At the inn, and he and his family settled down.
He also served the rabbi in the town.
He was a welcome guest and much-sought guide
In every home: he knew grain markets, trade
By river barge—such knowledge is valuable
In the country. And he was deemed a decent Pole.
He mended quarrels, even bloody ones,
Between the two places—for he ran both inns.
Esteemed by every veteran partisan
Of the Horeszkos, and all the Judge’s men,
He kept his cool between fearsome Gerwazy
Of the Horeszkos, and quarrelsome Protazy.
With Jankiel there, both quelled their sense of wrong—
One with a threatening fist, one with his tongue.
Gerwazy was away; he’d joined the hunt—
He didn’t wish to leave the green young Count
Alone on such a tough and crucial trip.
He would provide advice and guardianship.
His spot, the furthest from the entranceway,
Between two benches—the “corner place”—today
Was taken by Father Robak, seated there
By Jankiel, whose deep respect for him was clear—
The moment that he saw the friar’s cup
Was empty, he’d at once come running up
To have it filled with linden-honey mead.
The two had known each other, people said,
Abroad, when they were young. Often the priest
Came by at night; in secret they discussed
Grave matters. Some said Robak smuggled too,
But this was slander, not to be thought true.
Robak was speaking softly as can be.
The gentry bent their ears attentively,
Noses aimed at his snuffbox lying near,
Whose contents made them boom like mortar fire.
“Good Father,” said Skołuba with a sneeze,
“This snuff goes deep inside—it’s made to please.
Since this here nose” (he stroked it) “has been mine,
I’ve never had its like” (he sneezed again).
“From Kowno surely—Bernardine snuff indeed.
The place is world-renowned for snuff—and mead.
I was there, let’s see—.” The priest broke in: “Good cheer,
My worthy fellows, to all those gathered here!
But Mr. Skołuba’s not quite right. This snuff
Has come to us from someplace farther off—
From Jasna Góra in Częstochowa, made
By the Pauline Fathers. There you’ll find displayed
The image whose miracles are legendary,
Of Poland’s Queen, the Holy Virgin Mary.
Princess of Lithuania too she’s called.
She still reigns Poland; faith of a different mold,
However, squats in Lithuania now.”
“Częstochowa?” said Wilbik. “There, thirty years ago
I took confession during a church fair.
Say, is it true that French troops are now there,
And plan to destroy the church and take its riches,
The way it says in the Courier’s dispatches?”
“Far from it!” the monk replied. “His Majesty
Napoleon’s all a Catholic ought to be.
The Pope anointed him—in combination
They’re reaching many souls in the French nation,
Which somewhat went astray. True, silver was sent
From Częstochowa to the treasury, meant
For Poland—such was the Almighty’s choice.
His altars are always the homeland’s treasure house!
One hundred thousand Polish troops are massed
In the Duchy now, or more. Who’ll cover the cost?
Not you Lithuanians, for sure!
All of your money’s given to the Tsar.”
“Given!” cried Wilbik. “Taken by violence!”
“Father!” a farmer said with deference,
Bowing to Robak as he scratched his head,
“The gentry are not treated half so bad.
Us, they bleed dry.” “Peasant!” Skołuba cried.
“Your kind are fools—you take it in your stride.
You’re eels for the skinning! We well-born people, though,
We’ve golden freedoms we’re accustomed to.
My friends: time was, at home a gentleman—”
(“Yes!” all chimed in—“need bow his knee to none!”).
“These days we’re not believed—there have to be
Papers and such to prove our ancestry.”
Juraha cried: “You, you’re from peasant folk
Made gentry just three generations back.
Me, I’m from princes! Where are the parchment rolls
From when I became gentry—God alone recalls!
The Russians should rather ask the woodland ashes
Who gave them papers to outgrow the bushes.”
“Princes?” said Żagiel. “Brag to your heart’s desire,
There’s plenty of folk have princely roots round here.”
“Your arms show a cross!” Podhajski retorted;
“That means an ancestor who once converted.”
“Not so!” said Birbasz.” I’m from a Tartar duke
But my crest shows a cross above a barque.”
“The Poraj crest is princely!” Mickiewicz yelled.
“Stryjkowski says so—a coronet on gold.”
And thus a mighty ruckus filled the inn.
The priest resorted to his snuff; the din
Soon calmed as, for the sake of courtesy,
Each took a pinch and sneezed prolifically.
The monk then seized his moment and went on.
“This snuff’s been used by many a great man.
In fact, Dąbrowski, our famed general,
Took it four times.” They echoed one and all:
“Dąbrowski?” “The general, yes; I was with him
When he took Gdańsk from the Germans. At one time
He’d letters to write; so as to stay awake
He took a pinch, sneezed, clapped me on the back.
“Good Bernardine,” he said, “we’ll meet once more
In Lithuania—maybe within the year.
Tell them to wait with Częstochowa snuff—
For me, no other kind is good enough.”
The friar’s tale produced such joyfulness,
Such wonder, that everybody in the place
Fell quiet awhile; then the odd murmured word—
“From Częstochowa? Polish snuff?”—was heard.
“Dąbrowski? Out of Italy?” In the end
As if thought to thought, and word to word had joined,
On cue it seemed, they shouted in one voice:
“Dąbrowski!” as each man present raised his glass.
Then there came great commotion and embraces:
Peasants with coronets, dukes with barques and crosses.
All was forgotten, even the monk; instead
They sang, and called for drink: “Wine! Vodka! Mead!”
For a long time the Father listened; at last
He wished to go on. The little box held fast
In both hands, he sneezed so loud they lost the tune;
Before they could recover he jumped in:
“Good gentlemen, you praise the snuff you’ve tried
Out of my snuffbox—now see what’s inside.”
With a cloth he wiped the bottom to reveal
A tiny painted army, minuscule
As flies; there, too, was one man on a horse
The size of a bug—their general of course.
Seeming
ly heavenbound, on his steed he rose,
One hand upon the reins, one by his nose.
“Note the brave stance,” said Robak, “if you will.
You know who this is?” They peered closer still.
“It’s a great man, an emperor, although
It isn’t the Tsar—no tsar took snuff, you know.”
“A great man in a plain cloak?” Cydzik called.
“I thought all great men went about in gold.
The Russian generals gleam with it—it’s like
The saffron garnish on a well-cooked pike.”
“Well, in my youth,” said Rymsza, “I got to see
Kościuszko, our chief commander, certainly
A great man—yet he wore a Kraków coat,
The kind that’s called czarmarka.” “No it’s not,”
Snapped Wilbik. “It’s taratatka.” “No, that kind
Includes a fringe,” Mickiewicz then opined.
And thus began rambunctious disagreements
About the cut of various overgarments.
The artful Robak, seeing how the talk
Had dissipated, sought to bring it back
To his small box; he passed it round again,
They sneezed and said God bless, and he went on:
“When Emperor Napoleon was at war,
If he took snuff, a victory was secure.
Take Austerlitz—here stood the men of France
With cannon, seeing the Russian hordes advance.
Napoleon quietly watched. Like hay being mown,
Each volley brought whole Russian units down.
Squadron by squadron charged, was finished off;
As each one fell, the Emperor took some snuff.
The Tsar, his brother Constantine as well,
And German Kaiser Francis—all turned tail
And fled; Napoleon, sure now of his win,
Watched them and laughed, and brushed his fingers clean.
If any here should find themselves a part
Of his great army, take my tale to heart!”
Skołuba cried: “But Father, when will that be?
The calendar’s full of saints’ days; with each day
They promise the French will come. We watch and wait
Until it hurts, yet still the Muscovite
Clutches our throat. Before the sun shall rise,
It seems, the dew will eat away our eyes.”
“Sir,” said the monk, “complaints are a woman’s way,
While the Jews will wait, arms folded, till the day
Someone comes knocking at the tavern door.
Russia will crumble before the Emperor.
Three times his heel has crushed the Prussian vermin;
The Englishman, no luckier than the German,
Was pushed from the seas. The Russians are bound to fall.
But do you see the meaning of it all?
That there’ll be no one left to fight, and when
The Lithuanians finally arm—why then
Napoleon, having triumphed alone, will say:
“I don’t need you—who are you anyway?”
Inviting your guest, then waiting—that won’t do.
You need to take out your chairs and tables too,
And clear your house of trash before the feast.
You must clear out your house, I say—you must!”
A silence fell; then somebody called out:
“Clear out the house? What do you mean by that?
We’re ready to do anything, for sure—
But tell us in a way that’s less obscure.”
The priest broke off; through the window he had spied
Something of note. He stuck his head outside
Then, as he stood, he said: “Time’s short today,
Tomorrow we’ll speak of this more thoroughly.
I’ve business in the town; I’ll visit you
Along the way to talk, and ask alms too.”
“You should sleep at Niehrymowo, Father,” said
The overseer. “The Cornet will be glad.
Remember, the Lithuanians have a phrase:
‘Happy as a friar in Niehrymowo!’ “Please,”
Zubkowski said, “Visit us also, Father.
You’ll get some fabric, butter, something or other,
A sheep or cow—and don’t forget the saying:
‘Lucky the priest who’s at Zubkowo praying.’”
“Visit us too!” Skołuba said. “And us!”
Cried Terajewicz; “no monk left our house
In Pucewicze hungry.” Thus, among
Pledges and pleas, the Father quit the throng.
He’d seen Tadeusz passing at a gallop
Along the highway, hatless—seen him wallop
And lash his horse once and again, head down,
His pallid countenance marked with a frown.
This sight concerned the monk so much, he ran
As fast as possible after the young man,
To the dark woods that grew horizon-wide
Far as the eye could see, on every side.
The Lithuanian forests—who could chart
Those boundless regions to their tangled heart?
Fishermen know the ocean’s rim, no more;
The hunter circling round a forest lair
Sees only what it looks like from outside:
Its enigmatic depths remain untried.
Rumor and legend only tell what’s there
Beyond the trees and underwood. If you were
To enter, deep within you’d find a tangle
Of trunks, logs, roots, amid a swamp—a jungle
Guarded by myriad streams, whose rampant brakes
Hide ants, wasps, hornets, writhing nests of snakes.
If by prodigious courage you make it through,
A greater peril still would challenge you:
Further lie ponds, each one a lurking trap
Half-overgrown with grass. They are so deep
No human even plumbed them (so beware—
It’s more than likely demons live down there).
The water has a bloody, rust-red sheen
While wisps of noxious smoke rise from within,
Stripping the nearby trees of leaves and bark.
Those trees stand shrunken, maggot-ridden, stark,
Limbs moss-enmeshed and dropping out of true,
Trunks fringed with hideous fungi, all askew
Like a witches’ coven huddling in a ring
Round a pot in which a corpse is simmering.
What lies beyond cannot be visited
On foot, nor even by the eye, it’s said,
For all is hidden in a hazy cloud
Rising forever from the swampy mire.
Beyond those mists, they say, farther than far,
Is a fair and fertile land—the capital
Of the domain of plant and animal.
Stored here are seeds of every herb and tree
So they can send the world their progeny.
So they can breed, one pair is kept at least
(Like Noah’s Ark) of every kind of beast.
At the very heart are the royal courts of Bears,
Aurochs, and Bison—the forest’s emperors.
Like watchful ministers, nesting nearby
In the trees, swift Lynx and hungry Wolverine lie;
Further, like noble liegemen, there reside
Wild Boars, Wolves, Moose with antlers spreading wide.
Above, Falcons and Eagles—confidantes
Of their great lords, and kept at their expense.
These patriarchal ruling pairs, concealed
Far from the eyes of all the outside world,
&
nbsp; Send off their children to settle in the land
Beyond the woods, while they remain behind.
They never die from firearm or from knife,
Only old age—the natural end to life.
They’ve a graveyard also where, when death comes in,
The birds lay down their feathers, the beasts their skin.
The bear with worn-down teeth who cannot eat,
The feeble stag unsteady on his feet,
The aging hare whose once-quick blood’s congealing,
The gray-haired raven, the hawk whose eyes are failing,
The eagle no longer able to take food,
His ancient beak grown crooked and closed for good—
All come here. Small beasts too, injured or ill,
Return to die where once they used to dwell.
This is the reason that on human ground
Bones of dead animals are never found.
It’s said that in this realm, since the animals
Govern themselves, great decorousness prevails,
Unspoiled as yet by human civilization.
Ownership, which for us stirs such aggression,
Is foreign to them; they have no duels, no war.
The children live in paradise, as before
Their parents did: savage and tame together
In love and peace, not hurting one another.
If ever a man came by, even unarmed,
He’d walk among the creatures here unharmed.
They’d stare at him in wonderment, the way
That on creation’s sixth and final day
Their forebears, Eden’s earliest dwellers, gazed
At Adam, when man and beast still harmonized.
Luckily, humans never come—the path
Is barred for them by Toil, and Fear, and Death.
Though sometimes the bloodhounds, giving furious chase
Will stray among the mossy pits. The place
Fills them with horror; they flee with yelping cries.
For long hours, madness lingers in their eyes,
And though their master’s soothing hand is on them,
They tremble at his feet, dread still upon them.
These secret spots, where man does not belong,
Are called the “breedwoods” in the hunters’ slang.
You foolish bear! If only you’d stayed on
Back there, the Warden never would have known.
But—whether you let the scent of beehives woo you,
Or if the thought of ripening oat plants drew you—
You reached the woodland’s edge, where it’s less dense,
And there the foresters spotted you at once
And quickly sent their lookouts to locate
The places where you sleep and where you eat.
Pan Tadeusz Page 12