King Stakh's Wild Hunt (18 page)

His eyes suddenly became bitter, the corners of his eyebrows meeting at the bridge of his nose. “Girls were invented by the devil. All of them should be strangled to death, and the boys fighting among themselves for the few remaining ones, will kill themselves out. But nothing can be done…” Unexpectedly he ended up with: “Take me, for instance. Although my forest freedom is dear to me, still I sometimes think about Zosya, who also lives here. Maybe I’ll live alone all my life in the forest. That’s why I believed you, because I sometimes begin to go mad for those devilish female eyes...” I didn’t think so at all, but didn’t consider it necessary to convince this bear that he was wrong. Ryhor continued, “But, my friend, remember this well. If you have come to stir me up and then to betray me – there are many who have a grudge against me here – so know this – your stay will not be long on this Earth. Ryhor is not afraid of anybody. Quite the opposite, everybody is afraid of Ryhor. And Ryhor has friends. It’s impossible to live here otherwise. And his hand shoots accurately. In a word, you must know this, I’ll kill!”

I looked at him reproachfully, and he, glancing at my eyes, burst out laughing loudly, and his tone, as he ended up, was quite a different one:

“And anyway, I’ve been waiting for you a long time. For some reason or other it seemed to me that you wouldn’t leave things alone, and if you took to clearing them up, you wouldn’t pass me by. So well then, why not help each other?”

We parted at the edge of the forest near the Giant’s Gap, arranging to meet in the near future. I went home straight through the park.

When I returned to Marsh Firs, twilight had already descended on the park, the woman and her child were sleeping in one of the rooms on the first floor, but the mistress was not in the house. I waited for about an hour, and when it was quite dark, I could not bear it any longer and went out in search of her. I hadn’t walked far along the dark lane when I saw a white figure moving towards me in fright.

“Miss Nadzeya!”

“Oh! Oh, it’s you? Thank God! I was so worried! You came straight here?”

Bashfully she looked down at the ground. When we came up to the castle, I said to her quietly:

“Miss Nadzeya, never leave this house in the evening. Promise me that.”

She promised, but only reluctantly.

This night gave me a clue to the solution of a question that interested me, a question that turned out to be an entirely uninteresting one, save perhaps only in that I once again became convinced of the fact that stupid people, otherwise generally kind-hearted souls, can be contemptible.

On hearing steps again in the night, I went out and saw the housekeeper with a candle in her hand. I followed her as she went into the room with the closet, but this time I decided not to retreat. The room was again empty, the closet also, but I tried all the boards of the back wall – the closet stood in a niche – then I tried to raise them and became convinced that they were removable. The old woman was probably deaf; otherwise she would have heard me. With great difficulty I managed to push myself through the cracks I had made, and I saw a vaulted passage that led sharply downstairs. The steps were damaged and slippery, and the passage so narrow that my shoulders rubbed against the walls. I went down the steps and saw a small room, also vaulted. There I found two closets, and along the walls of the room stood trunks, bound with iron. Everything was open and paper and leaves of parchment were scattered everywhere. A table stood in the middle, beside it on a roughly knocked together stool was sitting the housekeeper. She appeared to be examining a sheet, quite yellowed with time. The greedy expression on her face was shocking.

When I entered, she screamed with fright, made an attempt to hide the sheet. I managed to grab her hand.

“Miss housekeeper, give that to me. And be kind enough to tell me why you come here every night to this secret archive, what you are doing here, why you frighten people with your footsteps.”

“Ugh! My God! How quick you are!” She exclaimed, collecting herself quickly. “Wants to know everything...”

Evidently, because she was on the first floor and did not consider it necessary to stand on ceremony with me, she began to speak with that expressive intonation of the common folk. “And teal and poppy you don’t want? Just see what he needs! And he’s taken the paper. May your children hide your bread from you in your old age as you have hidden this paper from me. Perhaps I have more right to be here than you. But he, just look, sits there, asking his questions.... May you be overtaken by ulcers the way you overtake me with your questions!”

This had become boring, and I said: “What is it you want? Prison time? Why are you here? Or perhaps it’s you who sends signals to the Wild Hunt from here?”

The housekeeper was offended. Wrinkles gathered on her face.

“Shame on you, sir, what a sin!” she quietly muttered. “I’m an honest woman, I’ve come here to get what’s mine. There it is, in your hand. It belongs to me.” I looked at the piece of paper. It was an extract from a resolution passed by a smallholder claims committee:

“And although the above mentioned Zakrewsky declares to this very day that he and not Haraburda is heir to the Yanovskys, this case which has lasted over a period of twenty years, is now closed, as not having been proven, and Mr. Isidore Zarkevsky is deprived of his rights to aristocratic rank for the lack of proof.”

“So what?” I asked.

“This is what, my dear fellow,” the housekeeper came back bitingly, “I am Zakrewsky, that’s what I am. And it was my father who went to court with the great and the powerful. I didn’t know about it, but my thanks to some good people. They told me what to do. The district judge took ten little red ones, but he gave me good advice. Give me that paper.”

“It won’t help you,” I said. “It isn’t really a document. Here the court refuses your father his request, even his right to the gentry is not established. I know about this examination of the petty gentry very well. If your father had had papers to prove his right for substitution after the Yanovskys – that would be another matter. But he did not hand in any papers – and that means that he did not have them.”

The housekeeper’s face reflected a piteous attempt to understand these complicated things.

Then, not believing me, she asked:

“But perhaps the Yanovskys bribed them? These people who raise trifling objections, just you give them some money! I know. They took the papers away from my father and hid them here.”

“And can you sue them twenty years running?” I asked. “Twenty more years?”

“My dear fellow, by that time I’ll have gone to wash God’s portals for him.”

“Well, so you see. And you have no papers. You have searched everything here, haven’t you?”

“Everything, young man, everything. But it’s a shame to lose what’s mine.”

“But they are all only vague rumours.”

“But the money – those red ones and the blue ones – mine.”

“And it is very bad to rummage nights among papers not belonging to you.”

“My dear fellow, the money is mine,” she drawled dully.

“The court will not grant you it, even if there were any papers to prove it. This entailed estate has belonged to the Yanovskys over a period of 300 years or even longer.”

“But it’s mine, my dear fellow,” almost in tears, and the greed on her face was loathsome to see. “I would have stuffed them, the dear ones, here, right here in my stockings. I would have eaten money, slept on money.”

“There aren’t just any papers,” losing all patience. “There is a lawful heir.”

And at this moment something awful occurred. The old woman stretched her neck, the neck became very long – and with her face close to mine, hissed:

“So perhaps... perhaps... she will die soon.”

Her face even brightened at this hope.

“She will die, and that’s all. She’s weak, sleeps badly, almost no blood in her veins, coughs all the time. It won’t cost her anything to die. The curse will be fulfilled. Why must Haraburda get this castle when I could live in it? It won’t make any difference to her, her suffering will be over – and off with her to the holy spirits. While I here would...”

The expression on my face probably changed for something frightening, for I was furious and she suddenly pulled her head back into her shoulders.

“Hyena! Scavenging a corpse? Only she’s no dead corpse, she is a living, breathing person. And such a person who is worth dozens of your kind, who has a greater right than you to walk this Earth, you foolish, empty thing.”

“My dear fellow...” she whined.

“Shut up, you witch! And you wish to send her to her grave? You are all alike here, blood suckers! You are all ready to murder a person for the money. All of you – spiders. For the sake of those blue little papers... And do you know what life is, that it is so easy for you to speak of taking another person’s life? I wouldn’t scatter pearls at your feet, but hear me! You want her to exchange the sunlight, joy, good people, the long life awaiting her for the worms in the ground, is that what you want? So that
you
can sleep on money? The same money that the Wild Hunt is seeking here? Maybe it’s you who lets the Lady-in-Blue in? Why did you open the window in the hall yesterday?”

“Oh, dear Lord! I didn’t open it! It was so cold then. I was even surprised at it being open.” She was almost wailing.

Her face expressed such fear that I could no longer keep silent. I lost all prudence.

“You want her death! You evil dog, you crow! Get out! She’s a noble lady, your mistress. Perhaps she’ll not drive you out, but I promise you, that if you do not leave this house that you have polluted with your stinking breath, I’ll see that everyone of your kind here is put in prison.”

She went over to the staircase crying bitterly. I followed. We went upstairs to the room where that closet was, and I stopped in surprise. Lady Yanovsky in a white dress with a candle in her hand was standing before us. Her face was sad, and she looked at the housekeeper with disgust.

“Mr. Belaretsky, I heard your talk accidentally, heard it from the very beginning. I had followed in your footsteps. At last I’ve learned the meaning of indignity and the depth of one’s conscience. And you...” she turned to Zakrewsky, standing aside with head lowered, “You can remain here. I forgive you. With difficulty, but I forgive you. And you, Belaretsky, forgive her. Stupid people should sometimes be forgiven. Because... Where will she go from here? Nobody needs her, a foolish old woman.”

A tear fell off her eyelashes. She turned around and left. I went after her. Lady Yanovsky stopped at the end of the hall and said quietly:

“For the sake of these papers people cripple their souls. If my ancestors hadn’t forbidden it, how gladly I would have given this mouldy old house to somebody. This house, and also my name, are a torture for me. If only I could die soon. Then I’d leave it to this woman with a heart of stone and a stupid head. Let her be happy if she is able to creep on her belly for the sake of this junk.”

In silence we went down into the room on the lower floor and over to the fireplace. We stood there looking at the fire, and its crimson reflections fell on Yanovsky’s face. In the last few days she had changed noticeably, perhaps she had grown up, perhaps she was simply coming into womanhood. I hope no one besides myself had noticed this. I was the only one to see that life was warming up as yet unnoticeably in this pale sprout that had been growing underground all this time. Her look had become more meaningful and inquisitive, although her face was still just as badly disfigured by the mask of that same chronic fear. All together, she had become a little livelier. For some reason the pale sprout had come to life.

“It’s good to stand like this, Miss Nadzeya,” I said pensively. “A fire burning...”

“A fire... It’s good to have it, to see it burn. It is good when people don’t lie.”

A wild cry, an inhuman cry, reached us from the yard – it seemed that a demon screamed and sobbed, not a human being. And immediately following this cry, we heard a steady, mighty thundering of hoofs near the porch. And the voice sobbed and screamed so terrifyingly that it could not have come from out of the breast of a human being.

“Roman of the last generation – come out! The revenge is here! The last revenge!”

And something else screamed, something nameless. I could have run out onto the porch, could have shot at these dirty, wild swine and laid down on the spot at least one of them, but in my arms was Nadzeya, and I felt the beating of her frightened little heart through her dress, felt how it was gradually dying out, beating perceptibly less and less often. Frightened for her life, I began to stroke her hair timidly. Slowly she regained consciousness and her eyelashes imperceptibly began to quiver at the touch of my hand on her head. In such a way a frightened puppy accepts the caress of a person who pats it for the first time; its eyebrows quiver, expecting a hit each time the hand is raised.

The thunder was already retreating and my entire being was ready to jump out on the porch together with her, shoot at those bats, and fall down on the steps together with her and die, feeling her at my side, all of her here at my side. In any case, to go on living like this was impossible.

And the voice was sobbing already from far away in the distance:

“Roman! Roman! Come out! Fall under the horses’ hoofs! Not now, not yet! Later! Tomorrow! Later! Promise we will come! We’ll come!”

And silence. She was in my arms. It seemed as if quiet music had begun playing somewhere, perhaps in my own soul. Quietly, so quietly, far, far away, gently. About sunshine, about raspberry-coloured meadows under glistening dew, about nightingales’ merry songs in the crowns of far away lindens. Her face was calm, like that of a sleeping child. Here a sigh broke out, her eyes opened, she looked around in surprise, became severe.

“I beg your pardon, I’ll leave.”

And she made her way to the staircase leading to the second floor – a white little figure.

It was only now, trembling with excitement, that I understood how courageous, how strong was her soul, if after such nerve wracking experiences she had gone out to meet me and opened the doors twice. Once when I, a complete stranger, arrived here, and once when I ran up to her doors, alarmed by the thundering hoofs of the Wild Hunt under her very windows, chasing me. Most likely it was the Hunt and the dark autumn nights that had impelled her to do that, as does a trustful feeling compel a hare hunted down by dogs, to press itself against the feet of an accidental passerby. This girl had very good nerves if she had endured this life here for two years.