The girl’s eyes filled with tears; and both began to think of Lipintse.
Vavron Toporek considered why he was going to America, and how it had happened. How had it happened? Well, half a year before, in the summer, they had seized his cow in a clover field. The owner of the clover, who took her, wanted three rubles damages; Vavron would not give them. The man went to law. The case dragged on. The injured owner of the clover wanted now not only the damage for the clover, but the cost of keeping the cow, and the cost increased daily. Vavron refused it; since he was sorry for the money. He had spent no little for the suit itself; it dragged on, and dragged on. The cost increased all the time. Finally Vavron lost the case. Besides, for the cow he had incurred cost, God knows how much; as he had no money to pay, his horse was taken; and the court sentenced him to arrest for resistance. Toporek squirmed like a snake, for the harvest was just coming, so hands and energy were needed for work. He was late at bringing in his grain, then rain began to fall; the wheat grew in the bundles. Hence he thought that by the single damage to that clover all his little property would be wasted; that he had lost so much money, a part of his cattle, all his year’s grain; and that before the new harvest either he and the girl would have to eat earth, or beg bread.
As the man had been well-to-do and successful before, so terrible despair seized him now, and he fell to drinking. In the public house he made the acquaintance of a German who was bargaining for flax, as he said, through the villages; but really he was luring people beyond the sea.
The German told Vavron miracles and wonders about America. He promised him more land for nothing than there was in all Lipintse, and with a forest, and with meadows; Vavron’s eyes laughed. He believed and he did not believe; but the Jew dairy-man supported the German, and said that the Government there gave each man as much land “as he could use.” The Jew had learned this from his nephew. On his part, the German showed an amount of money which not only a peasant’s eyes, but even the eyes of an heir, had not seen in his lifetime. They tempted the man till they convinced him. Why should he stay at home? For one loss he had spent so much money that he might have kept a man for it. Was he to yield himself to ruin? Was he to take a staff in his hand and sing at the church: “Holy heavenly, angelic Lady?”— “Nothing of that will come!” thought he. He struck hands with the German, sold out before Saint Michaels, took his daughter, and now he was sailing to America.
But the journey was not the success he had expected. In Hamburg people had dragged much money from him; on the steamer he and his daughter went between decks in the steerage. The rocking of the ship, and the endlessness of the ocean terrified them. No man could understand him, and he could understand no man. They were thrown around, each of them, like a thing, pushed aside like a stone on a highway; the Germans, their fellow-passengers, reviled him and Marysia. At dinner-time, when all crowded with their plates to the cook who distributed food, they were pushed away to the very last, so that more than once they had to suffer from hunger. On that ship it was strange and sad. Save the care of God, Vavron felt none other above him. He put on a bold face before the girl, raised his cap on the side of his head, told Marysia to admire things, admired everything himself, but trusted in nothing. At times he was seized by fear that perhaps those “pagans,” as he called his fellow-passengers, would throw him and Marysia into the sea, perhaps they would force them to change their religion, or sign some paper, yes! even a “cyrograf.”
The steamer itself, which went on day and night over the boundless ocean, shook and roared, raising water and foam, that steamer which puffed like a dragon, and drew after it at night a line of fiery sparks, seemed to him some kind of power which was suspicious and very uncanny. Childish fears, though he did not confess them, straitened his heart; for that Polish peasant, torn away from his native nest, was in truth a helpless child, and really at the mercy of God. Besides, he could understand nothing that he saw, nothing about him; so it is not a wonder that, when he was sitting on that coil of rope, his head bent under the weight of oppressive uncertainty and vexation, the breeze of the ocean sang in his ear and seemed to repeat the word: “Lipintse! Lipintse!” at times also it piped like the whistles of Lipintse the sun said: “How art thou, Vavron? I have been in Lipintse.” But the screw whirled the water with still mightier force, and the smoke-stack puffed more loudly, more quickly, — they were like two evil spirits drawing him farther and farther from Lipintse.
But other thoughts and memories were pursuing Marysia, like that foaming road, or the gulls which flew after the steamer. She remembered how one evening in the autumn, not long before their departure, she went to the well, which had a sweep above it, to draw water. The first stars were twinkling in the sky, and she was drawing the sweep, singing: “Yasio was watering the horses — Kasia had come to the well—” and somehow she felt as sad as a swallow twittering before its departure. Then from the pine wood, from the dark one, the swamp gave forth a drawling sound; that was Yasko Smolak, the groom, letting her know that he saw the well-sweep inclining, and that he would come from the pasture immediately. Indeed there was trampling; he rode up; he sprang from his horse; he shook his yellow forelock; and she remembered what he said to her as if it had been music. She closed her eyes, and it seemed to her that Smolak was whispering again to her, in a quivering voice, —
“If thy father is stubborn, I will give up all in the mansion; I will sell my cottage, my village land, and go — My Marysia,” said he, “wherever thou shalt be, I will fly through the air as a stork to thee, or swim as a duck through the water, or roll on the road as a gold ring, and find thee, thou, my only one! Have I fortune without thee? Whither thou turnest, I shall turn also. Whatever happens thee, will happen me also; one life and one death to us. And as I have promised here above the water of this well, so may God desert me as I desert thee, Marysia, my only one.”
Remembering these words, Marysia saw the well and the great ruddy moon above the pine wood, and Yasko as if living. She found solace in that memory and great comfort. Yasko was resolute; hence she believed that he would do what he had promised. Then all she wished was that he might be there, and listen with her to the sounds of the ocean. In his company, all would be livelier and more cheerful, for he feared no man, and could help himself anywhere. What was he doing then in Lipintse? The first snows must have fallen. Had he gone with his axe to the forest, was he harnessing horses, had they sent him to some place from the mansion, with the sleigh? was he cutting openings in the ice of the pond? Where was he, dear fellow? Here Lipintse appeared to her just as it had been: snow squeaking on the road, the ruddy light of evening between dark, leafless tree branches, flocks of crows flying from the pine wood to the village with cawing, smoke rising skyward from the chimneys, the frozen sweep at the well, and in the distance pine woods ruddy in the light of evening, and snow-covered.
Ah, where is she now! Where has her father’s will brought her! In the distance, as far as the eye can reach, nothing but water, green furrows, foaming ridges, and on those boundless fields of water that one ship, like a lost bird; heaven above them, a desert beneath, a mighty sound as it were the weeping of waves and the whistling of winds, and off there, before the beak of the vessel, the ninth land, or the end of the world.
Yasko, poor fellow, wilt thou meet her there? Wilt thou fly thither through the air in the form of a falcon? or wilt thou swim through the water disguised as a fish? or art thou thinking of her in Lipintse?
The sun inclined toward the west gradually, and was going down in the ocean. On the wrinkled billows the broad sunny pathway, stretched behind, shaped itself into golden scales, changed, glittered, shone, was consumed and perished somewhere in remoteness. The ship, sailing on over that fiery ribbon, seemed to pursue the fleeing sun. The smoke, bursting from the smoke-stack, grew ruddy; the sails and damp ropes became rosy; the sailors fell now to singing; meanwhile the radiant circle increased and settled down lower toward the ocean. Soon only one half of the shield was seen ab
ove the water, then only rays, and after that the whole west was filled with one immense ruddiness, and it was unknown in those gleams where the brightness of the waves found its end, and the sky its beginning. The air and the water were penetrated in like manner with light, which quenched gradually; the ocean sounded with one great but mild voice, as if it were murmuring an evening prayer.
In such moments the soul in a man receives wings, and what he had to remember, he remembers; what he loved, he loves still more ardently; that after which he yearns, to that does he fly now.
Vavron and Marysia felt, both of them, that though the wind was bearing them like helpless leaves, the tree from which they were borne was not in the direction in which they were going, but that from which they were coming: the Polish land, that grain land, waving in one field, grown over with pine-trees, dotted with straw roofs, full of meadows, of golden buttercups, and gleaming water, full of storks and swallows, crosses by the roadside, white mansions among lindens; she, who with a pointed cap under her feet, with the word “Praised!” greets and answers “for the ages of ages,” she the venerable, she the sweetest mother, so true, beloved above all others on the earth! Hence what their peasant hearts had not felt before, they felt then. Vavron removed his cap; the evening light fell on his hair, growing gray; his mind was laboring, for the poor man knew not how he was to tell Marysia what his belief was. At last he said: “Marysia, it seems to me as if something had remained there beyond the sea.”
“Our fate has remained, and love has remained there,” answered the girl, in a low voice, raising her eyes as if in prayer.
Meanwhile it had grown dark. The passengers had begun to leave the deck; on the ship, however, there was an unusual movement. The night is not always calm after a beautiful sunset, so the whistles of the officers were heard continually, and sailors were hauling ropes.
The last purple gleams were quenched on the sea, when a mist rose from the water; the stars twinkled in the sky, and then vanished. The mist thickened before the eye, hiding the heavens, the horizon, and even the vessel. Only the smoke-stack and the great central mast were now visible; the figures of the sailors seemed, from some distance, like shadows. An hour later, all was hidden in a whitish fog, even lanterns hanging on the mastheads, even sparks flying out through the smoke-stack.
The vessel did not rock in the least; one might have said that the sea had grown feeble and had flattened out under the weight of the fog.
Night had come down, in fact, blind and silent. Suddenly, in the midst of the silence, and from the remotest rim of the horizon, were heard wonderful rustles, like the heavy breathing of some giant breast nearing the vessel. At times it seemed as if some one were calling in the darkness, then that a whole distant chorus of voices were answering with infinite sadness and complaining tearfully. Those calls were running from darkness and endlessness toward the steamer.
Sailors, when they hear these sounds, say that the tempest is calling winds out of hell.
In fact these calls grew more and more definite. The captain, wearing a rubber coat with a hood, stood on the highest bridge; an officer took his usual place before a lighted compass. On the deck was no passenger now. Vavron and Marysia had gone down to the common cabin also. There was silence. The lamps, fastened in a very low arch, shone with a gloomy light on the interior and the crowds of emigrants sitting beside their bunks near the walls. The cabin was large but gloomy, as cabins in the fourth class are usually. Its ceiling and walls were very nearly one, therefore those bunks at the ends, divided by partitions, were more like dark dens than beds, and the entire cabin produced the impression of one immense cellar. The air in it was filled with the odor of tarred canvas, ship cables, bilge water, and dampness. Where could be found in it a comparison with the beautiful rooms of the first class! A passage of even two weeks in such cabins would poison lungs with bad air, bring a sickly pallor to faces, and cause scurvy frequently.
Vavron and his daughter were out only four days; still if one were to compare the former Marysia of Lipintse, the healthy and blooming, with her of to-day, made haggard by sickness, he would not have known her. Old Vavron too had grown as yellow as wax, for the first days neither of them had gone on deck. They thought it forbidden. Or for that matter did they know what was permitted and what was forbidden? They had hardly dared to move; moreover they feared to leave their things. And now not only they, but all, were sitting with their effects. ‘The entire steerage was strewn with bundles belonging to emigrants; this increased the disorder and gloomy appearance. Bedding, clothing, supplies of provisions, various utensils, and tin dishes, mixed together, were thrown in smaller or larger heaps over the whole floor. Upon them were sitting emigrants, nearly all Germans. Some were chewing tobacco, others smoking pipes; the rolls of smoke struck the low ceiling, and, forming a long streak, obscured lamp-light. A number of children were crying in the corners, but the usual noise had ceased, for the fog had penetrated all with a sort of fear, alarm, and gloom. The most experienced of the emigrants knew that it foreboded a storm. It was a secret at that time to no one, that danger was coming, and perhaps death was near. Vavron and Marysia could inform themselves in nothing, though when any one opened the hatchway for a moment those distant, ill-omened voices, coming up from infinity, were heard with distinctness.
Both were sitting in the depth of the room, in its narrowest portion, therefore not far from the prow of the steamer. The movement there was disagreeable; hence their fellow-passengers pushed them to that place. The old man strengthened himself with bread brought from Lipintse, and the girl, who disliked to do nothing, braided her hair for the night.
Gradually, however, the general silence, interrupted only by the crying of children, began to astonish the girl.
“Why do the Germans sit to-night so quietly?” inquired she.
“Do I know?” answered Vavron, as usual. “It must be that they have a holiday, or something.”
All at once the ship trembled mightily, exactly as if it had shivered before something terrible. The tin dishes lying around rattled gloomily, the flame in the lamps danced and gleamed up, some frightened voices inquired:
“What is it? What is it?”
But there was no answer. A second shock, weightier than the first, shook the steamer; the prow rose suddenly, and went down with equal suddenness, and at the same time a wave struck with dull force the round window on one side.
“A storm is coming!” whispered Marysia in terror.
Meanwhile something howled around the steamer like a pack of wolves, then it sounded like a pine wood when a whirlwind is breaking it suddenly. The wind struck once and a second time; it put the steamer on its side, then turned it around, raised it aloft, and hurled it into the depth. The rigging creaked, tin vessels, bundles, bags, and utensils flew along the floor, hurled from corner to corner. Some passengers fell flat; feathers from pillows flew through the air, and the lamp chimneys jingled mournfully.
All was noise and uproar: the plashing of water pouring in on the deck, the struggling of the ship, the screaming of women, and the weeping of children, the chasing for effects, and, in this disturbance and chaos, nothing was heard but the shrill sound of whistles, and, from moment to moment, the dull tramp of sailors hurrying along on the upper deck.
“Virgin of Chenstohova!” whispered Marysia.
The prow of the ship, in which both were sitting, shot into the air, and then went down as if frantic. Though Vavron and Marysia held to the sides of their plank berths, they were thrown so that at moments they struck the ceiling. The roar of the billows increased; the groans of the deck grew so piercing that it seemed as though beams and planks would burst in with a crash any moment.
“Hold on, Marysia!” shouted Vavron, trying to out-shout the roar of the tempest; but fear soon closed his throat, and those of others. Children stopped crying; women stopped screaming; all breasts breathed only hurriedly, and hands held with effort to various fixed objects.
The rage of the temp
est rose increasingly. The elements were unchained; the fog thickened with darkness, the clouds with water, the whirlwind with foam; billows struck the ship as if they had been sent from cannon, they hurled it to the right, to the left, and from the clouds to the bottom of the sea. At moments the foaming summits of waves passed over the whole length of the steamer; gigantic masses of water seethed in one awful disorder.
The oil lamps in the room began to quench. It became darker and darker; it seemed to Vavron and Marysia that the darkness of death was approaching.
“Marysia!” began the man, with a broken voice, for breath failed him. “Marysia, forgive me for delivering thee to death. Our last hour has come. We shall not look again on the world with our sinful eyes. We shall have no confession, no anointment; we are not to lie in the earth, but go from the water to the terrible judgment, poor girl!”
And while he was speaking thus, Marysia understood that there was no rescue. Various thoughts flew through her head, and something called in her soul, —
“Yasko, Yasko, my heart’s love, dost thou hear me in Lipintse?”
Terrible sorrow pressed her heart, and she sobbed aloud. The sobbing filled the room where all were as silent as if at a funeral. One voice called out from a corner: “Still!” but stopped, as if frightened by its own sound. Then a lamp chimney fell to the floor, and the flame went out. It was still darker. The alarm of silence reigned everywhere, when Vavron’s voice was heard suddenly in the silence, —
“Kyrie eleison!”
“Chryste eleison,” responded Marysia, sobbing.
“Christ listen to us!”
“Father in heaven, God, have mercy on us!” said the two, repeating the Litany.
In the dark room the voice of an old man, and responses, broken by sobbing, coming from a girl sounded with wonderful solemnity. Some of the emigrants uncovered their heads. Gradually the girl’s weeping ceased, the voices grew calmer, clearer; outside the tempest howled a response to them.
Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz Page 731