King Stakh's Wild Hunt

by Uladzimir Karatkevich

  About ten people were sitting at the table, all men. Among them I knew only Śvieciłovič, Aleś Varona and Stachoŭski. Almost all of them were already quite drunk, but for some reason they examined me with increased interest. The table was bursting with viands: Dubatoŭk was, evidently, of the well-to-do local gentry. His wealth, however, was relative. Of food and drink there was plenty, but the rooms through which I went showed no splendour. The walls were whitewashed, the shutters were covered with fretwork and brightly painted, the furniture was not very beautiful, but as if to make up for that, very heavy. Old-fashioned things stared o.ut from every corner. In the dining-room there was nothing but a wide oak table, stools covered with a green, silky linen, two Dantzig armchairs covered with golden Morocca, and a triple mirror in a brown frame, depicting a city with church domes. The gaudily dressed guests viewed me with curiosity.

  “Why are you staring?” Dubatoŭk shouted. “Have you never seen a man from the capital, you bears? Come, food for the guest! Put food on his plate, whatever is to your taste.”

  The hairy jaws began to smile, the paws began to move. Soon on my plate lay an enormous goose with cranberry jam, the leg of a turkey with apples, pickled mushrooms, a dozen kuldoons, and from all sides came:

  “And here are doughnuts and mushrooms with garlic… here is a piece of ham from a wild boar, strongly peppered, burns like fire. I swear to it by the memory of my mother… take it. And this is wonderful. And this here is something exceptional…”

  “This is how we Belarusians treat our guests,” the host shouted on seeing my confusion, and he laughed boisterously.

  In front of me food was piled high. I tried to protest, but that called forth such an outburst of indignation (one of the guests even began to shed tears;) truth to tell, he was in a blue haze, and I yielded.

  The lout Antoś brought me a glass of vodka on a tray, for a start. I am not afraid of intoxicating liquors, but seeing it I got scared. There was no less than a bottle of some yellow transparent liquid in the glass.

  “I couldn't!”

  “What do you mean you couldn't? Only a virgin wench can't, but even she quickly agrees.”

  “It's too much, Mr. Dubatoŭk.”

  “When there are three wives in a hut, that's too much, and at that not for everyone… Oh! Boys, we aren't respected. Ask the dear guest to…”

  “Don't offend us… and drink…” The guests roared like bears. I was forced to drink. The liquid burned my inners, fiery circles swam before my eyes, but I kept steady, didn't even make a wry face.

  “There's a man for you!” Dubatoŭk praised.

  “What's this?” I asked as I swallowed down a big piece of ham.

  “Oho! The Starka, old Polish vodka, even the Ukrainian vodka Spatykach; but our “Tris Deviniris” you do not know. In Lithuanian[7], brother, it is “Thrice Nine” — a vodka made of 27 herbs. This secret we wormed out from the Lithuanians hundreds of years ago. Now the Lithuanians themselves have forgotten it, but we still remember. Drink to your heart's content, then I'll treat you to some mead.”

  “And what's this?” I wanted to know, sticking my fork into something dark on my plate.

  “That is salmon lips in sweetened vinegar. Eat, brother, refresh yourself. This is food for giants. Our forefathers, may they rest in peace, were not fools. Eat, don't be lazy, and eat!”

  And within a minute, having forgotten that he had recommended me the “lips”, he shouted:

  “No, brother, you won't leave me without having tasted cold pasties stuffed with goose liver. Antoś!..”

  Antoś came over with the pasties. I tried to refuse.

  “Go down on your knees at the feet of our guest. Beat your foolish head against the floor, beg him, because as a guest he is offending us.”

  Soon I, too, was in a good state. Everyone around was screaming and singing. Dubatoŭk was hanging on to my shoulder, mumbling something, but I paid no attention. The room was beginning to swim.

  “A-a. Let's have a drink

  Then after it, another…”

  someone howled. And suddenly I remembered that house far away in the fir park, the trees overgrown with moss, the fireplace, the melancholy figure near it. I felt sick at heart. “I'm a drunken pig,” I kept repeating, “we mustn't live on the fat of the land when someone else is in trouble.” So deep was my pity for her that I was on the verge of tears… and immediately I became sober.

  The guests were beginning to leave the table.

  “Gentlemen,” Dubatoŭk said, “take a little walk, the table has to be refreshed.”

  Good God, this had been but the beginning! And everyone was already drunk, as drunk as pigs. It was 8 o'clock in the evening. That was unimportant. It was still early. I knew that having instantly become sober, I wouldn't get drunk again today, nevertheless I decided to drink with caution: I might get stuck in the quagmire — then there would be hell to pay.

  We rested, talked. Dubatoŭk showed us a fine collection of weapons. He praised an old sabre very highly, one that he had begged Raman Janoŭski to give him. He said that the Russian damask steel sword could cut through a plate, the Polish “Zygmuntowka” — quite a thick nail, but this one, ours, was a secret that the Tartars had brought with them in the time of Vitaŭt. And inside it was mercury, the blow such that it could cleave not only a copper plate, but a thick block. Nobody believed him; he shouted, ordered Antoś to bring a block. Antoś brought in a short block, the thickness of three human necks, and placed it on the floor.

  All grew quiet. Dubatoŭk took aim, grinned, baring his teeth, and suddenly the sabre described an almost invisible half-circle in the air.

  Dubatoŭk let out a deep guttural sound, drew the sabre towards himself, and split the block obliquely. He waved his wrist in the air. All kept silent.

  “That's the way to do it!” he shouted at us.

  I managed at this time to get Śvieciłovič out onto the porch and tell him of all that had occurred at Marsh Firs.

  He became very excited, said that he had previously heard something about it, but had not quite believed it.

  “And now you believe it?”

  “I believe you,” he said simply. “And I promise that while I am alive, not a single hair of her head shall be hurt. Be he devil or ghost or whatever else, I'll stand in his way.”

  We arranged to investigate things together, that he would come to see me in a couple of days and tell me all that he had learned in the vicinity of the village (various rumours and gossip might be of definite use). We decided not to get Dubatoŭk involved in this affair as yet: the old man could get very excited and act as was his habit in his devil-may-care way.

  Supper continued. We were again treated to food, again to drink. I noticed that Dubatoŭk was filling our wine glasses, both his and mine, equally, and as he drank he kept looking at me testingly. Whenever I drank a glass of wine a look of satisfaction appeared on his face. He was in a way egging me on into a competition. And during intervals he would offer either pancakes with a sauce made of flour, meat, fat, smoked ham and ribs, or else those unusual “shtoniki” — meat drowning in fat, such as saints had never eaten. He was evidently studying me from every angle. I drank but did not get drunk.

  The rest, excluding Śvieciłovič, were already in the sort of state when nobody listens to anybody, when one drinks, another tells some love story, a third is doing all he can to make somebody pay attention to some colourful fact in his biography, and a fourth is recalling what a good woman his mother had been, while he, such a drunkard, such a scoundrel, is profaning her memory, living such a dissolute life.

  The singing went on:

  In the hut's my wife,

  At a drinking spree am I.

  At the tavern my bullock's tied,

  In the devil's keep my lost soul.

  Another man drawled his song:

  Tell me, my good people,

  Where my beloved sleeps.

  If in a distant land

  Please, God, he
lp him

  But if in a widow's bed

  Oh! God! Punish him!

  But if in a widow's bed…

  Someone raised his head from the table and sang his own version of the last line:

  Please, God, help him too!

  Everybody burst out laughing.

  In the meantime Dubatoŭk shook his head as if to chase off his stupor, got up and announced:

  “At last I've found a real man among the young aristocrats. He has drunk more than I have, I've become tipsy, but he's fresh, as fresh as a bush in the rain. None of you here would have taken in half as much. Nine of you would have fallen flat on your faces, while the tenth would have mooed like a calf. This is a man! Him and only him, would I gladly have accepted for a friend in my youth.”

  Cries from everybody “Glory! Glory!”. Varona alone looked at me bitingly and gloomily. They drank to my health, to the gentry — the salt of the earth, to my future wife.

  When the enthusiasm had abated somewhat, Dubatoŭk looked me in the eyes and asked confidentially:

  “Getting married?”

  I shook my head uncertainly, although I understood very well what he was driving at. He was certain about it, evidently, whereas I had no wish to convince him of the reverse. I liked the old man, he was drunk and might be offended if I openly told him that I hadn't ever thought about it and did not even wish to think about it.

  “She's beautiful,” Dubatoŭk continued and sighed, looking at me sadly.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “My ward.”

  Things had gone too far, and to pretend any further was impossible, for otherwise it would have turned out that I was compromising the girl.

  “I haven't thought about it,” I said. “But even if I had thought about it, it doesn't depend on me alone. First of all it is necessary to ask her.”

  “You are avoiding an answer,” suddenly hissed Varona through his teeth. (I hadn't suspected that he was listening to our quiet conversation.) “You do not want to speak frankly and directly with serious people. You don't want to say that you are after money and a wife of noble birth.”

  I was convulsed with pain. Trying to keep calm, I answered:

  “I have no intention of getting married. And I consider speaking about a girl in a drunken company of men does no honour to a true gentleman. Stop talking, Varona, don't attract the attention of drunken people to an innocent girl, don't taint her reputation, and I, although it is a terrible insult, forgive you.”

  “Ha, ha!” exclaimed Varona. “He forgives me. This pig, this cad.”

  “Stop it!” I shouted. “Be quiet! Just think how you are insulting her with each one of your words!”

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Dubatoŭk tried to calm us. “Varona, you are drunk.”

  “Think yourself. I once allowed an offence of yours to pass by unnoticed, but in future I won't!”

  “You scoundrel!”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you!” I shouted so loudly that even those who were sleeping raised their heads from the table. “I'll force you to shut up!”

  A knife from the table whisked through the air and fell flat on my hand. I jumped up from my seat, grabbed Varona by the chest and shook him. At the same moment Dubatoŭk grabbed us by the shoulders and separated us, shoving Varona aside.

  “Shame on you, Aleś!” Dubatoŭk thundered. “You pup… Make peace immediately!”

  “No, wait a moment, Dubatoŭk. This is serious. It's too late. My honour has been insulted,” Varona roared.

  “And my honour as host. Who will now come to visit me? Everyone will say that Dubatoŭk treats his guests to duels instead of good vodka.”

  “Don't care a straw,” Varona shouted, baring his teeth.

  Without uttering a word, Dubatoŭk slapped him in the face.

  “Now you will first fight me with a sabre, for he only took hold of you by the chest,” he hissed so loudly that many started. “I shall do what has to be done for my guest to leave here safe and sound.”

  “You're mistaken,” Varona retorted calmly. “He who first offended is first in line. And then I'll fight with you, kill me if you will.”

  “Aleś,” Dubatoŭk almost begged him, “Don't bring shame on my house.”

  “He shall fight with me,” Varona said firmly.

  “Oh well, then,” our host unexpectedly agreed. “It does not matter, Mr, Biełarecki. Be courageous. This pig is so drunk that he can't hold a pistol. I think I'll stand beside you, and that will be the safest place.”

  “Don't worry,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder. “It's unnecessary. I'm not afraid. You be brave, too.”

  Varona stared at me with his deadly black eyes.

  “I haven't yet finished. We shan't shoot in the garden, for otherwise this dandy will escape. And not tomorrow, for otherwise he will leave. We shall shoot here and now, in the empty room near the shed. And three bullets each. In the dark.”

  Dubatoŭk made a protesting gesture, but a reckless cold fury had already crept into my heart. It was all the same to me now, I hated this man, forgot Janoŭskaja, my work, even myself.

  “I submit to your will,” I answered caustically. “But won't you make use of the darkness to run away from me? However, as you like.”

  “You lion cub!” I heard Dubatoŭk's broken voice.

  I glanced at him and was shocked. It was pitiful to look at the old man. His face was distorted with fear, his eyes expressed an inhuman fear and shame, such shame that death would be better. He was almost in tears. He did not even look at me, he just turned about and waved his hand.

  The shed was attached to the house. It was an enormous room with grey moss in the grooves of walls. Spiders' webs resembling an entangled delivery of linen, hung down from the straw roof and shook at our steps. Two young gentlemen carried candles and accompanied us into a room near the shed, a room entirely empty, with grey, wet plastering and without any windows. It smelled of mice and of abominable desolation.

  To be quite honest, I was afraid, very much afraid. My state could be compared with that of a bull in the slaughter-house or of a man in the dentist's chair. It was nasty and vile, but impossible to run away.

  “Well, what'll happen if he shoots me in the stomach? Oh! That'll be awful! If I could only hide somewhere!”

  I don't know why, but I was terribly afraid of being wounded in the stomach. And after I had eaten so well!

  I was so depressed and disgusted that I could hardly keep from bellowing, but I took myself in hand in time and glanced at Varona. He was standing with his seconds against the opposite wall, holding his left hand in the pocket of his black dress-coat, and in his right hand, held downward, was the gun for the duel. Two other guns were put in his pockets. His dry yellow face expressed disgust, but was calm. I don't know whether I could have said the same of myself.

  My two seconds (one of them was Dubatoŭk) gave me, too, a pistol, and pushed two others into my pockets — I noticed nothing. I was looking only at the face of the man I had to kill, for otherwise he would kill me. I looked at him with an inexplicable avidity, as if wishing to comprehend why he wanted to kill me, why he hated me.

  “And why should I kill him?” I thought, as if only I were holding a pistol. “No, I must not kill him. But that is not the point. The point is that human neck, such a thin and very weak neck, which it is so easy to wring.” I also had no wish to die and therefore decided that Varona should shoot three times and that should be the end of the duel.

  The seconds left, leaving us alone in the room and closed the door. We found ourselves in pitch darkness. Soon the voice of one of Va-rona's seconds was heard:

  “Begin!”

  With my left foot I made two “steps” to the side, and then carefully put my foot back into its former place. To my surprise, all my excitement had passed, I acted as if automatically,

  but so wisely and quickly as I could never have done had my brain been controlling my actions. Not with my hearing, but rather wi
th my skin, did I feel Varona's presence in the room, there at the other wall.

  We kept silent. Now all depended on our self-control.

  A flash lit up the room. Varona's nerves had failed him. The bullet whizzed past somewhere to the left of me and rattled against the wall. I could have fired at this very moment, for during the flash I saw where Varona was. But I did not shoot. I only felt the place where the bullet had struck. I don't know why I did that. And I remained standing in the very same place.

  Varona, evidently, could not even have supposed that I'd twice act in the same way. I could hear his excited hoarse breathing.

  Varona's second shot resounded. And again I did not shoot. However, I no longer had the will-power to stand motionless, all the more so because I heard Varona beginning to steal along the wall in my direction.

  My nerves gave way, I also began to move carefully. The darkness looked at me with the barrels of a thousand pistols. There might be a barrel at any step, I could stumble on it with my belly, all the more so that I had lost the whereabouts of my enemy and couldn't say where the door was and where the wall.

  I stood still and listened. At this moment something forced me to throw myself down sidewards on the floor.

  A shot rang right over my head, it even seemed that the hair on my head had been moved by it.

  But I still had three bullets. For a moment a wild feeling of gladness took hold of me, but I remembered the fragile human neck and lowered my pistol.

  “What's going on there with you?” a voice sounded behind the door. “Only one of you fired. Has anyone been killed, or not? Fire quickly, stop messing about.”

  And then I raised my hand with the pistol, moved it away from the place where Varona had been at the time of the third shot and pressed the trigger. I had to fire at least once, I had to use up at least one bullet. In answer, entirely unexpectedly, a faint groan was heard and the sound of a body falling.