King Stakh's Wild Hunt (4 page)

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. Belaretsky... It’s simply that I hate what savages can create in the minds of savages. Perhaps you, too, will someday understand what it is... this gloom. Whereas I understood that all too well long before. But I’ll be long dead prior to everything becoming clearer to me.”

I realized it would be tactless of me 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 Yanovsky, 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 season of 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 Yanovskys that she had forgotten the custom of hospitality.”

She said ‘the last of the Yanovskys’ 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 be spend on 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, as well as 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 that I answered 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, apparently because somebody had obeyed her.

The leftovers of a very modest supper were removed from the table. We remained in our armchairs before the fireplace. Yanovsky 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 state of mind 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 read my thoughts, she said: “I’ve never been anywhere beyond this plain in the forest... My father was the best man living on Earth, taught me on his own for 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 Yanovsky. 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 just that,” she said. “That world is alluring, but I am not needed anywhere except at Marsh Firs. And what should I do there to earn my living should I be in need of money? 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 to quickly 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; 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 books lie that love is a great mystery, that love is happiness and light, that when it comes to a man and there is no reciprocation, he kills himself.”

“Oh no, love happens!,” I answered, “Otherwise there would be neither men nor women.”

“A 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 like in those books of yours, – 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 what love was, she had not been awakened, was still quite cold, as cold as ice. She could not even understand whether love was shameful or not. And her eyes stared frankly into mine.

This could not have been coquetry. This was a child. No, not even a child, but a living corpse.

She wrapped her shawl around 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 kept howling. She shrugged her shoulders and said quietly:

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

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

“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. Lights burn in the windows, people laugh in the streets, on skating rings, under shining street lamps.”

She became thoughtful.

“That might be so over there. But here not a single light in the dark. Surrounding this old park by two miles on every side, lonely huts are asleep, sleeping without any lights. In this house there are about fifty rooms, many halls 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 lives the cook and the washerwoman. They live well. And in the second annex to this house, with its separate entrance, lives my manager, Ihnat Bierman – Hatsevich. Whatever we need this manager for, I do not know, but such is the order of things. And in this house, on the entire first floor with its thirty 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 yourself...”

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 bookcase for manuscripts. A volume of legends about our family must be there. And some other papers as well.”

And then she added: “Thank you, Mr. Belaretsky.”

I don’t know what she thanked me for, and I confess of not thinking about it much when I entered a small room without any door bolts, and put my candle on the table.

There was a bed there as wide as the Koydanov Battlefield. Over the bed was an old canopy. On the floor a threadbare carpet that had properties of a wonderful piece of work. The bed, evidently, was made up with the help of a special stick, as they used to do two hundred years ago, and what 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 hall, but I paid no attention to that, and as I slept 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 Yanovskys 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.

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 a vinegar sour face and so sulky and haughty, it was unpleasant to look at her. Therefore I did not stay long at the 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 project for myself that I could think of – 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 overtaken by the lilac flower that had grown completely 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, and sweetbriar and solanum grew wild as well. On the damp soil amidst the various herbs lay branches, covered in white mold, broken off, apparently, by the wind.

Traces of the human touch 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, with turrets along the sides, though not very large ones. Striking was the lack of architecture characteristic of the magnificent constructions of those days when our ancestors ceased building castles but nevertheless demanded that their architects should erect mansions resembling this old lair under all that moss.

I decided to go to the farmstead only after I had examined everything here, so I continued along the lane. The devil alone knows what kind of a fool had thought of planting fir trees in such a gloomy place, but it had been done, and the park which must have been hundreds of years old was only a little pleasanter than Dante’s famous forest. The firs were so thick that two persons together could not have encircled them with their arms, and they approached the very walls of the castle, their branches knocking at the windows, their blue-green tops rising above the roof. Their trunks were covered by a grey border of moss and lichen, the lower branches hung down to the ground like tents, and the alley was a reminder of a narrow path between hills. Gigantic, gloomy almost bare linden trees could be seen here and there at a close proximity to the very house, dark from the rain. And only one thick oak tree, evidently well looked after, for its top was several metres higher than those of the tallest firs.