SLA 468S 2002. Student translations.

Link to original.

Uliana Pasicznyk. translator

There once lived a man who from birth was defeated by doubt. No matter how he approached any activity, whether with indifference or conscientiously, and no matter whether it was work or some form of recreation, he would be seized by doubt. At that instant the work would become loathsome to him or the pastime would slump into boredom and despair. Nothing brought him any pleasure, and existence itself seemed such a heavy burden that the poor fellow would gladly have rid himself of it, had the decision not entailed effort beyond any that he could muster, for doubt did not allow him to make a final decision about anything.

The man's parents, when they realized that something was amiss, tried in every way they knew to alleviate his distress, but none of these attempts was of any help. For the older their son became, the stronger his doubt grew, and all his worried parents' urgings and counsel served only to increase his despair and hopelessness, making their son weary of life.

Finally the parents became convinced that neither threats nor pleas were of any use in his situation. So they began to equip their only child with the things he would need to travel far and wide, in the hope that by being out among people he would gain the wisdom and experience needed to cure him of his excessive doubt. At last, having given him directions and bestowing their blessing, they let their defective child go off on his long journey.

But in the far-off lands he traveled to, doubt continued to torment the man, and everything he undertook ended sooner or later in failure and vexation. True, from time to time the man came across good-hearted people who took pity on him and gave him shelter and work. But as soon as the man took a good look at whatever he was doing, doubt would seize him again, and he would abandon everything and find himself once again in the same situation as before. Yet now he was no longer an impetuous youth, but a man full grown, for whom it was time to have a roof over his head and a family of his own.

And then, because Providence, if not always immediately then at least occasionally, tends to even the most forsaken of men, in his wanderings from place to place the man somehow managed to find a corner to call home and gained a wife and children. Now he felt satisfied that at last he was making something of his life. But when his children began growing out of diapers, the man was once again seized by doubt, doubts stronger than he had ever known before. He left his wife and children and set off aimlessly into the world, as before.

And then one day, as he was fording a stream along his way, the man turned around and chanced to see that his doubts were seven chargers bound [yoked] together into one black steed, bearing him into an abyss from which there was no return. The terrified man, feigning calm, tried to vanquish these doubts that were now taking on such ever more physical form. But his power to scatter them proved too weak. Calling on God as his witness that he could carry on no more, exhausted in body and soul, he dropped down under a tree at a crossroads, and fell asleep.

As soon as his eyelids closed, he beheld before him a little old man, tugging at his sleeve. Pointing to small yard made of packed clay, smooth as a finished floor, he asked, "Will you agree to sweep my yard? To do this job I need a man defeated by too much doubt. Here are the sun and the moon--they will serve as your two brooms, and as for your pay, what I have to give you is one small seed."

"All right,' said the man, and he began to sweep the old man's yard, feeling as he swept that his doubts had vanished somewhere. After a time the old man told him to stop, saying that his job was finished, and gave him in remuneration the one small seed.

The man thanked him, and woke up. To his astonishment, in his palm they indeed lay one small, luminous seed. The man took a second look at the seed, and as he did so doubt again stirred within him, with such angry force that the man understood: his end was at hand, for the chargers were galloping under him. They were galloping so fiercely that, to stop from falling and cracking his skull, the man with one hand grabbed a mane and pressed the other one, the hand holding his reward from the little old man, to his breast. And at that instant he felt the seed fall tremulously to the bottom of his heart and there immediately put forth a slender shoot. And from the way the seedling trembled, the man understood that the seedling that had sprouted in him was--hope.

"You have become a bad horseman," the man's reason immediately admonished him.

"You will never make any headway in life if you don't pull out the weed that has taken root in your heart," added the doubts angrily, slackening their galloping pace.

"It's not a weed, but a new doubt that stirs in my heart," lied the man, all the while aware that the seedling of hope in him was sprouting more and more new branches.

"A person is a person only when he is overwhelmed by doubt," said the doubts, appeased. And that was the last they said, for hope, which from a tiny seed had flowered into a blossoming tree in the man's heart, silenced the voices of doubt. For only the tree of hope growing in the human heart helps man vanquish the doubts that are his riders to the precipice.