Tales by Polish Authors

'My friend,' I tried to say to console him a little, – 'no doubt under such circumstances it is difficult to remember that it makes no difference; but all earth is hallowed.'

But the Jew jumped as if he had been scalded.

'Hallowed! how hallowed! In what way is it hallowed! What are you saying, Sir? It's unclean! It's damned!.. Hallowed earth?.. You must not talk like that, Sir, you ought to be ashamed! Is earth hallowed, which never thaws? This earth is cursed! God doesn't wish human beings to live here; it wouldn't have been like this, if He had wished it. Cursed! Bad! Damned! Damned!'

And he began to spit about him, and stamp his feet, threatening the innocent Yakut earth with tightened lips and his shrivelled hands, and muttering Jewish maledictions. At last, exhausted by the effort, he fell rather than sat down at the table beside me.

All exiles, without regard to religion or race, dislike Siberia: evidently a fanatic does not learn to hate it half-heartedly. I paused until he had calmed himself. Educated in a severe school, the Jew quickly regained his self-possession and mastered his emotion, and when I gazed questioningly into his eyes the next moment, he immediately answered me:

'You must pardon me; I do not speak of this to anyone, for to whom should I speak here?'

'Then are there very few Jews here?'

'Those here? Do you call them Jews, Sir? They're such low fellows, not one of them keeps the Law strictly.'

Fearing another outburst, I would not, however, allow him to finish, and decided to change the conversation by asking him straight out what he wanted to talk to me about now.

'I should like to know the news from there, Sir. I have been here so many years, and I have never yet heard what is going on there.'

'You are asking a good deal, for I can't exactly tell you everything. I don't know what interests you, – politics perhaps?'

The Jew was silent.

I concluded that my present guest, like many of the others, was interested in politics; but as I myself did not understand the very elements of the subject, I began to give the stereotyped account I had already composed with a view to frequent repetition of the situation of European politics, our own,13 and so forth. But the Jew fidgeted impatiently.

'Then this does not interest you?' I asked.

'I have never thought about it,' he answered candidly.

'Ah, now I know why you have come! I am sure you wish to know how the Jews are doing, and how trade is going?'

'They are better off than I am.'

'Exactly. I am sure, under the circumstances, you will wish to know if living is dear with us, what the market prices are, how much for butter, meat, etc.'

'What does it concern me if it is ever so cheap there, if I can get nothing here?'

'Quite right again; but what the devil did you actually come here for?'

'Since I don't know myself, I ask you, Sir, how I am to tell you? You see, Sir, I often get thinking … I think so much … that Ryfka (that's my wife) asks, "Srul, what's the matter with you?" And what can I tell her, for I don't know myself what it is. Perhaps some people would laugh at me?' he added, as if fearing I were amongst them.

But I did not laugh; I was interested. Something, the cause of which he himself could not explain or express in words, was evidently weighing on him, and his unusually poor command of language added to this difficulty. In order to help him I re-assured him by telling him that I was in no hurry, as my work was not urgent and there would therefore be no harm in our having an hour's talk, and so on. – The Jew thanked me with a glance, and after a moment's thought opened the conversation thus:

'When did you leave Warsaw, Sir?'

'According to the Russian calendar, at the end of April.'

'Was it cold there then or warm?'

'Quite warm. I travelled in a summer suit at first.'

'Well, just fancy, Sir! Here it was freezing!'

'Then you have forgotten, is that it? Anyway, with us the fields are sown in April, and all the trees are green.'

'Green?' Joy shone in Srul's eyes. 'Why, yes, yes – green: – and here it was freezing!'

Now at last I knew why he had come to me. Wishing to make certain, however, I was silent: the Jew was evidently getting animated.

'Well, Sir, you might tell me if there is any – with us now … but you see, I don't know what it's called; I have already forgotten Polish,' he apologized shyly, as if he had ever known it – 'it's white like a pea blossom, yet it's not a pea, and in summer it grows in gardens round houses, on those tall stalks?'

'Kidney beans?'

'That's just it! Kidney beans! Kidney beans!' he repeated to himself several times, as if wishing to impress those words on his memory for ever.

'Of course there are plenty of those. But are there none here?'

'Here! I have never seen a single pod all these past three years. Here the peas are what at home we should not expect the … the…'

'The pigs to eat,' I suggested.

'Well, yes! Here they sell them by the pound, and it's not always possible to get them.'

'Are you so fond of kidney beans?'

'It's not that I am so fond of them, but they are so beautiful that … I don't know why … I often get thinking and thinking how they may be growing round my house. Here there's nothing!'

'And now, Sir,' he recommenced, 'will you tell me, if those small grey birds are still there in the winter, – like this – ' and he measured with his hand. 'I have forgotten their names too. Formerly there were a great many, when I used to pray by the window. They used to swarm round! Well, whoever even looked at them there? Do you know, Sir, I could never have believed that I should ever think about them! But here, where it's so cold that even the crows won't stop, you can't expect to see little things like that. But they are sure to be there with us? They are there, aren't they, Sir?..'

But I did not answer him now. I no longer doubted that this old fanatical Jew was pining for his country just as much as I was, and that we were both sick with the same sickness. This unexpected discovery moved me deeply, and I seized him by the hand, and asked in my turn:

'Then that was what you wished to talk to me about? Then you are not thinking of the people, of your heavy lot, of the poverty which is pinching you; but you are longing for the sun, for the air of your native country!.. You are thinking of the fields and meadows and woods; of the little songsters, for whom you could not spare a moment's attention there when you were busy, and now that these beautiful pictures are fading from your recollection, you fear the solitude surrounding you, the vast emptiness which meets you and effaces the memories you value? You wish me to recall them to you, to revive them; you wish me to tell you what our country is like?..'

'Oh yes, Sir, yes, Sir! That was why I came here,' and he clasped my hands, and laughed joyfully, like a child.

'Listen, brother…'

And my friend, Srul, listened, all transformed by listening, his lips parted, his look rivetted to mine; he kindled, he inspired me by that look; he wrested the words from me, drank them in thirstily, and laid them in the very depth of his burning heart… I do not doubt that he laid them there, for when I had finished my tale he began to moan bitterly, 'O weh mir! weh mir!' He struck his red beard, and in his misery tears like a child's rolled fast down his face… And the old fanatic sat there a long time sobbing, and I cried with him…

Much water has flowed down the cold Lena since that day, and not a few human tears have rolled down suffering cheeks. All this happened long ago. Yet in the silence of the night, at times of sleeplessness, the statuesque face of Bałdyga, bearing the stigma of great sorrow, often rises before me, and invariably beside it Srul's yellow, drawn face, wet with tears. And when I gaze longer at that night-vision, many a time I seem to see the Jew's trembling, pale lips move, and I hear his low voice whisper:

'Oh Jehovah, why art thou so unmerciful to one of Thy most faithful sons?..'

IN AUTUMN

WACŁAW SIEROSZEWSKI

The rain and bad weather, which had continued without interruption for several days, had kept the inhabitants of the hut, 'Talaki,'14 prisoners indoors, and condemned them to idleness. They constantly went out of the room to gaze long and sadly at the weeping sky, for the hay was rotting in the fields; – but alas! a grey film of rain hung over all the surrounding country, and in vain their eyes sought longingly for the smallest chink of blue in the heavy, dark clouds.

To add to the misfortune, the rain, not content with the holes left in the roof from the year before, made a number of fresh ones. It thus poured into the room from all sides on to people's heads and shoulders, and formed quite a deep and ever-growing pool underfoot. Various forms of filth, remains of food, refuse of fish and game, the dung in the corner where the calves were kept, which had been trodden down and had dried in the course of the year, became moist, and filled the interior of the 'yurta'15 with an unbearable smell. It was therefore stuffy, cold, and damp there. The fire, burning rather slowly, was choked by balls of grey smoke, which went across the room.

The hut was tiny; it occupied no more than twenty-four square yards of the solitude surrounding it. The slanting walls, made of barked larch trees placed perpendicularly, and narrowing towards the top, diminished its size still more. The flat roof was built of rafters of the same wood, and came down so close to the inhabitants' heads that one of them, Michawio, a big lad, while unwinding a bundle of nets at the little window, hit his curly shock head against it.

A plank partition, hewn out with a hatchet, ran through the centre of the room, and divided it into equal parts, the right being for the men, the left for the women. By a post at the end of the room, with his face turned towards the fire, his hands on his right knee, and smoking a pipe, sat my host, Kyrsa,16 a Yakut. Still hale, though no longer young, he was the wealthy and independent master of field labourers, and the owner of the house, of many nets, animals, and implements, as well as of three women: – a wife, and two daughters. The youngest was sold already, but she was living with her father, as the sum agreed upon for her had not yet been paid in full by the buyer.

There was deep silence in the room, – a rather unusual thing in a place where several Yakut people are together. The fire roared and hissed in the chimney, and behind the partition the girls made a squeaking sound as they rubbed the skins together. I had a foreboding that this silence would end badly; indeed, the storm soon broke out. The lad nicknamed 'Shmata' brought it on by his incompetence. After wandering from corner to corner all day, he now upset a bucket and spilt the water. This was the last straw. All eyes flashed, and faces grew pale.

The frightened Shmata tried to lay the blame on Michawio, who had been stooping down near him to look for a strap. Michawio in revenge reminded Shmata of what had happened about the rake the year before. The quarrel had begun in earnest. Their tongues, moving with the speed of a windmill, and throwing out invectives and sneers, formed an accompaniment to the host's threatening shouts, which rang out like the trump of the Archangel. Nor did our hostess fail to leave her seclusion to take part in the skirmish with the excitement peculiar to women all the world over. The yurta suddenly became like a disturbed beehive. The host affirmed, the hostess denied, the labourers hurled abuses at one another, the girls uttered war cries, the baby woke up and screamed in its cradle, and the calves lowed in answer to the loud mooing of the cows, whom evening had driven near the house door. This last occurence had a perceptible influence in diminishing the noise, for it caused the female element to withdraw from the fight; in fact, the disturbance might have been conjured away completely, if the happy thought of adding something at the very moment when everyone else was quieting down, had not entered our host's head.

This remark burst out unexpectedly, like a belated bomb after a battle, and produced such a din that the cows and calves were silent, the wind abated in fright, the clouds fled, and I became aware of a golden sunbeam penetrating the holes in the bladder at the window, and falling suddenly into the interior of our dark, dirty, noisy hovel. Merrily and brightly it rested in a shining circle on the closely cropped grey head of my host, before whose nose his wife's large closed fist was hovering at that moment. 'That's for you! Take that! Go on!' Kuimis cried, still beautiful in her anger. The fist came closer and closer to the unfortunate man's mouth.

What happened further? Did Kyrsa avenge himself like a man for that greatest of all insults possible to a Yakut from a woman? Or did he show himself to be the 'wife of his wife,' an old woman and a simpleton, as the neighbours called him, and refrain from knocking out the teeth or breaking the ribs of the active woman by whose work he lived and had grown rich? I do not know, because, foreseeing the overthrow of my friend, in whom love for his wife was always struggling against a sense of duty, and not wishing to be a witness of his defeat, I shouldered my gun and went out of the cottage.

The wind had dropped, the covering of clouds was torn open, and bits of pale blue sky were unveiled here and there. The sun peeped out suddenly through one of these little gaps, and the landscape, which had been dreary and joyless a moment before, brightened into a golden splendour. A light shadow, half cheerful, half sombre, fell across its faded autumn foliage, and in this half smile it resembled a forsaken woman, to whom the caprice of a lover, who has already grown cold, offers a moment of tenderness and happiness again. Drops of rain glistened like brilliants on the dark branches of the trees and bushes; the sky was coloured in shades of carmine, and the pearly tears of the passing storm trembled on the willows, still swaying from it.

Before me, between two high promontories overgrown by woods which ran in opposite directions, sparkled the surface of the lake. In proportion as it stretched into the distance, its bank became more winding, lower, and mistier, until it disappeared at the outlet of a gorge. Owing to the distance, the tall, thin larches, the thick willows, bushes, and grass growing there looked quite small, but the rays of the sunset, falling on them from behind, produced a wonderful lace-work of dark branches and leaves against a pale-rose sky. Grey clouds hung above them, heavily embroidered with gold and purple. The waves sported and chased one another below on the foam-splashed banks of the lake, which was painted with colours from the sky.

I walked towards the gorge, by the footpath leading through a meadow which was now turning yellow.

That 'demons' forest'17 looked dark and horrible close at hand. The flat hills, uniformly covered with soft moss of a dirty green, and with cranberry leaves, undulated gently westwards towards the sinking sun. The wood covering these hills was sparse and stunted, and disfigured them rather than otherwise, for single trees stood out here and there like the remaining hair on a bald man's head. Silence, and the gloom of oncoming night already filled the interior of the forest. Only here and there a forgotten ray of sunshine was burning itself out above in the bare, wind-twisted summits of the larches.

I stood for a moment, looking at that wild spot, which no native would have dared to approach. A deep stillness lay upon it; the waves beat more and more gently and noiselessly; the sunset was fading away, and only where the network of bushes was less close a transient gleam lighted the surface of some lakes, which had hitherto been unknown to me. I walked on towards them, impelled by curiosity and a feeling of longing.

The way proved more difficult than I had expected. At every moment I was obliged to jump or climb over bushes and avoid the deep, narrow wells, boarded round with tree-trunks felled a hundred years before and perfidiously concealed by the mosses and plants overgrowing them. As these wells were full of water, with bottoms as slippery as ice, an unwary pedestrian could easily break his neck or fracture a leg by falling into them. In many places swampy streams trickled along undefined channels, and though their banks were shallow, they were boggy and difficult to cross on account of the trunks and branches lying in them. The wood was full of trees with projecting, mud-covered roots, which now, when everything was assuming an indefinite shape in the twilight, looked twisted and monstrous. The white patches of lichen shining in the darkness at the foot of the trees like the immense shreds of a pall, emphasized and doubled their weird appearance. It is, therefore, no wonder that in the purple light of dawn, or in the moonlight, the natives should here see the tall wood-demon's pale face, – the Slav hunter who came from the South and now roams near the Yakut cottages, injuring cattle.

Woe to the district where his shadow passes! Often from fifty to two hundred beasts fall dead at one shot from those terrible Southern arms.

That evening, however, I met none of these inhabitants of the wood. I also did not see the 'demons,' – the dry Tungus corpses. At one time they were to be found here quite frequently, and the forest takes its name from them. Shrivelled and horrible, they usually sit somewhere under a tree or cleft in a rock, gazing eastwards with eye-sockets pecked by the birds. On their knees they hold a wooden bow, or a rifle, at their feet lies a hatchet with a broken handle, and at their belt, inlaid with silver and beads, hangs a broken knife in its sheath, – also broken, in order to prevent the dead man from doing any mischief after death. A little to one side lie scattered the bones of the reindeer, killed on his grave, the harness, and the small Tungus sledge. No one ever dares to possess himself of any of these considerably valuable articles, for punishment threatens the foolhardy, inasmuch as he loses his way all day long until he returns to the same place and restores the stolen object. Until they give ample satisfaction, and atone to the angered owner by a gift, obstinate people return some thirty, even a hundred times without being able to escape from the magic circle. It is dangerous even to touch any of the things belonging to the dead man, since that evokes a storm, or, at best, a high wind. Although the kindly natives had advised me to avoid meeting with the 'demon,' since it brings early, and sometimes immediate death, I was very sorry not to have seized him red-handed that evening. However, I came to be severely punished for this sinful wish.

The twilight deepened. The last purple resplendance had already faded from the sunset, when tired and tattered, I at last succeeded in pushing my way through the bushes of the 'demon's forest.' The sky was dark, and twinkling with myriads of stars. My expedition had failed in every respect. To complete the misfortune, the white mists hung like muslin over the valley, and entirely prevented me from satisfying my curiosity. I was therefore only able to take pleasure in the play of the moonlight.

It was really a beautiful view, although rather wild and gloomy. Nearly the whole of the broad valley, to the very edge of the wood where the dark, bare tree-tops projected beyond the border of mist, was filled by white balls of vapour; the moon was moving slowly above them. Looking for a moment into the depths of the valley, she drew aside the floating veil, and touched the sleeping lake below with her silvery kiss. I stood a long while to gaze and to rest. The deep silence, the stillness which always reigns in these woods, the knowledge that no one but myself was to be found in that solitude for twenty versts round, filled me with a strange feeling of anxiety and longing. I roused myself in order to dispel this. It was unfortunately time to think of returning; – no easy matter, however, for in making my way through the wood, I had lost a clear conception of the right track. At last I hit on a small footpath, and decided to follow it in the hope that it would lead me to some inhabited spot. I had scarcely gone twenty steps before becoming persuaded that I was not walking on a path, but on one of the numerous tracks made in the wood by water or animals. It was therefore necessary to return to the place from which I had started, for only thence could I more or less trace the way leading in a bee-line through the wood. But the place had disappeared; the night had shrouded it in new and different shadows, and the mist had drawn its silver web across it. I walked for some time, searching in vain, and haunted by the thought of forest madness. I had seen people brought home from the 'taiga'18 no longer in possession of their faculties, pale and miserable, and with the traces of terror and madness in their eyes. These unhappy men had often lost their way quite near houses, without seeing them or being able to recognize the points of the compass, although the sun was shining, and they had wandered about, crying and howling like wild animals. After recovering, they said that they had seen the demon. One of the causes of this illness is the fatigue brought on by the strain of the vain search. So I sat down on a felled trunk, resolving to wait for daybreak.

The air was cool. My clothes were wet with the mist and rain, besides being too thin for spending the night in the wood, so that I soon began to suffer from the cold. I tried to light a fire, but the matches were damp, and the only one which burnt could not set fire to the moist brushwood and logs. Having, therefore, gathered some grass, I hid my feet in it, as they were suffering the most from the cold; I examined my gun, and loaded it, and then, crouching against a tree, I tried to go to sleep.

In a situation of this kind every sense is rapidly dulled, – touch, smell, even sight; hearing alone becomes exceedingly acute. After only a few minutes I could hear my heart beating, the blood pouring through my veins, the whisper of the trees, the rustle of the mist, so that the dead silence of the wood was broken in upon by sounds, which, though scarcely audible, continued to increase. Suddenly a very real sound rang out amid these fancied ones, and forced me to open my eyes. It came from the further end of the lake, and was like the measured strokes of an oar. I fixed my eyes on the spot whence it seemed to come. The veil of mist was trembling slightly, and beyond it, in the distance, something indistinct appeared low on the water. After a moment a small Yakut pirogue emerged from the shadows, and sped along the lake. I could perfectly well see the rower squatting in the bottom of the boat, and striking first with one, then with the other blade of his long oar, from the ends of which the water poured in a shining stream, like molten silver.

He soon approached the bank, and drew the boat to land. I crept towards him, hiding in order that he should not see me too soon, and run away, as I knew he would. He was engaged in taking something out of the boat.

'What news?' I greeted him, according to the local custom, coming slowly out of the bushes.

He started and exclaimed, but did not run away, for he recognized me, and I him. He was a poor Yakut, who lived about five versts from me.

'I know nothing! I have heard nothing! Oh, how you did frighten me, – but it's all right!' he said hastily, giving me his hand.

'What did you think it was?'

'Why should one meet a man in the wood at night time?' he answered evasively, eyeing me suspiciously from head to foot. 'You often think it's a man you know, and you talk to him as if you knew him, and then it turns out in the end not to be a man at all.'

'What are you doing here so late?'

'I am going home; it's a holiday to-morrow. I have a long way to go from here to Babylon19 for fishing, – thirty versts. You know we're poor folk, we live by fishing, – we haven't any horses; so one is always in a boat, always in a boat. As I was dragging it through the wood I cut my foot, so I've got behindhand.'

'You have cut your foot?'

'It isn't much, for I've stopped the bleeding.'

'Then perhaps it was you whistling and calling?' I asked, remembering a strange sound I had heard a moment before.