VII
The Balaklava fishermen, too, once succeeded in offering the Italians an extraordinary and, in a sense, magnificent spectacle. It was on the 6th of January, on the day of our Lord’s baptism, which at Balaklava is celebrated in quite a peculiar manner.
By this time the Italian divers were completely convinced of the uselessness of further efforts to lift up the squadron. In a few days they were to sail home to their beloved gay Genoa, and they were hastily putting the steamer in order, scrubbing and washing the deck, and cleaning the engines.
The church procession, the clergy in gold-wrought vestures, the banners, the cross, and the saints’ images, the church singing—all this attracted their attention and they stood on the deck, leaning over its railing.
The clergy ascended the boards of the landing-place. Behind them women, old men, and children were crowded together. As for the younger men, they sat in their boats, which formed a narrow semicircle around the landing-place.
The day was sunny, transparent, and cold. The snow which had fallen the night before covered the streets, roofs, and the bald, brown hills; the water in the bay was an amethyst blue, and the azure of the heavens smiled festively.
The young fishermen wore underwear merely for the sake of decorum, and many of them were stripped to the waist. They all shivered with cold, and rubbed their frozen hands and chests. The singing of the chorus, harmonious and sweet, floated over the motionless stretch of the clear waters.
“On the river Jordan …” sang the priest in a thin falsetto, and the cross, raised high, sparkled in his hand. … The most critical moment had arrived. The fishermen stood each on the prow of his boat, all half-naked, bending forward in impatient expectation.
The priest again raised his voice and the chorus joined in harmoniously and joyfully: “On the river Jordan.” At last, the cross rose for the third time above the crowd, and suddenly, sent flying by the priest’s hand, it described a shining arc in the air and fell into the sea with a splash.
At the same moment dozens of strong, muscular bodies leaped from the boats into the sea, head first, shouting and splashing the water. Three, four seconds passed. The empty boats rocked and bowed; the churned-up water pitched and tossed. … Then one after the other, shaking, snorting heads, with hair falling over their eyes, began to appear above the water. The last one to emerge was young Yani Lipiadi. He held the cross in his hand.
The gay Italians could not remain serious at the sight of this extraordinary, half-sportlike, half-religious rite, hallowed by immemorial antiquity. They met the winner with such noisy applause that even the kindly priest shook his head disapprovingly:
“Very unseemly. … Very unseemly, indeed. … Is this a theatrical performance for them?”
The snow sparkled dazzlingly, the blue water caressed the eye, the sun flooded with its gold the bay, the hills, and the people, and the sea exhaled a strong, thick, and powerful odor. Fine!