Brethren by Ivan Bunin — Read

Behold brethren, slaying one another! / I would discourse of grief. / - Sutha Nippatha

The road out of Colombo, lying along the ocean, runs through dense coconut groves. To the right, within their sun-dappled shady depths, under the high canopy of feathery broom-like treetops, are scattered the Senegalese cabins, half-hidden by the pale green laminae of bananas, resembling gigantic ears of corn, so small and low are they in comparison with the tropical forest surrounding them. To the left, through the dark-ringed trunks, tall and slender, fantastically bent in all directions, one sees stretches of deep, silky sands, a gleam of a golden, blazing mirror of smooth water, and, anchored upon it, as though blending with the tree trunks, are the coarse sails of primitive pirogues -- frail, cigar-shaped hollowed-out small oaks. Upon the sand, in paradisaical nudity, are sprawling the coffee-coloured bodies of black-haired striplings. Many such bodies are also plashing, with laughter and yells, in the warm transparent water of the stony coast. Of what need, one thinks, to these people of the forests, these direct heirs of the Land of our First Parents, as Ceylon is styled even now -- of what need to them are cities, cents, rupees? Do not the forest, ocean, sun give them everything? And yet, upon attaining the years of maturity, some of them take to trading, others labour upon the rice and tea plantations, a third lot -- in the north of the island -- dive for pearls together with negroes, going down to the bottom of the ocean and arising thence with bloodshot eyes; a fourth group replace horses -- they carry Europeans over the towns and their environs, over dark red footpaths, shaded by enormous vaults of forest verdure over that very kabouk out of which Adam was created. Horses bear but illy the sultriness of Ceylon -- even Australian horses; every wealthy resident who keeps a horse sends it away for the summer to the mountains, into Candy, into Nurillia.