“What do you want?” asked the chief, still more impatiently. “Are you drunk, or what?”
“O Jesus! Mary!” cried the woman, feeling that the last plank of salvation was going from her hands. “Most sacred chief—”
But he was really very much occupied, for the levy had begun already, and there was much business in the district; besides he could not talk with the woman, so he waved his hand, and said, —
“Vodka! vodka! And the woman is young and good-looking.”
Then he turned to her with such a voice that she came near sinking through the floor, —
“When thou art sober, lay the affair before the commune, and let the commune lay it before me.”
He went on hurriedly, and the petitioners after him, repeating, “One short word, lord chief!” “Gracious chief!”
The corridor was deserted; it was silent there; only her little boy began to cry. She woke then as if from sleep, stood up, raised the child, and began to sing in a voice which seemed not her own.
She went out of the building. The sky was covered with clouds; on the horizon it was thundering. The air was sultry.
What was taking place in the woman’s soul, as she passed the old church a second time in returning to Barania-Glova, I will not undertake to describe. Ah! if Panna Yadviga had found herself in a similar position, I might write a sensational novel, in which I would undertake to convince the most obdurate positivist that there are ideal beings in this world yet. But in Panna Yadviga every impression would have risen to self-consciousness; despairing struggles of the soul would have expressed themselves in no less despairing, and therefore very dramatic, words and thoughts. That vicious circle, that deep and painful feeling of helplessness, weakness, and overpowering opposition, that rôle of a leaf in a storm, the dull knowledge that there is no salvation from any side, neither from earth, nor from heaven, would surely have inspired Panna Yadviga with a monologue no less intense than the terror of her position; this I should need merely to write down to make a reputation.
But Repa’s wife? Peasants when they suffer merely suffer, nothing more. This woman in the strong hand of misfortune was simply like a bird tormented by a vicious child. She went forward; the wind drove her; sweat flowed from her forehead; and that was the whole history. At times when the child, who was sick, opened his mouth and began to pant, as if ready to die, she called to him, “Yasek, O Yasek, my heart!” And she pressed her lips of a mother to the heated forehead of the little one. She passed the pre-Reformation church, and went on into the field, till she stopped on a sudden; a drunken peasant was coming toward her.
Clouds were rolling on in the sky, denser and denser, and in them something like a storm was preparing; from time to time there was a flash of lightning; but the peasant did not inquire, he let his coat-skirt to the wind, pulled his cap over his ears, and reeled along, now to the right, now to the left, singing, —
“To the garden went Dodo,
He went to buy parsnips,
But I will give Dodo
A club on the leg,
Dodo will run then.
Uu, du!”
Seeing Repa’s wife, he stopped, opened his eyes, and cried, —
“Oh, let us go to the wheat,
For thou art a kind woman!”
And he tried to seize her by the waist. Frightened for herself and the child, she sprang to one side, the man after her; but, being drunk, he fell. He rose at once, it is true, though he did not pursue her; he only picked up a stone and threw it after the woman with such force that the air whistled.
She felt a pain in her head; it grew dark before her at once; and she knelt down. She remembered only one thing, “the child,” and began to flee farther. She stopped under the cross, and, looking around, saw that the man was half a verst distant, staggering along toward the town.
At this moment she felt a certain strange warmth on her neck; she put her hand there, and, looking at her fingers, saw blood.
It grew dark in her eyes; she lost consciousness.
When she recovered, her shoulders were resting against the cross; in the distance a carriage from Dovborko was approaching, and in it young Pan Dovbor, with a governess from the mansion.
Pan Dovbor did not know Repa’s wife; but she knew who he was, she had seen him at church; she thought then to hurry to the carriage and beg him, for God’s mercy, to take even the child before the storm came; she rose to her feet, but could not advance.
Meanwhile the young man had driven up; and, seeing an unknown woman standing at the cross, he called, —
“Woman! woman! take a seat.”
“May the Lord God—”
“But on the ground, on the ground.”
That young Dovbor was a jester known in the whole region about; he attacked every one on the road in this fashion, trifled with them, as in this case, and then drove on farther. His laughter and that of the governess came to the ears of Repa’s wife; then she saw how they began to kiss, and soon after they disappeared with the carriage in the dark distance.
Repa’s wife was left alone. But it is not in vain that people say, “Women and toads thou wilt not kill, even with a scythe.” After an hour or so she dragged on again, though the legs were bending under her.
“What is the little child guilty of, the golden fish, O Lord God!” repeated she, cuddling the sick Yasek to her bosom.
And then fever seized her, for she began to mutter, as if drunk.
“In the cottage is an empty cradle, and mine has gone to the war with his gun.”
The wind swept the cap from her head; her beautiful hair fell to her shoulders and waved in the wind. All at once lightning flashed; the thunderbolt came so near that the smell of sulphur surrounded her, and she crouched. This brought her to herself, and she cried, “But the Word became flesh!”
She looked at the sky, which was storming, merciless, raging, and she began to sing in a trembling voice, “Whoso puts himself under the care!” A certain ominous, metallic flash fell from the clouds to the earth. She went to a forest at the roadside; but there it was still darker and more terrible. From moment to moment a noise was heard, as if the terrified trees were whispering to one another in an immense whisper, “What will happen! Oh! for God’s sake!” Then came silence. Again from the forest depth was heard some voice. Shudders passed through the woman; she thought that perhaps the “evil one” was laughing at the wood devils, or perhaps the host would pass by in a terrible dance at any moment.
“If only out of the forest, if only out of the forest!” thought she; “and there ahead beyond the forest is the mill and the cabin of Yagodzinski’s miller.” She ran on with the last of her strength, catching at the air with parched lips. Meanwhile the sluices of heaven were opened above her head; rain, mixed with hail, fell as if from a bucket; the wind struck, and with such force that the trees were bent to the earth; the forest was filled with mist, with steam, with waves of rain; the road was not to be seen; trees were bending along the earth and roaring and splitting; around was the breaking of limbs, and then came darkness.
The woman felt weak. “Save me, O people!” cried she, in a faint voice; but no one could hear her. The wind blew the voice back into her throat. Then she understood that she could not go farther.
She took off her head-kerchief, her apron, stripped herself almost to her shift, and wrapped up the child; then, seeing a weeping birch near, she crawled to it almost on her hands and knees, and, putting down the child under the branches, fell herself by his side.
“O God, receive my soul!” cried she, and she closed her eyes.
The storm raged for some time yet, and at last fell away. But night had come; through the intervals between the clouds the stars began to shine. Under the birch was the white, motionless form of the woman.
“Now!” said some voice in the darkness. After a while the noise of a wagon and the splashing of horses’ feet in the pools was heard at a distance.
This was Hershek, the cow farmer of L
ipa, who had sold his geese in Oslovitsi, and was coming home. Seeing Repa’s wife, he came down from his wagon.
CHAPTER X.
THE VICTORY OF GENIUS.
HERSHEK took the woman from under the birch, and would have taken her to Barania-Glova; but on the road he met Repa, who, seeing that a storm was coming, took his wagon and went to meet his wife. She lay all night and the next day in bed; but the following day she got up, for the little boy was sick. Her gossips came and incensed the child with consecrated garlands; and then old Tsisova, the blacksmith’s wife, conjured the disease with a sieve in her hands and a black hen. In fact, it helped the child immediately; but the trouble was greater with Repa, who filled himself with vodka beyond measure; it was not possible to agree with him on any point.
Strange thing, when Marysia came to herself and inquired for the child, instead of showing her tenderness, he said gloomily, —
“Thou wilt fly through towns, and the devil will take the child. I would have given it thee, hadst thou lost him!” Only then did the woman feel great pain, at such ingratitude, and with a voice straight from the heart she tried to reproach him; but she could go no further than to cry out, “Vavron!”
And she looked at him through her tears. Repa almost sprang from the trunk on which he was sitting. For a time he was silent, and then said, in a changed voice, “My Marysia, forgive me those words, for I see that I have wronged thee.” Then he roared with a great voice, and began to kiss her feet; and she accompanied him with tears. He felt that he was not worthy of such a wife. But that concord did not last long. The grief, which was festering like a wound, began at once to inflame them against each other. When Repa came home, either drunk or sober, he did not speak a word to his wife, but sat on the box and looked at the ground with a wolfish face. He would sit that way whole hours, as if turned into stone. The woman was busy around the room, worked as before, but was silent also. Later, when one wished to speak to the other, it was somehow awkward. So they lived as if in great feeling of offence, and deathlike silence reigned in the cottage. And what had they to say, since both knew that there was no help for them, that their fortune had ended? After a number of days, some evil thoughts began to come to the man’s head. He went to confession to Father Chyzik; the priest would not give him absolution, and commanded him to come next day; but on the morrow, Repa, instead of going to the church, went to the inn.
People heard him say, when drunk, that if the Lord God would not help him, he would sell his soul to the devil; and they began to shun him. A curse, as it were, was hanging over the cottage. People scattered reports sharp as beggars’ whips, and said that the mayor and the secretary did well, for such a rascal would bring only God’s vengeance on all Barania-Glova. And against the woman old gossips began to say uncreated things.
It came about that Repa’s well dried up. So Marysia went for water to the well in front of the inn; and on the way she heard boys say to one another, “There goes the soldier’s wife!” “Not the soldier’s wife, but the devil’s wife!”
She went on without speaking a word; but she saw how they made the sign of the cross. She took the jug to go home, and there, before the inn, stood Shmul. When he saw her, he took out the porcelain pipe which hung at his beard, and called to her.
“Marysia!”
She stopped and inquired, “What do you want?”
“Were you at the village court?” asked he.
“I was.”
“You were with the priest?”
“I was.”
“Were you at the mansion?”
“I was.”
“Did you go to the chief?”
“I did.”
“And you got nothing?”
She merely sighed, and Shmul continued, —
“Well, you are such fools that in all Barania-Glova there is nothing more foolish. And what did you go for?”
“Where was I to go?”
“Where?” answered the Jew, “and on what is the contract? On paper; if there is no paper, there is no contract; tear the paper, and that is enough.”
“Oh, how you talk!” said she, “if I could have got at that paper I should have torn it long ago.”
“But don’t you know that the secretary has the paper? Well! I know that you can do much with him; he said to me himself, ‘Let Repa’s wife come and ask me, and I,’ said he, ‘will tear the paper, and that’s the end of it.’”
Marysia said nothing, but took the jug by the ear and went toward the brick house; meanwhile it had grown dark out of doors.
CHAPTER XI.
ENDED MISFORTUNE.
THE Great Bear had gone down already, and the triangle had risen, when the door squeaked in Repa’s cottage; his wife came in quietly. She entered and stood as if fixed to the floor, for she thought that her husband would be sleeping as usual in the inn; but he was sitting on the box at the wall, with his fists resting on his knees, and looking at the floor. The coals were burning out in the chimney.
“Where hast thou been?” inquired Repa, gloomily.
Instead of answering, she fell on the floor, and lay before his feet, with great weeping and sobbing. “Vavron! Vavron!” cried she, “for thee it was that I yielded myself to shame. He deceived me, then abused and put me out. Vavron, have pity on me, at least thou, my heart! Vavron! Vavron!”
Repa took his axe out of the box.
“No,” said he, with a calm voice; “thy end has come at last, poor woman. Take leave of this world now, for thou shalt see it no more; thou wilt not sit in the cottage any longer, poor woman; thou wilt lie in the churchyard—”
She looked at him with terror.
“Dost wish to kill me?”
“Well, Marysia,” said he, “do not lose time for nothing; make the sign of the cross, and then will be the end; thou wilt not even feel it, poor thing.”
“Vavron, wilt thou, indeed?”
“Lay thy head on the box.”
“Vavron!”
“Lay thy head on the box!” cried he, with foam on his lips.
“Oh, for God’s sake, save me! People! sa—”
A dull blow was heard, then a groan, and the blow of a head against the floor; then a second blow, a fainter groan; then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth blow. On the floor gushed a stream of blood; the coals in the chimney were quenched. A quiver passed through the woman from head to foot; then her body stretched, and was motionless.
Soon after a broad, bloody conflagration rent the darkness; the buildings of the mansion were blazing.
EPILOGUE.
And now I will whisper something in your ear, reader. They would not have taken Repa to the army. An agreement like the one in the inn was not sufficient. But you see peasants do not know these things; the “intelligence,” thanks to neutrality also, not much! therefore Pan Zolzik, who knew a little of this, calculated that in every case the affair would drag on, and fear would throw the woman into his arms.
And that great man was not mistaken. You ask what happened to him? Repa, when he had set fire to the buildings of the mansion, was going to take vengeance on him, but at the cry of “Fire!” the whole village was up, and Zolzik escaped.
He continues in his office of secretary in Barania-Glova, and at present he has the hope of being chosen judge. He has just finished reading “Barbara Ubryk,” and hopes that Panna Yadviga may press his hand any day under the table.
Whether those hopes of the judgeship and the pressure will be justified, the future will show.
THE ORGANIST OF PONIKLA.
THE snow was dry, squeaking, and not over deep; but Klen had long legs, therefore he walked briskly over the road from Zagrabie to Ponikla. He went the more briskly because a good frost was coming, and he was dressed scantily in a short coat and a still shorter sheepskin overcoat above it, in black trousers and thin, patched boots. Besides, he had a hautboy in his hand; on his head a cap lined with the wind; in his stomach a couple of glasses of arrack; in his heart delight; and in his sou
l many causes for the delight.
That morning he had signed a contract with Canon Krayevski, as the future organist of Ponikla. Up to that time he had strolled about like any wretched gypsy, from inn to inn, from wedding to wedding, from fair to fair, from festival to festival, seeking profit with his hautboy, or on the organ, which he played better than any organist in that region. Now he was to settle down at last and have a fixed life beneath his own roof. A house, a garden, a hundred and fifty rubles a year, other earnings on occasions, a personal position, almost half spiritual, an occupation in the service of God, — who would not respect such a station?
Not long since any Matsek in Zagrabie, or Ponikla, if settled on a few morgs of land, looked on Pan Klen as a nobody; now people would take off their hats to him. An organist and, moreover, in such an immense parish — that was not a bundle of straw! Klen had been sighing this long time for that position; but while old Melnitski lived, it was not to be thought of. The old man’s fingers were stiff, and he played badly; but the canon would not send him away for anything, since he had been twenty years with him.
But when the “lysa” struck the old man so badly in the pit of the heart that in three days he died, Pan Klen did not hesitate to ask for the position, and the canon did not hesitate to give it, for a better organist could not be found in that region.
How such skill came to Pan Klen on the hautboy, the organ, and various other instruments which he understood, it was difficult to discover. He had not received the gift from his father, for his father, a man of Zagrabie, served during youth in the army, and did not work in his old age at music; he twisted hemp ropes, and played on no instrument beyond a tobacco-pipe, which was always between his mustaches.
From childhood Klen did nothing but listen wherever there was music. While a stripling, he went to “blow the bellows” for Melnitski at Ponikla. Afterward, when certain musicians came to Zagrabie, he ran away with them. He strolled about whole years with that company. God knows where he played, surely wherever it happened: at fairs, weddings, and in churches; only when the company broke up, or died, did he return to Zagrabie, as poor as a church mouse, haggard, and living like a bird on a branch. He continued to play, sometimes for the public, sometimes for the Lord God.
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz Page 708