The Romance of the Woods

Such being Tatiana's position in the community, it is not surprising that the entire population of Spask were ready and willing to lend a hand whenever the word went round that the znaharka was about to mow her field of grass, or to dig up her potatoes, or whatever may have been the particular nature of the work to be done upon her bit of land. On the occasion which we have to consider to-day there was hay to be made, and as Tatiana's allotment adjoined others upon which a similar work had to be performed, nearly all the "souls," or ratepayers, of the village were present and busy with their scythes, while there was assuredly no single child in the place absent; all were there, tossing Tatiana's hay about ("tedding" is the word, I believe), and making themselves more or less useful and entirely happy over the job. The field was a large one, for it comprised the whole of the hay allotments of the souls of the community, about twenty-five in all; hence Tatiana's strip, which was but one twenty-fifth of the whole, was soon mown by so large a body of workers, who then passed on to the next strip, and thence to a third and a fourth, until all was mown. The field lay close up to the very edge of the pine forest, Tatiana's strip being actually the nearest to the wood, so that, as the work went on, the whole body of workers gradually drew further and further from the cover, until towards evening the busy, noisy crowd were at quite a considerable distance from the spot at the edge of the forest where work had commenced in early morning. On such occasions as mowing day at Spask there is no question of returning to the village during working hours; for once in a way Ivan Ivanich sticks to business, and meals, as well as any little refreshers of a liquid nature, are partaken of upon the spot; hunks of black bread tied up in red handkerchiefs, salted herrings in grimy bits of newspaper, and kvass, in dirty-looking bottles, forming the principal items of the food and drink brought by the moujiks to be consumed upon the ground. Kvass is a drink to which I should recommend every reader to give a very wide berth, for it is without exception the nastiest decoction that ever the perverted ingenuity of mankind invented, and is calculated to nauseate the toughest British palate to such an extent that the said Britisher will flee the country rather than taste the noxious stuff a second time.

On this occasion there was quite an array of red handkerchiefs left at the edge of the field, together with sundry loose hunks of black bread and other comestibles, and half-a-dozen tiny children of a non-perambulating age, which latter had been brought to the field by their mothers for the excellent reason that there was no one left in the village to look after them, and were now peacefully sleeping, like so many little bundles of rags, each under the tree selected by its parent for the office of shade-giver. Assuredly not one of the red-shirted souls so busily wielding their scythes, or of the gaily-kerchiefed women tossing and drying the grass, ever bethought herself of the possibility of danger to the little ones thus left a hundred or so of yards away: for who would hurt them? There were no gipsies to carry them away, or brigands—they had never heard of such gentry; it was perfectly safe, and nobody bothered his head about the babies. Therefore it came as a terrible shock to every person present when of a sudden some one raised the cry: "Medvyed, medvyed!" (a bear, a bear!) There was no mistake about it, it was indeed a bear, and a big one, too—"the tsar of the bears," as a moujik expressed it afterwards. The brute was apparently busy searching among the red handkerchiefs for something to eat, when first seen; but at the general shout or howl of fear and surprise which immediately arose from the whole body of peasants in the field, he raised his nose and deliberately scanned the assembled villagers, showing his teeth and growling unpleasantly.

The villagers were too frightened, at first, to either move or utter a sound. The spectacle of a bear in their midst was too unusual in that portion of Russia in which Spask lay to be other than intensely horrifying. Spask did not even boast of an ochotnik, or hunter, among its inhabitants; the population, one and all, were as ignorant of the best course to pursue under the circumstances as though the foul fiend himself had suddenly appeared among them, and their tongues, as well as their arms, were absolutely paralysed with amazement and terror.

Meanwhile the bear, seeing that none seemed anxious to dispute his presence, turned his attention to the red bundles which contained the food whose good smell had probably attracted him, visiting several of these in turn and rolling them about in his attempts to get at their contents. Then he visited a bundle which contained a baby. The child was, fortunately, fast asleep; neither did it awake when Bruin rolled it over to sniff at it; if it had moved the consequences might perhaps have been fatal. But, as matters turned out, the child slept on, and the bear, satisfied that it was dead, left it. Then at length the spirit of the assembled population returned to them, and, as though with one accord, the entire crowd gave vent to a shriek of relief and rage; men began to finger their scythes and women their rakes, and the whole assembly moved a step or two towards the intruder. Then Bruin began to think that discretion was, perhaps, after all, the better part of valour, and, with a few savage snarls and grunts, he retired into the forest, stepping upon a sleeping baby as he withdrew, and causing the child to wake and scream with pain or fright. Then he disappeared among the dark pines, moaning and grunting so as to be heard for a considerable distance.

The villagers lost no time in rushing to the assistance of the screaming child, now that danger was over; when it was seen that the baby was quite uninjured, and, further, that the child was a relative and goddaughter of old Tatiana, whose bundle of black bread the bear had also honoured with particular attention. These facts amounted, in the minds of the good people of Spask, to a coincidence. Why had the brute thus chosen out the znaharka for special and deliberate insult? Undoubtedly he was an evil spirit, and these acts of hostility on his part directed against the chief local enemy of evil spirits must be regarded as something in the nature of a challenge. Tatiana's bread was all eaten or spoiled, and Tatiana's godchild still lay screaming, though unhurt, in her mother's arms. There was more in this than appeared on the surface.

All eyes were now upon the znaharka, for it was evident that something must be said or done under the circumstances; the reputation of the wise woman of the village was, in a way, at stake.

Tatiana did not disappoint her admirers. She first crossed herself, and then spat; then she fixed her eyes upon the spot where the bear's retreating form had last been seen, and commenced a speech, half a formula of exorcisation and half pure (or rather very impure) abuse, which certainly did the greatest credit both to her inventive faculties and to her knowledge of the intricacies of the Russian language as arranged specially for the use of vituperative peasants. If one fractional portion of the old woman's curse had taken effect upon its object, the rest of the days of that bear upon this earth would indeed have been days of blighting and misery both for himself and for those who called him son or cousin or husband; his female relatives especially came under condemnation, and most of all she who had brought him into the world; her fate was to be shocking indeed, so much so that I shrink from entering into the matter in detail for fear of wounding the feelings of my readers, who are not perhaps accustomed to the beauties of the Russian peasant's vocabulary, which is exceedingly rich in certain forms of speech. Tatiana's curse, however, produced a great effect upon her fellow villagers, who felt that it was all that the occasion demanded, and that they had for the present obtained satisfaction for the insults heaped upon them by the uninvited stranger; the baby was also, presumably, of this opinion, for it now stopped crying, and began to look about it with eyes full of the last few unshed tears, as though it expected to find the corpse of the bear lying somewhere about as the immediate result of Tatiana's heroics. After this, the souls, accompanied by their female relatives and the children, returned to the village, where the rest of the evening was spent by the majority of the gentlemen in the refinements of vodka-drinking and wrangling at the beer-shop.

But, alas! shocking though the curse of Tatiana had sounded, and dire as the results ought to have been in the way of utter confusion and annihilation in this world and the next for that bear and all his relations, it soon appeared that somehow or other the malediction had missed its mark. The very next day the creature was seen by a villager who chanced to penetrate somewhat deep into the forest in search of mushrooms; and so far from being any the worse for the liberal cursing it had had, the bear had appeared—so the moujik declared—to be all the better, or rather fiercer for it; it had actually chased him for some little distance, and would have caught him if he had not, most providentially, reached a wide expanse of open ground which the bear had hesitated to cross in daylight.

This was serious news, and Tatiana was observed that morning, after hearing it, to grow very thoughtful; she made her hay diligently, but silently, exchanging neither word nor salutation with man, woman, or child during the whole of the day. The peasant women eyed the old znaharka with unquiet minds; was this evil spirit destined to prove more mighty than she, and to defy with impunity the very clearly expressed maledictions of their all-powerful znaharka? Surely not. It would be a bad day for Spask if the confidence which the village had so long reposed in the mystic powers of the sagacious Tatiana were now to be shaken! This was the very reflection which was disturbing the mind of the znaharka herself, with the corollary that it would be an uncommonly bad thing for her business also. Things however, went from bad to worse. Far from feeling any ill effects from the curses of Tatiana, these seemed to have inspired the offending animal with greater courage and ferocity than had ever hitherto been the portion of mortal bruin. He chased the villagers at every opportunity: he entered the village at night and stole—alas! poor znaharka!—Tatiana's own dog; he grew bolder day by day, and at last his daring culminated in the pursuit and capture of a poor little child. The unfortunate baby, for she was scarcely more, had strayed beyond the edge of the wood while her people were busy in the hayfield, had been caught, carried away, and eaten. This was the climax. Tatiana's reputation was tottering. Already several sick persons had presumed to get well without her assistance; another had done an even worse thing, he had ridden over to the neighbouring selo, which means the chief of a group of villages, in order to consult the local feldscher, an insult to the medical genius of Tatiana which had never before been offered to that lady—who, to do her justice, little as she knew about medicine or human bodies and their ailments, nevertheless knew a great deal more than her professional rival upon these subjects, for he was as absolutely ignorant of one as he was of the other.

And now Tatiana began to feel her influence in the village, and therefore her very livelihood, slipping away, not gradually, but, if I may use the expression, with a run. If something did not happen to re-establish her reputation, and that very soon, both position and emoluments as wise-woman of the district would inevitably go by the board! Folks began to eye her askance when they met her; some even openly mocked at her as she passed, delighting to tell her each new tale of the appearance of the demon bear, that thrived on curses; in a word, the position became insupportable. The discredited wise-woman now took to roaming the woods, armed with her sickle, in hopes of meeting and, by some fortunate combination of circumstances in which cursing and cunning and violence were all to play a part, compassing the death of her arch-enemy, the ruiner of her position and prospects, the hated, the accursed, the demoniac bear. Strangely enough, Tatiana still believed in herself though the rest of the village had learned to doubt her powers, and she was not without hope that a second curse, if personally applied, might yet prove efficacious. All Tatiana's wanderings in the forest seemed, however, to be doomed to end in disappointment; the enemy would not show himself, and matters were growing extremely critical when at last one afternoon the unexpected happened. As the old woman was busily employed washing her children's clothes in the river, on chancing to raise her head she espied for the first time since the memorable evening of her first abortive cursing, the very identical object of that curse and of very many others since lavished upon him in the secret recesses of her being—Bruin himself. The bear, unaware of her proximity, was standing at the edge of the steepish bank which at that spot overhung the water, endeavouring to reach the stream for a drink. Unsuccessful in his efforts to effect this, the brute was softly whining and grunting, growing excited and passionate the while, as baulked bears will, over his failure to get at the water. Seeing that his whole attention was absorbed in the interest of the moment, Tatiana, who, brave as she was, had at first forgotten everything in the terror of this sudden rencontre with the savage brute, determined to seize the opportunity to escape. But when she had crept a very few paces away, a thought struck her. She was discredited and disgraced at the village; her reputation, which meant her livelihood, had gone from her; what was life worth to her under the circumstances? Why not make one bold stroke for reputation and fortune, and succeed or perish in the attempt? Here was this bear busily engaged in balancing himself over the surface of the swift stream, endeavouring to get at the water which he could not possibly reach, but, bear-like, persisting in the attempt; now, why not creep quietly up, and—yes, she would do it! Tatiana stole softly behind her enemy—it was a matter of life and death, she quite understood that, so she was careful enough to make no sound—approached within a yard or two of the monster's broad stern, then, as he bent himself further than ever over the water, gave one loud shout and one big rush, and in an instant had thrown the whole weight of her body against that of the already almost overbalanced animal at the brink. The next moment znaharka and bear were both rising to the surface of the river Neva, beneath whose cool waters they had plunged in company. Old Tatiana could swim like a duck and soon struck out for the best landing place; the bear, like a sensible creature, following her lead. But the old woman, trained to swim in these waters from childhood, quickly outstripped her companion, and was ready, with her sickle in her hand, when that half-drowned individual arrived. The river was deep to the very bank, so that Tatiana had no great difficulty in beating off her enemy, who, placing two huge paws upon the edge of the bank, received a cut from the sickle upon each, which soon compelled him to snatch away those members with a roar of pain and rage.

Then commenced an unequal battle. The bear splashed about endeavouring to gain a footing; but whenever he came to the bank, there was Tatiana awaiting him with her deadly sickle, and in addition to many cuts over paw and forearm the unfortunate brute had soon to bewail sundry gashes over face and head, which first enraged and then stupefied him, the old woman accompanying her blows with volleys of abuse and imprecations which, I am convinced, must have made that bear feel exceedingly ashamed of himself had he not had other matters to engage his attention at the moment!

The result of all this was a foregone conclusion. The poor brute could not land; his efforts to gain a foothold waxed feeble; his roars of pain and rage grew weaker, thinned themselves into pitiful whines and bubbling moans, and then died away altogether. His head went under water, reappeared once and a second time, and sank again. He was drowned.

Then the old znaharka crossed herself, spat towards her defunct enemy, and fainted.

An hour afterwards, as the Souls of Spask were engaged, more suo, in wrangling over their midday vodka, at the beer-house, to them entered the pale and dishevelled figure of the discredited wise-woman.

"Well, little mother," said one, "what are you asking for curses this afternoon? I'm told they are a drug in the market!"

Rude laughter followed this sally.

"Curses have gone up since the morning," said the old woman. "I have seen a vision–"

"If your visions are as nourishing as your maledictions," interrupted a second moujik, "you'd better feed the demon bear with them. He may thrive on them, and it will save our oats!"

"The bear is dead," said Tatiana "I have seen him in a vision. You will find his body at the shallow rapids near Gouriefka. My curse has fallen upon him. He will eat no more oats!"

With which solemn words Tatiana made an effective exit before her hearers had decided what to make of them.

When the dripping body of that ill-used bear was brought in triumph to the village and laid in the street in front of Tatiana's cottage, it would be difficult to say which of two parties, all the members of which talked at once, were the loudest—those who applauded and extolled the marvellous triumph of the znaharka over the powers of darkness, or those who raised their voices in denunciation upon the prostrate enemy of mankind. The two parties changed places continually, those who cursed the bear taking a turn at extolling the woman of the hour, and vice versâ. Suffice it to say that never was bear better cursed, and never was praise more lavished upon human being. For several years after this, if there was a wise woman in all Russia whose blessings and cursings were esteemed absolutely effective in all emergencies, and carried their own steady market value for miles around Spask, that woman was Tatiana. Her cures were marvellous after this, for so great was the faith reposed in her powers that she might have saved her herbs and still the patients would have recovered. As for the death of the bear, St. Sergius, on whose name-day the brute perished, got the credit of that, after deduction had been made for the glory fairly earned by Tatiana, but for whose maledictions the good saint might never have been moved to interfere for the relief of the Spask peasantry. Tatiana knew exactly how much St. Sergius had to do with the killing of the bear; but, in her opinion, it paid her far better to pose as the successful curser than as the intrepid hunter, and no doubt she knew best about that, as about most things, being a znaharka.

Moreover, the bear, whether he died of curses or of cold water, provided an excellent fur to clothe Tatiana withal when winter frosts came on, for the widow's ancient mantle had worn out with her reputation.

  CHAPTER IX

AMONG THE WOOD-GOBLINS

Summer was "a comin' in," and a certain serious matter began to weigh upon the mind of the peasants of Kushlefka, which is a prosperous village in a grain-growing district of Archangel; for its settlement could not much longer be delayed. The fact is, that early in the winter Kushlefka had been so unfortunate as to lose the services of its pastuch, or cowherd, death having carried off the old man during the slack time—when the cows were all at home, that is, and needed no one to look after them. But now that summer was at hand, and the cows would soon be wanting to be up and about, wandering over communal pasture and moorland in search of the fresh young blades of grass, it was very awkward to feel that there was no pastuch to personally conduct them in their wanderings, and that no single candidate had been near the place to apply for the post. None of the villagers would so much as think of accepting the office, for it was but a poorly-paid billet, and was generally held by some one unconnected with the place—some outsider who had wandered into the village in search of a job and was appointed pastuch for as long as he would keep the situation.

Hence when, one Sunday afternoon, as the assembly of the Heads of Families or Souls composing the Mir or Commune of Kushlefka were met to consider matters of local interest, and to settle certain business questions appertaining to their jurisdiction, it was considered rather a stroke of good luck for the community when a ragged moujik of middle age suddenly appeared at the door of the council-hall, doffed his cap and crossed himself towards the ikon in the corner of the room, made a bow to those present, grinned, scratched his head, and said:

"Good day, brothers; don't leave me!"

The reader must not suppose that the new-comer in thus addressing the Souls of Kushlefka was seized with a sudden misgiving that those gentlemen might all arise and depart just as he had arrived; the Russian expression "Don't leave me!" merely indicates a desire to be heard, and if possible assisted, and is a common mode for an inferior to commence a conversation with a superior.

"What do you want?" asked the starost, or president.

"Why—work," said the man; "some job—bread to eat—any kind of work will do for me." This seemed most providential, and the starost looked meaningly around at his lieutenants.

"What do you know—what can you do?" he asked.

"Better ask me what I can't do!" replied the new man; "I can do a bit of anything and everything!"

"You can drink vodka, I warrant!" said one of the Souls, "or you'd have pockets in your clothes and something inside them!" This was in rude allusion to the attire of the new-comer.

"Well, if you come to that, brother," said that ragged individual, "the moujik who doesn't take kindly to vodka is like a fish who can't swim; I can drink vodka as well as most—try me, if you don't believe it."

"Do you understand the duties of a pastuch?" the starost inquired. The man laughed scornfully.

"You give me a pastuch's pipe, starost, and I'll show you what I can do! I can blow the pipe so that not only the cows of my own village follow me home, but the cattle from the next village as well! Why, all the liéshuie (wood-spirits) come flying up from miles around when I play, and settle on the trees like riabchiks (tree partridges) to listen! Wolves come and fawn at my feet! You won't find a pastuch like me in all Russia!"

The fact is, the stranger was exceedingly anxious to obtain the situation of pastuch; it was just the sort of loafing work to suit him; hence his eloquence.

Now, when the patron of a situation is no less anxious to give away the office at his disposal than the candidate is to obtain it, there is not much need to waste words over the appointment; accordingly, Radion Vasilitch was speedily engaged as the village pastuch, at a salary of four roubles per month, and entered at once upon his duties.

The appointment was made none too soon; for the very next day was that on which the cattle were annually allowed to make their first excursion beyond their own yard gates. Radion appeared in full pastuch costume at earliest morn, and blew his long horn or pipe in a manner which proved that he was no novice in the accomplishment. Out came the cows into the street, a noisy, happy herd, lowing and gambolling in exuberant but ungainly joy, for they were very naturally delighted to learn that their long captivity was over. Each house contributed its one or two or four cows to the herd as Radion passed trumpeting down the street, and at last the starost's house was reached.

"Starost!" shouted Radion, "aren't you going to do what is necessary for the safety of the herd before I take them into the woods?"

"What do you mean?" asked the chief Soul, who was standing in déshabille at his own yard gate, watching the pastuch and his charge.

"Why, about the wood-goblins. It is better to propitiate them—we always did so on the first day of the season at Kirilova!"