King Stakh's Wild Hunt (13 page)

The room grew quiet. Dubatowk aimed at his target, grinned, baring his teeth, and suddenly the sabre described an almost invisible half circle in the air.

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

“That’s the way to do it!” He shouted at us.

I managed at this time to get Svetsilovich 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 do you believe it?”

“I believe you,” he said simply. “And I promise that while I am alive, not a single hair shall fall off her head. Be he the 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 – finally various rumours and gossips might be of definite use. We decided not to get Dubatowk 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, offered drink. I noticed that Dubatowk was filling our wine glasses, both his and mine, equally, and as he drank he kept sizing me up. 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 dumplings swimming in ghee, so good as saints had never eaten” as he called them. He was evidently studying me from every angle. I drank but did not get drunk.

The rest of Dubatowk’s visitors, excluding Svetsilovich, 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, help 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 Dubatowk 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 came from everybody “Glory! Glory!” Varona alone looked at me with acid and gloom in his eyes. They drank to my health, to the gentry – the salt of the Earth, to my future wife.

When the enthusiasm had abated somewhat, Dubatowk 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,” Dubatowk 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,” Varona suddenly hissed through his teeth. I hadn’t suspected that he could be 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 turned pale. 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 bachelors 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!” Dubatowk tried to calm us. “Varona, you are drunk.”

“Think for 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 Dubatowk grabbed us by the shoulders and separated us, shoving Varona aside.

“Shame on you, Ales!” Dubatowk thundered. “You pup... Make up with him immediately!”

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

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

“Go to hell,” Varona shouted, baring his teeth.

Without uttering a word, Dubatowk 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.”

“Ales,” Dubatowk 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. Belaretsky. 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.”

Dubatowk 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 Yanovsky, my work, even myself.

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

“You lion cub!” I heard Dubatowk’s broken voice.

I glanced at him and was shocked to see a pitiful old man. His bitter distorted face, his eyes expressing an inhuman fear and shame, such shame that death would be better. He was almost in tears. He did not even look at me, just turned around and waved his hand.

The shed was attached to the house. It was an enormous chamber with grey moss in the grooves of its walls. Spider 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 situation could be compared with that of a bull in the slaughterhouse 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. After such a wonderful meal, I suppose.

I was so depressed and disgusted that I could hardly keep from bellowing, but I gathered myself just 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 Dubatowk - handed me a pistol too and pushed two others into my pockets. I noticed nothing of their manipulations. 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, is 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 Varona’s seconds announced:

“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 with my skin did I feel Varona’s presence in the room.

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 was the wall.

I stood still and listened. At this moment something forced me to throw myself down side wards 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 overwhelmed 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.”

This was when 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 response, entirely unexpectedly, I heard a faint groan and the sound of a body falling.

“Quick, over here!” I shouted. “Quick! To my aid! It seems I’ve killed him!”

A blinding yellow stream of light fell on the floor. When people came into the room, I saw Varona lying stretched out motionless on the floor, his face turned upward. I ran up to him, raised his head. My hands touched something warm and sticky. Varona’s face became even yellower.

“Varona! Varona! Wake up! Wake up!”

Dubatowk, gloomy and severe, came floating from somewhere, as if from out of a fog. He began fussing over the body lying there, then looked into my eyes and burst out laughing. It seemed to me I had gone mad. I got up and, almost unconscious, took out the second gun from my pocket. The thought crossed my mind that it was very simple to aim it at my temple and...

“No more! I can’t take any more!”

“Well, but why? What’s wrong, young man?” I heard Dubatowk’s voice. “It wasn’t you who insulted him. He wanted to bring disgrace on both you and me. You have two more shots yet. Just look how upset you are! It’s all because you’re not used to it, because your hands are clean, because you have a conscientious heart. Well, well... but you haven’t killed him, not at all. He’s been deafened, that’s all, like a bull at the slaughter. Look how cleverly you’ve done him. Shot off a piece of his ear and also ripped off a piece of the skin on his head. No matter, a week or so in bed and he’ll be better.”

“I don’t need your two shots! I don’t want them!” I screamed like a baby, and almost stamped my feet. “I give them to him as a gift!”

My second and some other gentleman whose entire face consisted of an enormous turned up nose and unshaven chin carried him off somewhere.

“He can have these two shots for himself!”

Only now did I understand what an awful thing it is to kill a person. Better, probably, just to kick the bucket yourself. Not that I was such a saint. Quite another thing if it’s a skirmish, in a battle, in a burst of fury. Not in a dark room where a man is hiding from you as a rat from a fox terrier. I fired both pistols right at the wall, threw them down on the ground and left.