King Stakh's Wild Hunt (26 page)

“Who is he?” adamantly repeated Ryhor moving stone jaws.

And then she began to weep. Cried, sobbed like a child, and through her sobbing finally escaped a brief:

“Mr. Likol... Mr. Ryhor Dubatowk.”

I was horror stricken to the very heart. Dumbfounded!

“Impossible! Such a good man! And, most important, of what benefit is it to him? After all, he’s not an heir!”

And my memory obligingly reminded me of the words of one of the scoundrels under the tree: “He’s in love with antiquity.” Even the undeciphered “...ly ma...” in the letter to Svetsilovich suddenly turned naturally into Dubatowk’s favourite byword: “Holy martyrs! What’s going on here in this world!”

I wiped my eyes driving off my confusion.

Like lightning the solution flashed through my mind.

“Wait here, Nadzeya. And Ryhor, you wait, too. I’ll go to Mr. Haraburda. Then I’ll have to look through Bierman’s things.”

Up the stairs I ran, my mind working in two directions. Firstly, Dubatowk might have arranged matters with Bierman, although why had he killed him? Secondly, Haraburda also might have been dependent on Dubatowk.

When I opened the door, an elderly gentleman with Homeric haunches got out from his armchair to meet me. He looked at my determined face in surprise. “Excuse me, Mr. Haraburda,” I flung at him sharply, “I must put a question to you concerning your relations with Mr. Dubatowk: why did you permit this man to order you about?”

He had the look of a thief caught in the act of committing a crime. His low forehead reddened, his eyes began to wander. However, from the look on my face, he probably understood that I was in no mood for joking.

“What can one do... Promissory notes...” he muttered.

“You gave Mr. Dubatowk promissory notes secured by Yanovsky’s estate, which does not belong to you?”

And again I struck home aiming at the sky.

“It was such a miserly sum. Only 3,000 roubles. The kennel requires so much.”

Things were beginning to fall into their places. Dubatowk’s monstrous plan gradually became clear.

“According to Roman Yanovsky’s will,” he mumbled, removing something from his morning coat with trembling fingers, “such a substitution was established. Yanovsky’s children receive the inheritance...” and he looked at me pitifully in the eyes. “There won’t be any. She’ll die, you know... She’ll die soon. After her – her husband. But she is mad, who will marry her? Then the next step – the last of the Yanovskys. But there aren’t any, after Svetsilovich’s death – none. I am Yanovsky’s relative in the female line. If there aren’t any children or a husband – the castle is mine.” And he began to whimper: “But how could I wait? I’ve so many promissory notes. I’m such an unfortunate person. Mr. Ryhor has bought up most of my notes. And in addition gave 3,000 roubles. Now he’ll be the owner here.”

“Listen to me,” speaking through set teeth, “there was, is, and will be only one owner here, Miss Nadzeya Yanovsky.”

“I laid no hope on receiving an inheritance. Yanovsky could get married. So I gave him a promissory note, its security being the castle.”

“So! You lack both shame and a conscience. You probably do not even know what they are. But don’t you really know that from the financial aspect this act is not valid? That it’s criminal?”

“No, I don’t. I was glad.”

“But you know, don’t you, that you drove Dubatowk into committing a terrible crime, a crime for which there is no word even in man’s language? Of what is the poor girl guilty that you decided to deprive her of her life?”

“I suspected that it was a crime,” he babbled, “but my kennel, my house...”

“You lousy thing! I don’t want to dirty my hands on you. The provincial court will busy itself with you. And in the meantime, on my own authority, I’ll put you in the dungeon of this house for a week, so you won’t be able to warn the other rascals.”

He began to whimper and whine:

“That’s coercion.”

“It’s for you, is it, to speak of coercion? You villain! It’s for you, is it, to appeal to the law?” I flung at him. “What do you know about that? You who lick people’s boots!”

I called Ryhor, and he pushed Haraburda into the dungeon, under the central part of the building where there weren’t any windows.

An iron door thundered behind him.

The small light of a candle loomed somewhere in the distance behind dark window-panes. When I lifted my eyes, I saw close by the reflection of my face in sharp shadows.

I was looking through Bierman’s papers. It still seemed to me that I might find something of interest in them. Bierman was too complicated a character to have lived the life of a foolish sheep.

And so, here I was with the consent of the mistress. I had taken out all the papers from the secretaire and put them on the table, also all the books, letters and documents, and I sat, sneezing from the thick layer of dust on these relics.

There was little of interest, however, in them. I came across a letter from Bierman’s mother, in which she asked for help, and the rough draft of his answer, where he wrote that he was supporting his brother, that now his brother didn’t interfere with his mother living as she liked, and as for the rest – they were quits. Strange! What brother, where is he now?

I dug out something resembling a diary in which next to monetary expenditures and rather clever remarks on Belarusian history, I found also Bierman’s discourses such as these:

“The Northwest Territory as a concept is a fiction. The reason for this possibly lies in the fact that it serves with its blood and brain the idea of the universe as a whole, but not as of five provinces, that it pays off all debts and obligations, and that it is preparing a new Messiah in its very depths for the salvation of mankind, and therefore its lot is to suffer. This, however, does not refer to those who are its best representatives, people possessing energy, strength and an aristocratic spirit.”

“Well, just take a look, with the spirit of a knight, a strong man in torn pants,” I muttered.

“My only love is my brother. At times it seems to me that all other people are only caricatures of him and there is need of a person who would remake everybody in his likeness. People must be creatures of darkness. Animal beauty appears more clearly in their organisms, a beauty that we must guard and love. Then isn’t the only difference between the genius and the idiot the fig-leaf, which man himself revised? Belaretsky’s mediocrity irritates me, and, by God, it would be better for him if he disappeared, and the sooner the better.”

And yet another note:

“Money is the emanation of human authority over a herd of others, and regretfully so!. We should have learned to perform castration of the brains of all those who do not deserve the life of a conscious being. And the best should be given boundless happiness, for such a thing as justice is not foreseen by nature itself. This applies also to me. I need peace, which we have here more than anything else, and money in order to mature the idea for the sake of which I appeared in the world, the idea of splendid and exceptional injustice. And it seems to me that the first step might be the victory over that towards which my body is striving and which, however, it’s necessary to overcome, the desire for the mistress of Marsh Firs. She is anyway condemned by blind fate to be done away with – the curse on her is being fulfilled by the appearance of the Wild Hunt at the walls of the castle. Though she is stronger than I had thought: she hasn’t lost her mind yet. King Stakh is weak, and I am ordained to correct his mistakes. I am, nevertheless, jealous of all young men and especially of this Belaretsky. I shot at him yesterday, but was forced to retreat. I shoot badly.”

The next sheet:

“It is possible that if I fulfilled the role of God’s will, of his highest design, such as has been known to happen with ordinary mortals, the evil spirits will leave this place and I shall remain the master here. I convinced Belaretsky that the Hunt presents the chief danger. But what danger can there be in apparitions? The Little Man is a different story.”

“Gold, gold! Thousands of panegyrics could be sung to your power over people’s souls. You are everything – the baby’s diaper, the girl’s body to be bought, friendship, love and power, the brain of the greatest geniuses, even the decent hole in the Earth. And I will achieve all this.”

I crumpled the paper and squeezed my fingers until they ached.

“Abomination!”

Suddenly my hand came across a sheet of parchment folded in four among piles of paper. I unfolded the sheet on my lap and could only shake my head – it was the construction plan of Marsh Firs, a plan dating back to the sixteenth century. And in this plan four listening channels were clearly indicated in the walls. Four! But they were so hidden in the plafonds that to find them was simply impossible. One of them, by the way, led from the dungeons in the castle to the room near the library, probably in order to overhear prisoners’ conversations, and the second one connected the library, the now abandoned servants’ rooms on the first floor and Miss Yanovsky’s quarters. The two others remained unknown to me; they opened into the hall where were located the rooms belonging to Yanovsky and myself, but where they led to had been carefully rubbed out.

The villain had found the plan in the archive and had hidden it.

There turned out to be some more interesting things in the plan. The outer wall of the castle contained an empty space, a narrow passage and three small cells of some kind – where I had once torn off a board in the boarded up room.

I swore as never before in my life. Many unpleasant things might have been avoided if I had thoroughly knocked at the walls covered with panels. But it wasn’t too late even now. I grabbed the candle, glanced at the clock – half past ten – and ran as quickly as I could to my hall.

I was knocking for half an hour probably, before I hit on a place which answered to my knocking with a resonant sound as if I were knocking on the bottom of a barrel. I looked for a place in the panel that I could catch onto and tear off at least a part of it, but in vain. Then I saw some light scratches on it, made with some sharp thing. I equipped myself with a folding knife and began to prod it into the hardly noticeable cracks between the panels. With a blade of the knife I managed quite soon to find something that gave way. I pressed harder – the panel began to squeak and slowly turn on the side, forming a narrow slit. I looked at the reverse part of the panel at the place in which I had stuck the knife. A hollow board made opening the manhole from the inside impossible. I went down about fifteen steps, but the door behind my back began to squeak so pitifully that I hurried upstairs and managed just in time to hold it back with my foot so that it shouldn’t shut. To remain in a rat hole alone under the threat of sitting there till Doomsday with a candle end was foolhardy.

Therefore I left the door half open, put a handkerchief near the axle and myself sat down not far away on the floor, with my revolver on my knees. I had to blow out the candle, for its light might frighten the mysterious creature if it had thought of creeping out of its hiding place. The candle burning round the corner in the hall all night, even though dimly, still gave some light, and an indefinite grey light also poured in through the window.

I don’t know how long I sat there with my chin buried in my knees. It was about twelve when drowsiness began to overtake me, my eyes became glued together. No matter how I fought sleep, I nodded; the past sleepless nights were catching up with me. In an instant, my mind slipped away and I fell into a kind of a dark, stuffy abyss.

Have you ever tried to sleep while sited, your back leaning against a wall or a tree? Try it. You will become convinced that the sensation of falling was left to us from our forefather – the monkey. For him it had been necessary to prevent his falling off the tree. And, sitting against the tree, you will, in your sleep, fall very often, awakening and again falling asleep. Finally, wonderful dreams overcome your soul, a million years of man’s existence will disappear, and it will seem to you that under the tree a prehistoric mammoth is going to – the water and the eyes of a cave bear are burning from under a cliff.

This was my condition by approximation. Dreams... Dreams... It seemed to me I was sitting in a tree and I was afraid to let myself down, for a pithecanthropus was stealthily making his way along the ground under me. It was night and wolves were moaning behind the trees. At that very moment I “fell” and opened my eyes.

In the semi darkness a strange creature was moving straight in front of me. Green, old fashioned clothes, covered with dust and cobwebs, its long lowered in thought head was stretching out as a bean seed, frog-like eyelids almost covered its eyes, and hands were hanging down, hands with such long fingers they were almost touching the floor.

The Little Man of Marsh Firs moved past and floated on farther, while I followed after him with my revolver. He opened a window, then another one and crept inside. I stuck my head out after him and saw him walking with the ease of a monkey along a narrow ledge the width of three fingers! Here and there he nipped off a few buds from the branches of a lime tree touching the wall, and champed them. With one hand he helped himself to move on. Then he crept back into the hall again, closed the window and slowly moved ahead somewhere. A fearful sight was this inhuman creature! Once it seemed to me that I heard a kind of mumbling. The Little Man beat himself on his forehead and was lost in the dark where the light of the distant candle did not reach. I hurried after him, because I was afraid he would disappear. When I found myself in the dark I saw two fiery eyes that looked from around the corner and were inexplicably threatening.

I rushed to the Little Man, but he began to groan grievously and wandered off somewhere, shaking on his little legs. Turning around, he fixed his gaze on me, threatening me with a long finger. For a moment I was dumbfounded, but collected myself, caught up with the Little Man and grabbed him by the shoulders. My heart began to beat happily, for it was not a ghost.

When I dragged the creature out into the light, it put a finger into its mouth and pronounced in a squeaking voice: