Srpski "Aska and the Wolf" is from the book, Stories by Ivo Andric, published by Svijetlost-Prosveta in Belgrade, Yugoslavija: 1958 Ivo Andric Aska and the Wolf Translated by Felicity Rosslyn     This took place in the sheep community on Rising Meadows. When Aja, a large ewe with thick fleece and round eyes, gave birth to her first lamb, it looked just like all the other new-born babies of its kind: a fistful of damp wool starting to bleat. It was female, and it was an orphan, for Aja had lost the husband she dearly loved a few days earlier. The mother called her child Aska - a name she thought exactly right for the dazzling sheep-beauty it was going to be.     In the early days the lamb followed its mother like all the other lambs, but as soon as it began to run about on its little legs (which were still stiff, and unusually long) and to graze independently, it immediately started to show its true nature. It didn't cling to its mother's apron strings, and it took no notice of her call or the ringing of the bell on the lead ram: it delighted in wandering down paths it had found for itself, and finding isolated pastures in distant places.     The mother gave the child (who was otherwise good, pretty and clever) warnings; she loaded her with good advice and with reproaches; she pointed out all the danger of such behaviour in a place like theirs where there was always a cunning, cold-blooded wolf about, against whom the shepherds were powerless, and who slaughtered ewes and lambs particularly when they strayed away by themselves. Aja fretted with anxiety, and often wondered who this child of hers (a female, too) took after in her headstrong and restless ways. Whoever it was, the lamb was a great worry to her mother. In school Aska learnt quickly and progressed quite well; but whenever the mother went to ask about her marks and conduct, the teacher replied that the child was gifted and could be top pupil, if only she were less lively and less easily distracted. The only subject in which she always got high marks was P. E.     One day, when she had left school with average passes, Aska stood in front of her mother and announced that she wanted to go to ballet school. At first her mother opposed it vigorously. She gave many reasons, each more conclusive than the last; she argued that no-one in their family had ever been anything other than a peaceful domestic sheep. Art, her mother informed her, was an insecure vocation that neither fed nor housed those who gave themselves up to it. The path of art was generally uncertain, delusive and difficult; but dancing was much the most difficult and much the most delusive of all the arts - not to mention ill-famed and dangerous. Not a single lamb from a good home had ever taken that path; and so on, and so forth. Finally: what would all the sheep in our community say if they heard my daughter had gone in that direction?     That was how her well-meaning, anxious mother dissuaded Aska. But knowing her daughter's nature, she realised from the start that her wishes could not be opposed for long, and so she gave way. She enrolled the young lamb at the sheep's ballet school, hoping in this way to calm Aska's innate restlessness - though the majority of ewes and rams in the flock censured her for doing so.     It couldn't be said that Aja was indifferent to the criticism and gossip of the flock in the folds and pastures, but mothers love their children so much that they learn to love their foibles too, even those they can't approve of in their hearts. Little by little, the mother reconciled herself to her daughter's choice and began to look at the matter differently. What was so bad about art, after all? she asked herself. And dancing was the most elevated of its forms - the one which relies solely on our own bodies.     This reconciliation was made easier by the fact that little Aska really showed great aptitude and passion for dancing, and she visib1y progressed. She was, besides, as true and innocent as anyone could wish. But she could not shake off her strange and dangerous habit of wandering far away from the sheep's pastures and shady places; and one day, the thing which Aja always dreaded happened.     Aska had passed her first year at ballet school with top marks and was just about to start the second. It was the beginning of autumn. The sun was still strong, though it had imperceptibly begun to pale, and with the short, tepid showers it made a joyful rainbow over the bright, wet countryside. That day Aska was particularly gay and lively - and heedless. Carried away by the freshness of the day and the beauty of the juicy grass, she wandered little by little to the very edge of the distant beech wood and then she went in. It seemed to Aska the grass was particularly juicy there, and the deeper she got into it, the juicier it was.     A milky mist that lingered in the wood was withdrawing from the sun, like the last trace of a strange nocturnal dance. It was bright, white and silent. The poor visibility and total silence created an enchanted world in which space and distance knew no limit, and time lost all meaning.     Aska sniffed the old, sloping beeches. They were overgrown with moss, as intoxicating as a tale of marvellous adventures. She ran across the bright green glades, and it seemed to her the tale was neverending and the marvellous adventures beyond counting. Just in the midst of one of these glades she suddenly found herself face to face with a terrible wolf. Old, expert and insolent, he had crept down to a region other wolves did not visit at that time of year. His mangy coat, a greenish brown, had enabled him to merge with the autumnal beeches and the browning grass.     The beautiful setting that had intoxicated Aska and swept her away suddenly lifted like a thin, deluding curtain - and before her stood a wolf with burning eyes, its tail between its legs, and a kind of smile on its slightly bared teeth, more terrible than all her mother's warnings. Aska's blood froze and her little legs stiffened beneath her. She remembered she had to call the flock and opened her mouth, but no voice came. Death was facing her, invisible but omnipresent, final, and unbelievably horrible.     The wolf made a semicircle round his frozen victim, in the slow and gentle walk that precedes a leap. He seemed to be observing the lamb with incredulity (as much as wolves can be incredulous) and, from fear of a trap, to be asking himself suspiciously (for wolves are capable of suspicion) how this pretty little white lamb could have strayed so far as to arrive, so to speak, at his very jaws.     For his victim these were strange, unexpected moments between extreme terror, which had already overwhelmed her, and the unthinkable, bloody and final fact which is concealed in the word - death. Even there, where she thought there could and would be none, there remained a little time for the stupefied Aska; but so little of it, it was scarcely like time at all. That gave her the strength to move, though not to defend herself, for she was incapable of doing so. Her last movement could only be - to dance.     Painfully, as in a bad dream, the girl made the first movement: one of those positions which are practised at the barre, and do not yet resemble dancing. Immediately after she made a second, and third. They were the week, constricted motions of a body under sentence of death, but they were sufficient to halt the astonished wolf for the moment. And now she had once begun, Aska repeated them one after the other with the dreadful feeling she did not dare stop: that if there were only second's interval between the first and second movement, death would enter through the chink. She was taking up the positions in the order she had learnt them in at school, just as if she heard the sharp voice of her teacher: 'One - and - two! One - and - two - and - three!'     She performed them all in order, everything she had managed to learn in the course of the first year. The movements were short and quick, incapable of filling up the yawning gulf of time from which death was menacing her. She passed on to the figures that were performed without support at school, in the centre of the hall. But that was the extent of her knowledge and power. She could execute, fully and accurately, two or three figures; and she performed them feverishly. The first, second, third. And that was about the limit of her knowledge and skill. She had to repeat the movements, afraid that repetition would rob them of their power and attraction. She tried in vain to remember anything else she could do to fill up the abyss that waited at the dance's end. Time was going by, the wolf was still watching and waiting, but beginning to close in; ahead of her, all farther knowledge of classical dancing was cruelly shut off, while the voice of her teacher grew fainter and finally disappeared. Her knowledge had served her well, but this was the end of it. Knowledge had failed her, school could tell her nothing more - but she had to live, and. in order to live, she had to dance.     And Aska set off in a dance outside the rules that are recognised in academies, beyond all that people learn and know.     Who can say whether, since the world began, it has ever seen what the small nameless wood saw that day, above Rising Meadows?     Aska the little sheep danced across green clearings, through narrow passages, between heavy grey beeches and over the smooth brown carpet of leaves that had fallen in layers with the years. Pure and slender, no longer a lamb and not yet a sheep, she was as light and mobile as a white willow catkin borne on the wind - greyish if she went through a thin patch of mist, and shining as if lit up from within if she found herself in the bright sunshine of a clearing. Behind her, with silent steps and never taking his eyes from her, came the old wolf, the invisible executioner of her flock from time immemorial.     The cool, cunning and proverbially cautious wolf, more than a match for both men and animals, was startled at first. His surprise went on deepening to astonishment, and to a peculiar, irresistible curiosity. At first he remembered who and what he was, where he was and what he had to do - only he said to himself, 'First let me take a good look at this unheard-of wonder. That way I shall not only get the blood and meat of this strange lamb but its unusual, funny, mad and madly amusing dance, such as the eye of wolf has never yet beheld. And its blood and meat will never elude me, since I can strike it down and slaughter it whenever I wish. So I shall; but not before it has finished dancing, and I have seen the whole wonder in its entirety.'     Thinking like this, the wolf followed the little sheep, pausing when she paused, and lengthening his stride when she quickened the rhythm of the dance.     Aska was not thinking at all; she was only drawing from her small body, filled with the pure sap of the joy of living and doomed to inevitable and immediate death, an unexpected power, and incredible skill and variety of movement. She knew only one thing: she was alive, and the longer and better she danced, the longer she would live. So she danced, and it was no longer dancing - it was a miracle.     And then there was another miracle: the wolf's astonishment turned to pure wonder, a thing wholly unknown to his species (for if wolves could wonder at anything in the world they would not be what they are.) This unfamiliar sense of wonder so stunned the wolf that the little lost sheep, half-dead from terror, pulled him after her as if she were leading him by a strong line tied to an invisible ring in his muzzle.     Going along like a sleepwalker, not looking where he trod or noticing the direction he was going in any more, the wolf continually repeated to himself, 'The blood and meat of this lamb will never escape me. I can chop it up whenever I please. But let me see the wonder out - just this next movement, and the next -'     So it went on, one more, then another; and each one was wholly new and exciting, promising the one to come would be more exciting still. The forest clearings went by in succession, and the damp, dark little tunnels beneath the beech trees, full of dry leaves.     Little Aska now felt as if she had a hundred lives, and was using all their strength to prolong the only life she actually had, the one which was already forfeit.     We really do not know how much strength and what capacities are concealed in every living creature. We do not suspect all we are capable of; we come into being and pass away without ever recognising all we could have been and done. That is only revealed at such critical, exceptional times as this, when Aska danced her dance for the life she had already lost. Her body did not tire any more, but the dancing itself supplied strength for more dancing. Aska danced on, performing ever newer figures such as no school of ballet teachers would recognise.     Whenever it seemed to her that the wolf was recovering and remembering who and what he was she intensified the speed and daring of her dance. She executed unusual jumps over fallen trunks, which forced the wolf to laugh and marvel anew, and made him want to see them repeated. She jumped onto fallen beeches, and standing on the mounds of moss which covered them, using her back legs only, she made herself into a gay white top that dazzled the onlooker's eyes. Then, having straightened up, she used just her front legs to take ever faster little steps across a flat space between the trees that was still green. Whenever she came across a clear slope she flung herself madly down the bank of smooth, dry leaves like an audacious skier, as rapidly as someone producing a brilliant glissando on the keyboard with a thumb: whoooooosh! And the wolf would slide after her as fast as he could so as not to lose sight of the dance for an instant. He was still repeating to himself how, sooner or later, the blood and meat of this lamb would fall to his lot and he only wanted to watch its dance through to the end; but each time he repeated it more briefly and feebly, for the dance was preoccupying him more and more, and pushing everything else aside. Neither Aska nor the wolf took any account of the time or length of their journey. She was alive, and he was enjoying himself.     When they heard Aja the ewe's sad bleating and caught the anxiety that was passing from flock to flock, the shepherds chose two of the youngest and bravest among them and sent them to the woods to look for the disobedient lost lamb. One of them had just a dogwood club, but a stout one, and the other carried a rifle on his shoulders, if such could be termed a sort of blackened musket. It was a famous old firearm, for the story went that his father had killed a starving wolf with it right on the fence of the sheepfold. As for that - as with all stories - who can say how it was, and whether it happened or not; at all events, it was the only fire-arm in Rising Meadows, and it served more to raise the shepherds' spirits and confidence than to be really dangerous to wolves.     They came up to the edge of the wood and there they hesitated a little, for there were a hundred ways into the wood and who can spot the invisible tracks of a lamb's hooves? They went along the route of the green grass and good grazing as the most likely; and luck was with them. No sooner had they gone a little farther into the wood and climbed a small bank than they saw an amazing sight in the hollow below them. They stopped and hid. Through a deep cleft in the foliage they could watch without being observed: Aska the little sheep was crossing the green glade in daring and accurate pirouettes, and a few paces away the heavy, mangy wolf was plodding after her, nose down, lost in the sight, and wagging his tail.     For a few moments the shepherds were transfixed by amazement, but then they came to themselves. When Aska suddenly changed the shape and rhythm of her dance on arriving at the trees, and the wolf was still in the clearing, turned sideways to the onlookers, the older shepherd took down his rifle, aimed and fired. The wood resounded, and dry leaves flew off along with one or two frightened birds.     At the edge of the clearing something unexpected happened: Aska dropped in the midst of her interrupted movement, like a bird shot flying, and the wolf slipped into the wood like a green shadow.     The shepherds ran down to find Aska unconscious on the smooth ground. There was no injury on her whatever, but she lay as if dead on the woodland turf. The wolf had left a bloody trail behind him.     The older shepherd loaded his rifle, the younger one seized his club in both hands, and so they set off along the bloody trail. But they did not have to go far: the wounded wolf had been strong enough to run a hundred or so paces while his wound was still warm, but then he had dropped down in a thicket. The rear end of his body was paralysed, but he was pawing the ground with his forelegs, and swinging his head and showing his teeth. It wasn't difficult to finish him off.     The sun was just beyond the midheaven when the shepherds returned, descending the dark pastures between the flocks and the sheepfolds. The younger had tied the wolf by its back legs with his belt, and pulled the long, bloody carcass easily down the slope. The elder carried the white lamb slung over his neck, the way shepherds do. Aska's pretty head hung over his left shoulder for dead.     Great was the rejoicing in Rising Meadows. There was no end to the congratulations, clamour and singing, the reproaches and tears, the shrieks and the happy bleating.     Aska came round. She revived slowly, lying motionless and spent on the grass, more like a discarded fleece than a living lamb. She felt she hadn't a healthy muscle in her body or a tendon that didn't ache. Tearful and ecstatic, her mother bustled round her, and the ewes and rams collected to view the wonder.     Aska was ill for a long time and recuperated from her terrible experience slowly; but her youth and her will to live, with her mother's good nursing and the general support of all the inhabitants of Rising Meadows, eventually overcame her weakness. Thus Aska recovered to be a well-behaved daughter, a good student, and in time the prima ballerina of Rising Meadows.     How Aska the little sheep outwitted and outdanced the terrible wolf was written, told and sung about all over the world. Only Aska herself never spoke of her meeting with the beast or her dance in the wood, for nobody likes to talk of the most important and most difficult things in their lives. It was not until some years had passed and she had fully assimilated her dreadful experience that Aska choreographed a famous ballet of her own invention, which the critics and audiences called her 'Dance with Death' - but which Aska always called her 'Dance for Life.'     And she lived happily ever after, becoming a world-famous dancer, and dying at a great age.     Even today, so many years later, that famous ballet of hers is still being danced, in which art and the spirit of resistance conquer all evils including death itself. Dance kolo, live longer!