KREMENETS: June, 1910 The ruined castle could be a stage set for Shakespeare. The mountain is called Bona, bringing to mind Latin, bonum is "good," or governesses (bona), or bills due (bona). However, the mountain itself looks gloomy, a thicketed cone, truncated, needless to say. Four walls and a watchtower remain of the building, and a deep well, which holds a column of dark air and the airless legend of the castellan's daughter who had fallen in love. The affair is three centuries gone, but even now her transparent ghost, garbed in wedding white, flies headlong into the abyss. Two high school girls cast stones into the well counting out the seconds to measure its depth. Remembering the laws of gravitation one can calculate the drop by formula, with a minor adjustment for the time needed for sound to return.They wait in vain. The girls crane, peering down. The elder is named Nekhama (later called Nadezda); the second is Rachel (who will be known as Raisa). Rachel, fourteen, still has seventy-six years before her (Nekhama will die in the thirties); however, today, all this is history. Eternally (i.e., outside of time), along the shaft of darkness, the wedding apparition of a Polish baroness flies up toward an old Jewess and two schoolgirls look into the abyss with empty eyes-- but better they should look in another direction, and taking each other hand in hand, start down into the valley, their eyes filled with the colors of fruit trees, of rough white limestone walls and the terra cotta ripple of rooftiles. Then, flying up from the well bottom, the dull stroke will sound. © 1996 Boris Khersonsky. All rights reserved. Translation by Ruth Kreuzer and Dale Hobson