaching the mouth of the Oxos.

Worse yet: this Massagetai navy staged, from time to time, piratical raids on those territories deemed to be “no man's land” and – what was worse, from time to time – those clearly remaining under Greek suzerainty and protection. And at such times, the broad waters of the Oxos became the site and witness of great battles, one of which (clearly the most important) was eventually commemorated by the stamping of a coin; a coin which was to survive ages upon ages upon ages; and which was destined to play a critical role in the Great Adventure of Heliodoros and Dioneia.

In the course of that battle, a Greek ship called “Meandria” played an especially prominent role. Some years later, it was renamed (on the orders of Great King Demetrios, son of Euthydemos) as “Harmony of All Nations in the Heart of Asia”. And, under this new name, it was destined to become (all those many years later) the main home of Heliodoros and Dioneia.

One should therefore not be surprised that it was their fate to face their Great Adventure on its deck. Indeed, it would have been strange if they had had to face their Great Adventure anywhere else since they felt at home on her deck more than anywhere else. And, after all, the true nature of any Great Adventure is that, in its course, a person is subjected to a test such as he is, and not as he seems to himself or to others.

Teodor Parnicki's historical novels often address issues of identity -- both personal and ethnic; as you would expect from a son of German citizens interned in Russia during World War I, who learned to speak Polish as a teenager, in Polish high school in Harbin, Manchuria. During World War II, already an established author, he found himself in Soviet Central Asia and the fruit of that sojourn was this book about Hellenistic Kingdoms in Bactria and India: a deeply subversive take on what it meant to be Greek in Central Asia and what it means to belong to a nation or to have a national identity.

This is a beautifully written thinking person's novel, with a political mystery at its center; and takes place on a mysteriously powerful Greek ship on the River Oxus ("The Harmony of Nations" of the title) in days immediately leading to a revolutionary change in ethnic policy about to be sprung on his Greek subjects by Demetrios, their king, from his distant war camp in North India.

Why are Japanese male writers such ridiculous oddballs?

When I need to take a break from doing what I love, which is translating Polish classics (books I grew up loving and keep re-reading), I relax by... translating short stories by Japanese masters.

Like Osamu Dazai, herein featured by reference.

Osamu Dazai was a sensitive and intelligent man. You can see it from his photos: his face is easy to read.

He was also born to be a misfit. He was the eighth child of a plebeian and very rich landowning family in the far north of Japan. See how that puts him out:

1) he's from Northern Japan (everybody knows they are bears and wolves, not people, up there in their Tohoku; come autumn they kill a moose and sew themselves up in the carcass until spring to survive the deep freeze, and drink some really rancid booze to prevent their blood from freezing solid); all his life Dazai exaggerated his northern dialect to rile the finer sort and hung around with rude Northerners like himself;

2) he's elite but not elite (first, he's Tohoku elite, what kind of elite is that?); second, they're not even elite (a.k.a. former samurai); they are just peasants made good; new money, OK?

3) he's the eighth child anyway, who cares about the eighth child?

Then there is that literature thing.

I mean, in every country in the world and in every family, the parents tremble to hear that junior intends to be a writer (or, God forbid, even worse, a poet). How will you make a living, son?

But in Japan, this comes with a heavy moral tinge.

It's all very well for a girl to write fiction. Murasaki Shikibu, Lady Nijo, Sei Shonagon, fine traditions, blah, blah. Who cares? All women ever have to do is something inconsequential like bear and raise kids, and maybe serve their husband his sake during the evening meal. So who can possibly object if a woman scribbles something in her free time, of which she has plenty, especially if she scribbles it in that funny women's script, hiragana.

But MEN don't WRITE. (For Hachiman's sake!)

MEN DO.

Men either run a business; or slave away 47/9 (47 hours a day, 9 days a week) as sarariman; or they don armor and go out and do unto their neighbors.

To do vapid dung like write literature is both weak-bum sissy AND unbelievably rude (as in "selfishly ignoring the polite rules of society").

So, if you are born with all that baggage (eighth child of new money peasants from the far North) and then you turn on your own family by choosing to become a writer, this is not just disobedience, it is disobedience cubed.

Add to that that your family probably DOES drink antifreeze and has not read a book since high school required reading.

And now you make this decision -- to become a sissy writer -- in the days of the military regime when THE WHOLE NATION SACRIFICES FOR THEIR SACRED EMPEROR, this emperor about whom you don't give a rolling donut. Well, you're not just beyond the pale, you're just DEAD MEAT. However well you write.

And this makes you a rebel, yes?

And if for all the social pressures, you rebel anyway, then... where lie the boundaries of rebellion? Is it ok to drink? Take drugs? Sleep around? Walk out on your wife? Make a double suicide pact with a beautician half your age?

You ask, am I well?

Thank you. Yes. All things considered.

Two days ago, the field of barley just out and to the left, dark blue-green until then, suddenly put forth its sheaves -- the whole field, all in one day while I was indoors struggling with my "professionals" ("inepts"?) And now it sways, shimmering golden-and-baby-green in the wind, dazzling the eyes. Eyes that cannot focus on this cloud of wonder, blazing in seven million shades of baby green. I throw the dog a stick into the field and she disappears - only the swaying mustache of the barley marks where she is rutting for the stick.

So, yes, all things considered, I am well.

And up on Ranner Knapp (yes, it means in Luxembourgish what it sounds like in English, Luxemburgish is a Franconian language, and therefore closely related to Dutch and therefore closer to English than to German), well, out there, your favorite crop -- rape -- is blooming, rich, heady yellow, both sides of the narrow path.

Or was, two days ago, intensely scented, stifling, and deafening with the hum of bees.

But when I went there today, just two days later, the bloom was half off and there were barely any bees in the field.

In our forest, wild cherries are pea-sized and the catkins on the walnut tree are as big as my thumb. The air is heavy with scent and birds make an incredible racket. And when you clear a crest of a hill (and it's all hills around here), in every direction you look, the world seems veiled with a yellowish veil: the eager pollen of trees and grasses flying a mile high.

So, yes, I'm all right.

And, oh, the top 3 inches of the rape, now good four-foot-tall, are edible, flower and all, very sweet and intensely weedy.

In two weeks, I will be poaching them to make pasta con broccolini. Farfalle will be the poison of choice,

With just an inch of chouriço ("chorizo", says my spell-checker, as dumb as a doornail).

My bitch is dying.

She's got arthritis and dysplasia. She's barely got any teeth left (all those years of shredding sticks, that really bad habit of her race, as drinking is of mine). And she can barely walk. Though she manages a 50-meter "sprint" every now and then. If you can call it that. And then suffers for the rest of the day for it.

When I arrived here, four years ago, she was at the height of her powers, like a 50-year-old woman, just past menopause, done with kids, and free to enjoy herself. We took five-hour walks, swam in the river, and chased deer and rabbits. She murdered a fox.

Now she's 80 years old and miserable. I kiss her and tell her, it's all right baby, when you bite it, I'll skin you and make a pillowcase out of you and will hold your ears to my face in my sleep until the day I die. (I make brave. How does one skin a dog?)

She listens attentively to what I say, with an expression that says, "Good God Wolf, I wish I knew what the heck you are saying" and then suggests we play ball.