King Stakh's Wild Hunt Read online

  It was difficult and unpleasant for me to look at all this. And again that feeling of a sharp, incomprehensible cold…

  I did not hear any steps behind my back, it was as if someone had come flying through the air. I simply felt suddenly that someone was standing behind my back, looking at me. Then under the influence of this look, I turned around. A woman stood behind me, looking at me questioningly, her head slightly bent. I was stunned. It seemed to me as if the portrait that had just been talking to me, had suddenly come to life and the woman in it had stepped down from it.

  I don't even know what they had in common. The one in the portrait (I looked around at it and saw that she was in her place) was tall, well-built, with a great reserve of vitality, merry, strong and beautiful. While this one was simply a puny creature.

  Still there was a resemblance, a kind of super-resemblance that can force us to recognize two men in a crowd as being brothers, although they do not resemble each other: one a brunette and the other a blond. Yes, and here there was even more. Their hair exactly alike, their noses of the same form, their mouths with the same kind of slit and the same white even teeth. Added to this there was a general resemblance in the expression on their faces, something ancestral, eternal.

  And nevertheless I had never before seen such an unpleasant-looking person. Everything alike and everything somehow different. Short of stature, thin as a twig, thighs almost undeveloped and a pitiable chest, light blue veins on the neck and hands, in which there seemed to be no blood at all — so weak she was, like a small stem of wormwood.

  Very thin skin, a very thin neck, even the hair-do somehow inexpressive. Which seemed so very strange because her hair was of the colour of gold, fluffy and surprisingly beautiful. Whatever was that absurd knot for at the back of her head?

  Her features were so expressive, sharply defined, regularly proportioned that they would have served as a model for even a great sculptor, but I doubt whether any sculptor would have been tempted to use her as a model for Juno: seldom does one see such an unpleasant face, a face to be pitied. Crooked lips, deep shadows about her nose, her face a greyish colour, black eyes, their expression fixed and incomprehensible.

  “The poor thing is devilish ugly,” I thought, sympathizing with her, and I lowered my eyes.

  I know many women who would never to their dying days have forgiven me my lowered eyes, but this one was probably accustomed to seeing something similar on the faces of the people she met with: she paid absolutely no attention to my eyes.

  I was unpleasantly surprised by this frankness, to put it mildly. What was it? A subtle calculation or naivete? But no matter how much I looked into this distorted face, I couldn't see in it any ulterior motive.

  Her face was artless, like that of a child. But her voice was most convincing: slow, lazy, indifferent, and simultaneously timid and broken like the voice of a forest bird.

  “And also, as a matter of fact, I saw you even before that!”

  “Where?” I was frankly amazed.

  “I don't know. I see many people. It seems to me that I've seen you in my sleep… Often… Didn't you ever happen to feel as if you had lived somewhere formerly and long ago… and now you discover you are looking at something you had seen long, long ago?…”

  I am a healthy man. And I had not yet known then that something similar sometimes happens to nervous people with a very keen perception. The connection between primary conceptions, and subsequent notions is somehow disturbed in the memory, and things very much alike seem identical to them; in objects entirely unknown to them they reveal something long known to them. Whereas the consciousness — ever a realist — resists this. And so it happens that an object is simultaneously unfamiliar and mysteriously familiar.

  I repeat I had not known that. And even so it never for a moment entered my head that this girl could tell a lie, such sincerity and indifference were felt in her words.

  “I have seen you,” she repeated. “But who are you? I do not know you.”

  “My name is Andrej Biełarecki, Miss Janoŭskaja. I am an ethnographer.”

  She wasn't at all surprised. On the contrary, on learning that she knew this word, it was I who was surprised.

  “Well, that is very curious. And what interests you? Songs? Sayings? Proverbs?”

  “Legends, Miss Janoŭskaja, old local legends.”

  I got terribly frightened. It was no laughing matter: she suddenly straightened up as if an electric current had been passed through her, torturing her. Her face became pale, her eyelids closed.

  I rushed over to her, supported her head, and put a glass of water to her lips, but she had already come to. And her eyes sparkled with such indignation, with such an inexplicable reproach in them, that I felt as if I were the worst scoundrel on earth, although I had not the faintest idea why I should not speak about my profession. A vague idea flashed through my mind that something was connected with the old rule: “never speak of woe in the house whose master has been hanged.”

  In a broken voice she said:

  “And you… And you, too… why do you torture me, why does everybody?…”

  “My dear lady! Upon my word of honour, I had nothing harmful in mind, I don't know anything… Look, here is my certificate from the Academy. Here is a letter from the governor. I've never been here before. Please forgive me, for heaven's sake, if I have caused you any pain.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “Never mind, calm yourself, Mr. Biełarecki… It's simply that I hate what savages can create in the minds of savages. Perhaps you, too, will some day understand what it is… this gloom. Whereas I understood what it is long ago. But I'll be dead long before everything will have become clear to me.”

  I realized it would be tactless to question her any further, and I kept silent. It was only after a while, when she had calmed down that I said:.

  “I beg your pardon for having disturbed you, Miss Janoŭskaja, I see that I have immediately become an unpleasant person for you. When must I leave? It seems to me the sooner the better.”

  Again that distorted face!

  “Ah! As if that were the trouble! Don't leave us. You will offend me deeply if you leave now. And besides,” her voice began to tremble, “what would you say if I asked you to remain here, in this house, for at least two or three weeks? Until the time when the dark autumn nights are over?”

  Her look began to wander. On her lips a pitiful smile appeared.

  “Afterwards there will be snow… And footprints in the snow. Of course, you will do as you see fit. However, it would be unpleasant for me were it to be said of the last of the Janoŭskis that she had forgotten the custom of hospitality.”

  She said “the last of the Janoŭskis” in such a way, this eighteen-year-old girl, that my heart was wrung with pain.

  “Well then,” she continued, “if this awful stuff interests you, how can I possibly object? Some people collect snakes. We here have more spectres and ghosts than living people. Peasants, shaken with fever, tell amazing and fearful stories. They live on potatoes, bread made of grasses, porridge without butter, and on fantasy. You mustn't sleep in their huts: it's dirty there and congested, and all is evilly neglected. Go about the neighbouring farmsteads, there for money that will go to buy bread or vodka, warming up for a moment the blood that is everlastingly cold from malaria, they will tell you everything. And in the evening return here. Dinner will be ready, awaiting you here, and a place to sleep in, and a fire in the fireplace. Remember this — I am the mistress here, and the peasants obey me. Agreed?”

  By this time I was already quite certain that nobody obeyed this child, nobody was afraid of her, and nobody depended on her. Perhaps, had it been anybody else, I might have smiled into her eyes, but in this “command” of hers there was so much entreaty that I did not yet quite understand, and I said with my eyes lowered:

  “Alright. I agree to your wish.”

  She did not notice the ironic gleam in my eyes and for a moment even blushed, apparent
-ly because somebody had obeyed her.

  The left-overs of a very modest supper were removed from the table. We remained in our armchairs before the fireplace. Janoŭskaja looked around at the black windows behind which the branches of enormous trees rubbed against, and said:

  “Perhaps you are ready for sleep now?”

  This strange evening had put me into such a mood that I had lost all desire for sleep. And here we were sitting side by side looking into the fire.

  “Tell me,” she suddenly said. “Do people everywhere live as we do here?”

  I glanced at her, puzzled: hadn't she ever been anywhere outside of her home? As if she had understood me, she said: “I've never been anywhere beyond this plain in the forest… My father, he was the best man living on earth, taught me himself, he was a very educated man. I know, of course, what countries there are in the world. I know that not everywhere do our fir-trees grow, but tell me, is it everywhere so damp and cold for man to live on this earth?”

  “Many find life cold on this earth, Miss Janoŭskaja. The people who thirst for power are to blame for that, they wish for power that is beyond their ability to exert. Also money is guilty, money for the sake of which people grab each other by the throat. However, it seems to me that not everywhere is it so lonely as it is here. Over there, beyond the forests, there are warm meadows, flowers, storks in the trees, as well as impoverished and oppressed people; but there the people somehow seek escape. They decorate their homes, women laugh, children play. While here there is very little of all that.”

  “I suspected that,” she said. “That world is alluring, but I am not needed anywhere except at Marsh Firs. And what should I do there for money if money is necessary? Tell me: such things as love and friendship, do they exist there, at least now and then? Or is it so only in the books that are in my father's library?”

  Again I did not for a moment suspect that this was an equivocal joke, though I was in quite an awkward position: sitting at night in a room and conversing with a young lady whom I hardly knew, talking about love, the subject having been brought up by her…

  “Sometimes those things happen there.”

  “There, that's what I say. It's impossible that people lie. But here we have nothing of the kind. Here we have the quagmire and gloom. Here we have wolves… wolves with fiery eyes. On such nights it seems to me that nowhere on this earth, nowhere does the sun shine.”

  It was terrifying to see a dry black gleam in her eyes, and in order to change the subject, I said:

  “It can't be that your father and mother did not love each other.”

  Her smile was enigmatic:

  “Our people do not love. This house sucks the life out of its people. And then who told you that I had a mother? I don't remember her, nobody in this house remembers her. At times it seems to me that my appearance in this world was of my own doing.”

  In spite of the naivety of these words, I understood that this was an unknown scene from Decameron and one must not laugh, because it was all so terrible. A young girl was sitting near me talking of things that she had long been hiding in her heart and which, however, had no greater reality for her than angels in heaven had for me.

  “You are mistaken,” I growled, “love nevertheless, even though rarely, does come our way on earth.”

  “Wolves cannot love. And how can one love, if death is all around? Here it is, beyond the window.”

  A very thin, transparent hand pointed to the black spots on the windows. And again her fine voice:

  “Your lying books write that it is a great mystery, that it is happiness and light, that when love comes to a man and there is no reciprocation, he kills himself.”

  “Yes,” I answered, “otherwise there would be neither men nor women.”

  “You lie. People kill others, not themselves. I don't believe in it, I've never experienced it, which means that it doesn't exist. I don't wish to kiss anybody, about which your books write so much and so queerly, — people bite each other.”

  Even now such talk frightens some men, what then is there to say about those times? I am not an unfeeling sort of person, but I felt no shame: she spoke about love as other women do about the weather. She did not know it, she had not been awakened, was quite cold, cold as ice. She could not even understand whether it was shameful or not. And her eyes looked frankly into mine.

  This could not have been coquetry. This was a child, not a child even, but a living corpse.

  She wrapped her shawl about her and said:

  “Death reigns on earth. That I know. I don't like it when people lie about what has never existed on our earth.”

  Beyond the walls the wind howled. She shrugged her shoulders and said quietly:

  “A terrible land, terrible trees, terrible nights.”

  And again I saw that same expression on her face and did not understand it.

  “Tell me, they are large cities — Vilnia and Miensk?”

  “Rather large, but Moscow and Petersburg are larger.”

  “And there, too, the nights bring no comfort to people?”

  “Not at all. In the windows lights burn, in the streets people laugh, skates ring, street lamps shine.”

  She became thoughtful.

  “That's so there. But here not a single light. Surrounding this old park two versts on every side, lonely huts are asleep, sleeping without any lights. In this house there are about fifty rooms, many corridors and passages with dark corners. It was built so long ago… And it is a cold house, for our ancestors forbade laying stoves, they allowed only fireplaces in order to be unlike their common neighbours. The fireplaces burn day and night, but even so there is dampness in the corners and cold everywhere. And in these fifty rooms there are only three people. The housekeeper sleeps on the ground floor and the watchman also. And in one of the wings behind the alleys and the park the cook and the washerwoman live. They live well. And in the second annex to this house, with its separate entrance, my manager lives, Ihnat Bierman-Hacevič. Whatever we need this manager for, I do not know, but such is the law. And in this house, on the entire first floor with its 30 rooms, I am the only one. And it is so uncomfortable here that I'd like to get into some corner, wrap myself up in my blanket as a child does, and sit there. Now for some reason or other it feels good and so quiet here as it has not been for two years, since the time my father died. And it is all the same to me now whether there are lights beyond these windows or not. You know, it is very good when there are people beside you…”

  She led me to my room (her room was only two doors away) and when I had already opened the door, she said:

  “If old legends and traditions interest you, look for them in the library, in the book-case for manuscripts. A volume of legends about our family must be there. And some other papers as well.”

  And she added: “Thank you, Mr. Biełarecki.”

  I don't know why she thanked me, and I confess that I didn't think about it much when I entered a small room without any door-bolts, arid put my candle on the table.

  There was a bed there as wide as the Kojdanava Battlefield. Over the bed was an old canopy. On the floor a threadbare carpet that had been a wonderful piece of work. The bed, evidently, was made up with the help of a special stick (as they used to do 200 years ago), and such a big stick it was. The stick stood near the bed. Besides the bed there were a chest of drawers, a high writing-desk and a table. Nothing else.

  I undressed, lay down under a warm blanket, having put out the candle. And immediately beyond the window the black silhouettes of the trees appeared on a blue background, and sounds were heard, sounds evoking dreams.

  For some reason or other a feeling of abandonment overcame me to such a degree that I stretched out, drew my hands over my head and, almost beginning to laugh, so happy did I feel, I fell asleep, as if I had fallen into some kind of a dark abyss over a precipice. It seemed to me I was dreaming that someone was making short and careful steps along the corridor, but I paid no attention to that,
and I slept and in my dream I was glad that I was asleep.

  This was my first night and the only peaceful one in the house of the Janoŭskis at Marsh Firs.

  The abandoned park, wild and blackened by age and moisture, was disturbed for many acres around, filled with the noise of an autumn rain.

  Chapter The Second

  The following day was a usual grey day, one of those that often occur in Belarus in autumn. In the morning I did not see the mistress of the house. I was told that she slept badly at night and therefore got up late. The housekeeper's face, when I was having breakfast, was a kind of vinegar-sour face and so sulky and haughty, it was unpleasant to look at her. Therefore I did not stay long at table, took my tattered notebook, five pencils, put on my cloak that had dried overnight, and having asked the way, set off for the nearest “pachynak” — one or two huts in a forest, the beginning of a future village.

  I immediately felt better, although nothing in the surroundings made for merriness. Only from here, from this wet footpath, could I take a good look at the castle. At night it had seemed smaller to me, for both of its wings were safely hidden in the thicket of the park and the entire ground floor was completely overgrown with lilac that had grown wild. And beneath the lilac grew yellow dahlias, pulpy burdock, dead-nettle and other rubbish. Here and there as in all very damp places, greater celandine stuck out its web-footed stalks, sweetbriar and solanum grew wild. And on the damp earth amidst the various herbs lay branches white with mould, broken off, apparently by the wind.

  Traces of the work of human hands were seen only in front of the entrance where late dark purple asters shone in a large flower bed. And the house looked so gloomy and cold that it wrung my heart. It was a two-storeyed building with an enormous belvedere, and along the sides were turrets, though not very large ones. Striking was the lack of architecture characteristic of the magnificent buildings of those days when our ancestors ceased building castles, but nevertheless demanded that their architects should erect mansions resembling this moss-overgrown old lair.