“But that is too bad; I have an affair with him from the commune.”
An affair with the commune for common people always means something evil. The woman stopped working, looked with alarm at the secretary, and inquired with concern, —
“Well, what is it?”
Zolzik meanwhile passed through the gateway and stood near her.
“Let us have a kiss, then I’ll tell you.”
“Keep away!” said the woman.
But the secretary had succeeded already in putting his arm around her waist, and drawing her toward him.
“I will scream!” said she, pulling away vigorously.
“My pretty one, — Marysia!”
“Oh, this is just an offence against God! Oh!”
She struggled still more vigorously; but Pan Zolzik was so strong that he did not let her go.
At this moment Kruchek came to her aid. He raised the hair on his back, and with furious barking sprang at the secretary; and, since the secretary was dressed in a short coat, Kruchek seized his nankeen trousers, went through the nankeen, caught the skin, went through the skin, and when he felt fulness in his mouth, he began to shake his head madly and tug.
“Jesus! Mary!” cried the lord secretary, forgetting that he belonged to the esprits forts.
But Kruchek did not let go his hold till the secretary seized a billet of wood and pounded him uncounted times on the back with it; when Kruchek got a blow on his spine, he sprang away whining piteously. But after a while he jumped at the man again.
“Take off this dog! take off this devil!” cried the secretary, brandishing the stick with desperation.
The woman cried to the dog, and sent him outside the gate. Then she and the secretary gazed at each other in silence.
“Oh, my misfortune! Why did you look at me?” asked Marysia, at length, frightened by the bloody turn of the affair.
“Vengeance on you!” shouted the secretary. “Vengeance on you! Wait! Repa will be a soldier. I wanted to save him. But now — you will come yourself to me! Vengeance on you!”
The poor woman grew as pale as if some one had struck her on the head with a hatchet; she spread out her hands, opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something; but meanwhile the secretary raised his cap with green binding from the ground, and went away quickly, brandishing the stick in one hand, and holding his badly torn trousers with the other.
CHAPTER II.
SOME OTHER PERSONS AND DISAGREEABLE VISIONS.
AN hour later, perhaps, Repa came home from the woods with the carpenter Lukash, on the landlord’s wagon. Repa was a burly fellow, as tall as a poplar, strong, just hewn out with an axe. He went to the woods every day, for the landlord had sold to Jews all the forest which was free of peasant privileges. Repa received good wages, for he was a good man to work. When he spat on his palm, seized the axe, gave a blow with a grunt and struck, the pine-tree groaned, and chips flew from it half an ell long. In loading timber onto wagons he was also the first man.
The Jews, who went through the woods with measures in their hands and looked at the tops of the pines, as if hunting for crows’ nests, were amazed at his strength. Droysla, a rich merchant from Oslovitsi, said to him, —
“Well, Repa! devil take thee! Here are six groshes for vodka. No! here, wait; here are five groshes for vodka!”
But Repa did not care, — he just wielded his axe till the woods thundered; sometimes for amusement he let his voice out through the forest, —
“Hop! Hop!”
His voice flew among the trees, and came back as an echo. And again, nothing was heard but the thunder of Repa’s axe; and sometimes the pines too began to talk among their branches with a sound as is usual in a forest.
At times, also, the wood-cutters sang; and at singing, Repa too was the first man. One should have heard how he thundered forth with the wood-cutters a song which he had taught them himself, —
“Something shouted in the woods,
B-u-u-u-u!
And struck terribly,
B-u-u-u-u!
That’s a mosquito that fell from the oak,
B-u-u-u-u!
And he broke a bone in his shoulder,
B-u-u-u-u!
That was an honest mosquito,
B-u-u-u-u!
He is flying barely alive,
B-u-u-u-u!
And they asked the mosquito,
B-u-u-u-u!
Oi, is a doctor not needed?
B-u-u-u!
Or any druggist?
B-u-u-u!
Only a spade and a pickaxe,
B-u-u-u-u!”
In the dramshop, too, Repa was first in everything: he loved sivuha; and he was quick at fighting when he had drunk anything. Once he made such a hole in the head of the house-servant, Damaz, that Yozvova, the housekeeper, swore that his soul could be seen through it. Another time, but that was when he was barely seventeen years of age, he fought in the dramshop with soldiers on furlough. Pan Skorabevski, who was mayor at the time, took him to the chancery, and gave him a couple of blows on the head; but for appearance’ sake only, then, being satisfied, he inquired, —
“Repa, have the fear of God! How didst thou manage them? There were seven against thee.”
“Well, serene heir,” answered Repa, “their legs were worn out with marching, and the moment I touched one he fell to the floor.”
Pan Skorabevski quashed the affair. For a long time he had been very friendly to Repa. The peasant women even whispered into one another’s ears that Repa was his son.
“That can be seen at once,” said they; “he has the courage of a noble, the dog blood!”
But this was not true; though everybody knew Repa’s mother, no one knew his father. Repa himself paid rent for a cottage and three morgs of land, which became his own afterward. He cultivated his land; and, being a good worker, his affairs went on well. He married, and met such a wife that a better could not be found with a candle; and surely he would have been prosperous, had it not been that he liked vodka a little too well.
But what could be done? If any one mentioned the matter, he answered right off, —
“I drink from my own money, and what’s that to you?”
He feared no one in the village; before the secretary alone had he manners. When he saw from a distance the green cap, the stuck-up nose and goatee walking in high boots along the road slowly, he caught at his cap. The secretary knew also some things against Repa. During the insurrection certain papers were given Repa to carry, and he carried them.
When he came that day from the woods to his cottage, Marysia ran to him with great crying, and began to call out, —
“Oh, poor man, my eyes will not look long on thee; oh, I shall not weave clothes for thee, nor cook food long for thee! Thou wilt go to the ends of the earth, poor unfortunate!”
Repa was astonished.
“Hast eaten madwort, woman, or has some beast bitten thee?”
“I haven’t eaten madwort, and no beast has bitten me; but the secretary was here, and he said that there was no way for thee to escape from the army. Oi! thou wilt go, thou wilt go to the edge of the world!”
Then he began to question her: how, what? — and she told him everything, only she concealed the tricks of Pan Zolzik; for she was afraid that Repa would say something foolish to the secretary, or, which God keep away! he would attack him, and harm himself in that way.
“Thou foolish woman!” said Repa, at last, “why art thou crying? They will not take me to the army, for I am beyond the years; besides, I have a house, I have land, I have thee, stupid woman, and I have that tormented lobster there too.”
While saying that he pointed to the cradle where the “tormented lobster,” a sturdy boy a year old, was kicking and screaming to make a man’s ears split.
The woman wiped her eyes with her apron, and said, —
“What does this all mean, then? Or does he know of the papers which thou wert carrying from forest to forest?”
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Repa began now to scratch his head. “He does indeed!” After a while he added, “I will go and talk with him. Maybe it is nothing terrible.”
“Go, go!” said Marysia, “and take a ruble with thee. Don’t go near him without a ruble.”
Repa took a ruble out of the box, and went to the secretary.
The secretary was a single man, so he had no separate housekeeping, but lived in the house of four tenements standing at the dam, — the so-called “brick house.” There he had two rooms, with a separate entrance. In the first room there was nothing but some straw and a pair of gaiters; the second was both a reception and a sleeping room. There was a bed in it, almost never made up; on the bed two pillows without cases, from these pillows feathers were dropping continually; near by was a table, on it an inkstand, pens, chancery books, a few numbers of “Isabella of Spain,” published by Pan Breslauer, two dirty collars of English make, a bottle of pomade, paper for cigarettes, and finally a candle in a tin candlestick, with a reddish wick and a fly drowned in the tallow close to the wick.
By the window hung a large looking-glass; opposite the window stood a bureau on which were the very exquisite toilet articles of the secretary, — jackets, vests of fabulous colors, cravats, gloves, patent-leather shoes, and even a cylinder hat which the lord secretary wore whenever he had to visit the district capital of Oslovitsi.
Besides this, at the moment of which we are writing, in an armchair near the bed rested the nankeen trousers of the lord secretary; the lord secretary himself was lying on the bed and reading a number of “Isabella of Spain,” published by Pan Breslauer.
His position, not the position of Pan Breslauer, but the secretary, was dreadful, so dreadful, indeed, that one would need the style of Victor Hugo to describe it.
First of all, he feels a raging pain in his wound. That reading of “Isabella,” which for him had been always the dearest pleasure and recreation, now increases, not only the pain, but the bitterness which torments him after that adventure with Kruchek. He has a slight fever, and is barely able to collect his thoughts. At times terrible visions come to him. He has just read how young Serrano arrived at the palace of the Escurial covered with wounds after a brilliant victory over the Carlists.
The youthful Isabella, pale with emotion, receives him. The muslin rises in waves above her bosom.
“General, thou art wounded!” says she with trembling voice to Serrano.
Here it seems to the unhappy Zolzik that he is really Serrano.
“Oi! oi! I am wounded!” repeated he, in a stifled voice. “Oh, queen, pardon! But may the most serene—”
“Rest, general! Be seated. Be seated. Relate thy heroic deeds to me.”
“Relate them I can, but as to sitting I cannot in any way,” cries Serrano, in desperation. “Oi! — Pardon, O queen! That cursed Kruchek! I wish to say Don José — Ai, ai! ai!”
Here pain drives away dreaming. Serrano looks around; the candle is burning on the table and spluttering, for just then it begins to burn the fly which had dropped into the tallow; other flies are crawling along the wall Oh! this is the house of four tenements, not the palace of the Escurial! There is no Queen Isabella here. Pan Zolzik recovers presence of mind. He rises in the bed, moistens a cloth in a dish of water standing near the bed, and changes the application on his wound.
Then he turns to the wall, dozes, or rather dreams half asleep, half awake, and is going again evidently by extra post to the Escurial.
“Dear Serrano! my love! I will dress thy wounds myself,” whispers Queen Isabella.
Then the hair stands on Serrano’s head. He feels the whole horror of his position. How is he to refuse obedience to the queen, and how is he in this case to yield himself to the dressing of his wound? Cold sweat is coming out on his forehead, when suddenly — the queen vanishes, the door opens with a rattle, and before him stands neither more nor less than Don José, Serrano’s sworn enemy.
“What dost thou wish? Who art thou?” shouts Serrano.
“I am Repa!” answers Don José, gloomily.
Zolzik wakes a second time; the Escurial becomes the brick house again, the candle is burning, the fly is crackling in the wick, and blue drops are scattered; in the door stands Repa, and behind him — but the pen drops from my hand — through the half-open door are thrust in the head and shoulders of Kruchek. The monster holds his eyes fixed on Pan Zolzik, and seems to laugh.
Cold sweat in very truth is coming out on the temples of Pan Zolzik, and through his head flies the thought, “Repa has come to break my bones, and Kruchek to help him.”
“What do ye both want here?” cries he, in a terrified voice.
Repa puts the ruble on the table, and answers, —
“Great, mighty lord secretary! I have come about the conscription.”
“Out! out! out!” cries Zolzik, into whom courage enters in one instant. And falling into a rage he rises to spring at Repa; but at that moment his wound, received in the Carlist war, pains him so acutely that he drops again on the pillow, giving forth smothered groans.
“Oi! ye!”
CHAPTER III.
MEDITATIONS AND EUREKA.
THE wound became inflamed.
I see how my fair readers will begin to drop tears over my hero, and hence, before any of them faint, I will hasten to add, that my hero did not die of the wound. Long life was predestined to him. For that matter, if he had died, I should have broken my pen and stopped this story; but as he did not die I continue.
In truth, then, the wound grew inflamed, but unexpectedly it turned to profit for the lord secretary of the chancery of Barania-Glova, and turned in this very simple way: The wound drew the humors from Pan Zolzik’s head, therefore he began to think more clearly, and saw at once that, up to that time, he had been committing pure folly. For just listen: The secretary had a design, as they say in Warsaw, on Repa’s wife, and that is not to be wondered at, for she was a woman whose equal was not to be found in the whole district of Oslovitsi, therefore he wanted to get rid of Repa. If once they took Repa into the army, Pan Zolzik might say to himself, “Now frolic, my soul, with thy coat off.” But it was not so easy to substitute Repa for the mayor’s son. A secretary is a power. Zolzik was a power among secretaries; there was this misfortune, however, that he was not the last resort in recruiting. In this case, one had to do with the district police, with the military commissioner, with the chief of the district, with the commander of the guard. Not all at least of these were interested in presenting the army and the State with Repa instead of Burak. “To inscribe him in the recruiting list, and what further?” asked my sympathetic hero. “They will verify the list, and it must be compared with the parish record; and since it will be hard to muzzle Repa’s mouth, they will give a reprimand, and perhaps throw the secretary out of his office, and thus finish the matter.”
The greatest men have committed follies under the influence of passion, but just in this is their greatness, that they open their eyes in proper season. Zolzik said to himself that in promising Burak to inscribe Repa in the list of recruits he had committed his first stupidity; in going to Repa’s wife and attacking her at the hemp, he had committed the second; when he frightened her and her husband with the enrolment, he committed the third stupidity. Oh, lofty moment! in which a man truly great says to himself, “I am an ass!” thou didst come to Barania-Glova, thou didst descend, as if on wings, from that region where the lofty rests on the sublime, for Zolzik said to himself plainly, “I am an ass!”
But was he to reject the plan now, when he had shed his own blood for it (in his enthusiasm he had said, the blood of his own breast)? Was he to reject the plan when he had sanctified it by a new pair of trousers, for which he had not paid Srul, the tailor, and a pair of nankeens, he did not know himself whether he had worn them twice? — No, and never! On the contrary now, when to his projects against Repa’s wife was added a desire for vengeance against both, and Kruchek with them, Zolzik swore to himself that he would be
a fool unless he poured tallow into Repa’s skin.
He meditated over methods the first day, while changing poultices; he meditated the second day, while changing poultices; he meditated the third day, while changing poultices; and do you know what he thought out? Well, he didn’t think out anything!
On the fourth day, the guard brought him diachylum from the apothecary in Oslovitsi; Zolzik spread it on a cloth, applied it, and how wonderful were the effects of this medicament! Almost simultaneously he cried out, “I have found it!” In fact, he had found something.
CHAPTER IV.
WHICH MAY BE ENTITLED: THE BEAST IN THE SNARE.
A FEW days later, I do not know well whether five or six, in a private room of the public-house in Barania-Glova sat Burak the mayor, the councilman Gomula, and young Repa. The mayor took his glass, —
“You might stop quarrelling, when there is nothing to quarrel about.”
“But I say that the Frenchman will not give up to the Prussian,” replied Gomula, striking the table with his fist.
“The Prussian is cunning, the dog blood!” answered Repa.
“What good is it that he is cunning? The Turk will help the Frenchman, and the Turk is the strongest.”
“What do ye know! The strongest is Harubanda [Garibalda].”
“You must have got out of bed shoulders first. But where did you pull out Harubanda?”
“What need had I to pull him out? Haven’t people said that he sailed down the Vistula in boats with a great army? But the beer in Warsaw didn’t please him, for generally it is better at home, so he went back.”
“Don’t lie for nothing. Every Schwab 8 is a Jew.”
“But Harubanda is no Schwab.”
“What is he?”
“Well what? He must be Cæsar and that’s the end of it!”
“You are terribly wise!”
“You are not wiser.”
“But if you are so wise, then tell what was the surname of our first father?”
“How? Yadam, of course.”
“That is a Christian name; but his surname?”
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz Page 703