King Stakh's Wild Hunt (11 page)

This youth with his clear and kind face awakened such an unexpected tender emotion within me that I smiled, but he, apparently, took my smile for a sneer.

“So you, too, are laughing at me as did my deceased father, as did Uncle Dubatowk...”

“I don’t think they were laughing at you, Andrey. On the contrary, it is pleasant for me to hear these words from you. You are a decent and kind person. Only perhaps you shouldn’t tell anybody else about this. Now you’ve mentioned the name of Dubatowk...”

“I am grateful to you for your kind words. However, you didn’t really think, did you, that I could’ve spoken about it with anybody else? You guessed it yourself. And Uncle Dubatowk – he too, did, though I don’t know why.”

“It’s well that it was Dubatowk who guessed it, not Ales Varona,” I said. “It would otherwise have ended badly for one of you. Dubatowk is the guardian, interested in Nadzeya’s finding a good husband. And it seems to me that he will not tell anybody else, and neither will I. But, in general you should not mention it to anybody.”

“That’s true,” he answered guiltily. “I hadn’t thought that even the slightest hint might harm Miss Nadzeya. And you are right – what a good man Dubatowk is and how sincere! People like him. A fine swordsman, simple and patriarchal! And so frank and merry! How he loves people and doesn’t interfere with anybody’s life. And his language! When I first heard it, it was as if a warm hand were stroking my heart.”

His eyes even became moist, so well did he love Dubatowk.

“Now you know, Mr. Belaretsky, but no one else will. And I will never compromise her. I shall be dumb. Look, you have been dancing with her, and it makes me happy. She is talking with someone – it makes me happy, if only it makes her happy. But to tell you the truth, to be frank with you...” His voice became stronger, his face showing determination like the young David’s coming out to fight Goliath. “Were I at the other end of the world and my heart felt that someone intended to hurt her, I’d come flying over, and were it God Himself, I would break His head for Him, I would bite Him, would fight to my last breath, and then I would crawl up to her feet and breathe my last. Believe me. And even when I am far away I am always with her.”

Looking at his face, I understood why the powers that be fear such slender, pure and honest young men. They have, of course, wide eyes, a childish smile, a youngster’s weak hands, a proud and shapely neck as if made of marble, as if it were especially created for the hangman’s pole axe, but in addition to all this, they are uncompromising, conscientious even unto trifles. They are unable to accept the superiority of crude strength, and their faith in the truth is fanatic. They are inexperienced in life, are trusting children right into their old age, in serving the truth they are bitter, ironic, faithful to the end, wise and unbending. Mean people fear them even when they haven’t yet begun to act, and governed by their inherent instincts, always poison them. This base trash knows that they, these young men, are the greatest threat to their existence.

I understood that were a gun put into the hands of such a man, he would with that sincere smile of white teeth, come up to the tyrant, put a bullet into him and then calmly say to death: “Come here!” He will undergo the greatest suffering and if he doesn’t die in prison of his thirst for freedom, he will come up calmly to the scaffold.

So boundless was the faith which this man called forth in me, that our hands met in a strong handshake and my smile was a friendly one.

“Why were you expelled?”

“Oh, some nonsense. It began when we decided to honour the memory of Shevchenko. We were threatened that the police would be brought into the university.” He even began to blush. “Well, we rebelled. And I shouted that if they only dared to do that with our sacred walls, we would wash that shame off them with our blood, and the first bullet would strike the man who had given that order. Then it became noisy and I was grabbed. And in the police station, when I was asked my nationality, I answered: “Write – Ukrainian.”

“Well said.”

“I know it was very imprudent for those who had taken up the struggle.”

“No, that was good for them, too. One such answer is worth dozens of bullets. And it signifies that everybody is fighting a common enemy. There is no difference between the Belarusian and the Ukrainian if the lash is held over them.”

We looked at the dancers silently until Svetsilovich winced.

“Dancing. The devil knows what it’s like. A waxworks show of some kind... antediluvian pangolins. In profile not faces but ugly mugs. Brains the size of a thimble, and paws like a dinosaur’s with 700 teeth. And their dresses with trains. And the frightening faces of these curs... We are after all an unfortunate people, Mr. Belaretsky.”

“Why?”

“We have never had any really great thinkers among us.”

“Perhaps it’s better so,” I said.

“And nevertheless we are a people without a land to settle on. This infamous trade of one’s country over a period of seven centuries. In the beginning it was sold to Lithuania, then, before the people had hardly become assimilated, to the Poles, to everybody and anybody, regardless of honour and conscience.”

The dancers began to cast glances at us.

“You see, they are looking at us. When a person’s soul is screaming, they don’t like it. They all belong to one gang here. They trample on the little ones, they repudiate honour, sell their young daughters to old men. You see that one over there – Sava Stakhowsky? I would not put a horse into the same stable with him, for the horse’s morals would be endangered. And this Chobaleva, a provincial Messalina. And this one, Asanovich, drove a serf’s daughter into her grave. Now he can’t do that, hasn’t got the right to, but all the same he continues to lead a dissolute life. Unfortunate Belarus! A kind, complaisant, romantic people in the hands of rascals. And so it will always be while this nation allows itself to be made a fool of. It gives up its heroes to the rack and itself sits in a cage over a bowl of potatoes or turnips, looking blank, and understanding nothing. Much would I pay the man who at last shook off from his people’s neck this decaying gentry, these stupid parvenus, these conceited upstarts and corrupt journalists, and made the people become masters of their own fate. For that I would give all my blood.”

Apparently my senses had become very sharp. All the time I felt somebody’s look on my back. When Svetsilovich had finished, I turned around and was stupefied. Standing behind us was Nadzeya Yanovsky, and she had heard everything. But it was not she, it was a dream, a forest sprite, a being out of a fairy tale. Her dress was like that worn by women in the Middle Ages. No less than fifty lengths of Vorsha golden satin had gone into its making. And this dress had over it another, a white one, with free designs in blue that seemed as if of silver as the colours played in the numerous cuts hanging from the sleeves and the hem of the dress. Her tightly tied waist was bound by a thin golden cord falling almost to the floor in two tassels. On her shoulders was a thin “robok” made of a white and silver tinted cloth. Her hair was gathered in a net, an ancient head dress reminding one somehow of a little ship woven from silver threads. From both horn lets of this little ship a thin white veil hung down to the very floor.

This was a Swan Queen, the mistress of an amber palace, in another word, the devil alone knows what, but only not the previous ugly duckling. I saw Dubatowk’s eyes popping out of his head, his jaws sagging. He, too, had evidently not expected such a transformation. The violin screamed. Silence fell.

This attire was quite uncomfortable and it usually fetters the movement of a woman unaccustomed to it, makes her heavy and baggy, but this girl was like a queen in it, as if she had all her life worn only such clothing, her head proudly thrown back, she floated dignified and womanly. From under her veil her large eyes smiled archly and proudly, stirred by a feeling of her own beauty.

Dubatowk grunted even, so surprised was he, and he came up to her with quickening steps. With an incomprehensible expression of pain in his eyes, he took her face in the palms of his hands and kissed her on the forehead, muttering something like “such beauty”.

And then his lips again broke out into a smile.

“A Queen! My Beauty! I have lived to see this, holy martyrs! Yanovsky to her very finger tips! Allow me, dear daughter, your little foot.”

And this enormous bear, grunting, spread himself out on the floor and put his lips to the tip of her tiny slipper. Then he arose and began to laugh:

“Well, my little daughter, with such capital you should sit as quiet as a mouse, otherwise somebody will steal you.”

And he suddenly winked:

“And why not recall the old days, the clays of your childhood when we used to dance together? Give this old beaver one dance, and then let death come upon me.”

The white queen held out her hand to him.

“Come on, my swans, my beauties!” Dubatowk shouted to the veterans. “In the beginning give us our ‘Light Breeze’ – two circles, and then from my place – you know which one, don’t you? – change to a mazurka!”

And in a whisper he turned to me:

“Our dances are good in all respects, but there just isn’t such a fiery one as the Polish mazurka. Only ‘Lavonicha’ might dispute it, but to dance that there must be several pairs, and can these hags and snivellers dance it? For this you need ballet legs... like mine here.”

And he burst out laughing. But I looked in fright at his legs that were like hams and thought: “What he will make of this good dance with those?”

In the meantime everybody moved aside to clear the space for them. I heard a voice:

“He, Dubatowk... will dance!”

I did not leave this profanation, because I wished to see this forgotten dance about which I had heard more than once, and which, people said, had been widespread some eighty years ago.

The enormous bulk that was Dubatowk straightened up, and took Yanovsky by the limpid transparent wrist of her left hand.

From the first notes of “Light Breeze” he kicked his heels, made a three step with the right and then with the left foot. This huge man moved with an unexpected ease, at first kicking his heels after every three steps, and then simply on the tips of his toes. And at his side she floated, simply floated in the air, a golden, white and blue being, as if she were a bird of paradise, her veil soaring in the air.

Then they whirled, floated, sometimes drawing together, sometimes drawing apart, sometimes crossing each other’s path. No, this was not a profanation, just as the dance of an old man, once a great dancer, but now grown heavy, is not a profanation. It was in the full sense of a light breeze changing gradually into a storm, and the veil was circling in the air, the feet flashing by... And suddenly the musicians started a mazurka. As a matter of fact it was not a mazurka but some kind of an ancient local variation of its theme, including in itself elements of the “Light Breeze”.

And here the huge bulk rushed ahead, thundered with his heels, then began rising smoothly into the air, striking one foot against the other. And at his side she floated, light, and smiling and sublimely majestic.

This was indeed a real miracle: two people dressed as in olden times, creating a fairy tale before our very eyes.

Having circled about, Dubatowk led Yanovsky up to me. He was red as a lobster.

“She has tired me out...”

“But, Uncle, you are like a young man.”

“Young, young! No, words won’t help... The horse’s riding days are over. Soon I’ll be sent off to drink my beer with our forefather Abraham. For you, young ones, life’s ahead! Sing your songs and dance your dances! Dance, young fellow!”

The dancing was resumed. Svetsilovich did not like to dance. Varona sulked and he, too, did not come over, and I was left to dance with Miss Yanovsky till supper time. How she danced! Involuntarily I became lost in contemplation of this childish face, which had suddenly become so alive and pleasantly cunning. We danced and danced, and it was all not enough, we whirled about the hall the walls circled in front of us, and it was impossible to see anything on them. She probably felt as I did, but my feeling can be compared only with the dreams which sometimes come to us in our youth. In your dream you are dancing and a mysterious happiness envelops your heart. I could see only her pink face and her head thrown back, as it lightly turned about in time with the music.

We went to have supper. While leading her into the dining room, it seemed to me I heard some hissing in a corner of the hall. I looked there and in the semi darkness saw someone’s eyes – some old ladies were sitting there – and I walked on. And I distinctly heard somebody’s dry voice squeaking:

“Making merry as if death were facing them! They have sinned, have angered God and can yet make merry... A cursed family... It does not matter, soon the Wild Hunt will come... Just look at her, shameless one, all evening with this stranger, this atheist. She has found herself a friend, she has. Never mind! I swear that King Stakh will rise against her, too. The dark nights are beginning.”

These vile, icy words filled me with alarm. Now that I came to think of it, I would leave and perhaps deprive the girl of the possibility of getting married. Why am I spending the entire evening with her? What am I doing? I am not at all in love with her, and never will be, because I know my own heart. And I firmly decided not to dance with her any more or sit beside her at the table. And anyway, I had to leave that place. Enough of the idyll of an aristocratic gentleman. Must be off as soon as possible to common people, back to work. I seated her and stood aside, intending to find Svetsilovich and seat him with her. However, all my intentions went up in smoke. On entering the hall, Svetsilovich immediately took a seat at the end of the table. And Dubatowk sat down beside the mistress at the right and growled at me:

“Why are you standing? Sit down, my boy.”

“A fine Polish gentleman you would have made some hundred years ago. Strong hands, eyes like steel. A handsome fellow. But I’m curious to know whether you are a serious person. Not a featherbrain, are you?”