King Stakh's Wild Hunt (2 page)

Such was, for instance, the legend of Masheka – I was hunting a different group of legends when I stumbled on this one. I had to hurry, as the very notion of a legend and a tale was dying out.

I don’t know how it is with other ethnographers, but it has always been difficult for me to leave any locality. It would seem to me that during the winter that I had to spend in town, some woman might die there, the woman, you understand, who is the only one who knows that particular enchanting old tale. This story will die together with her, and nobody will hear it, and my people and I shall be robbed.

Therefore my anger and my anxiety should not surprise anyone.

I was in this mood when one of my friends advised me to go to the District N., which was even at that time considered a most unwelcoming place.

Could he have foreseen that I would almost lose my mind because of the horrors facing me there, that I would find courage and fortitude in myself, and what would I discover? However, I shall not forestall events.

My preparations did not take long. I packed all necessary things into a medium sized travelling bag, hired a carriage and soon left the hub of a comparatively advanced society, putting the civilization behind me. And so, I came to the neighbouring district with its forestry and swamps, a territory which was no smaller than perhaps Luxemburg.

At first, along both sides of the road I saw fields with several wild pear trees, resembling oaks, standing scattered here and there. We came across villages on our way in which whole colonies of storks lived, but then the fertile soil came to an end and endless forest land appeared in front of us. Trees stood like columns, the brushwood along the road deadened the rumbling of the wheels. The forest ravines gave off a smell of mould and decay. Sometimes from under the very hoofs of our horses flocks of heath cocks would rise up into the air – in autumn heath cocks always bunch together in flocks – and here and there from beneath the brushwood and heather brown or black caps of nice thick mushrooms were already peeping out.

Twice we spent the nights in small forest lodges, glad to see their feeble lights in the blind windows. Midnight. A baby is crying, and something in the yard seems to be disturbing the horses – a bear is probably passing nearby, and over the trees, over the ocean-like forest, a solid rain of stars.

It is impossible to breathe in the lodge. A little girl is rocking the cradle with her foot. Her refrain is as old as the hills:

Don’t go kitty on the bench,
You will get your paws kicked.
Don’t go kitty on the floor,
You will get your tail kinked.
A–a–a!

Oh, how fearful, how eternal and immeasurable is thy sorrow, my Belarus!

Midnight. Stars. Primitive darkness in the forests.

Nevertheless, even this was Italy in comparison to what we saw two days later.

The forest was beginning to wither, was less dense than before. And soon an endless plain came into view.

This was not an ordinary plain throughout which our rye rolls on in small rustling waves; it was not even a quagmire... a quagmire is not at all monotonous. You can find there some sad, warped saplings, a little lake may suddenly appear, whereas this was the gloomiest, the most hopeless of our landscapes – the peat bogs. One has to be a man-hater with the brain of a cave man to imagine such places. Nevertheless, this was not the figment of someone’s imagination; here before our very eyes lay the swamp.

This boundless plain was brownish, hopelessly smooth, boring and gloomy.

At times we met great heaps of stones, at times it was a brown cone. Some God forsaken man was digging peat, nobody knows why. At times we came across a lonely little hut along the roadway, with its one window, with its chimney sticking out from the stove, with not even a tree anywhere around. The forest that dragged on beyond the plain seemed even gloomier than it really was. After a short while little islands of trees began coming into view, trees covered with moss and cobwebs, most of them as warped and ugly as those in the drawings that illustrate a horribly frightening tale.

I was ready to growl, such resentment did I feel.

As if to spite us, the weather changed for the worse. Low level dark clouds were creeping on to meet us. Here and there leaden strips of rain came slanting down at us. Not a single crested lark did we see on the road, and this was a bad sign – it would rain cats and dogs all night through.

I was ready to turn in at the first hut, but none came in sight. Cursing my friend who had sent me here, I told the man to drive faster, and I drew my rain cloak closer around me. The sky became filled with dark, heavy rain clouds again and a gloomy and cold twilight made me shiver as it descended over the plain. A feeble streak of lightning flashed in the distance.

No sooner did the disturbing thought strike me that at this time of the year it was too late for thunder, than an ocean of cold water came pouring down on me, on the horses and the coachman.

Someone had handed the plain over into the clutches of night and rain.

The night was as dark as soot, I couldn’t even see my fingers, and only guessed that we were still on the move because the carriage kept on jolting. The coachman, too, could probably see nothing and gave himself up entirely to the instincts of his horses.

Whether they really had their instincts I don’t know – the fact remains that our closed carriage was thrown out from a hole onto a kind of a hillock and back again into a hole.

Lumps of clay, marshy dirt and paling were flying into the carriage, onto my cloak, into my face, but I resigned myself to this and prayed for only one thing – not to fall into the quagmire. I knew what these marshes were famous for. The carriage, the horses, and the people, all would be swallowed up, and it would never enter anybody’s mind that somebody had ever been there. That only a few minutes ago a human being had screamed there until a thick brown marsh mass had blocked his mouth, and now that human being was lying together with the horses buried six metres down below the ground.

Suddenly there was a roar, a dismal howl. A long, drawn out howl, an inhuman howl... The horses gave a jerk. I was almost thrown out... they ran on, heaven knows where, apparently straight on across the swamp. Then something cracked, and the back wheels of the carriage were drawn down. On feeling water under my feet, I grabbed the coachman by the shoulder and he, with a kind of indifference, uttered:

“It’s all over with us, sir. We shall die here!”

But I did not want to die. I snatched the whip from out of the coachman’s hand and began to strike in the darkness where the horses should have been.

That unearthly sound howled again, the horses neighed madly and pulled. The carriage trembled as if it were trying with all its might to pull itself out of that swamp, then a loud smacking noise from under the wheels, the cart bent, jolted even worse, the mare began to neigh! And lo! A miracle! The cart rolled on, and was soon knocking along on firm ground. Only now did I comprehend that it was none other than me in my own person who had uttered those heart wrenching howls. I now was deeply ashamed of myself.

I was about to ask the coachman to stop the horses on this relatively firm ground, and spend the night there, when the rain began to quiet down.

At this moment something wet and prickly struck me in the face. “The branch of a fir tree,” I guessed. “Then we must be in a forest, the horses will stop on their own.”

However, time passed, once or twice fir tree branches hit me in the face again, but the carriage slid on evenly and smoothly – a sign that we were on a forest path.

I decided that it had to lead somewhere and gave myself up to fate. Indeed, when about thirty minutes had passed, a warm and beckoning light appeared ahead of us in this dank and pitch-dark night.

We soon saw that it was not a woodsman’s hut and not a tar sprayer’s hut as I had thought at first, but some kind of a large building, too large even for the city. In front of the building – a flower bed, surrounded with wet trees, a black mouth of the fir tree lane through which we had come.

The entrance had a kind of a high rooflet over it and a heavy bronze ring on the door.

At first I and then the coachman, then again I, knocked on the door with this ring. We rang timidly, knocked a little louder, beat the ring very bravely, stopped, called out, then beat the door with our feet – but to no avail. At last we heard somebody moving behind the door, uncertainly, timidly. Then from somewhere at the top came a woman’s voice, hoarse and husky:

“Who’s there?”

“We’re travellers, dear lady, let us in.”

“You aren’t from the Hunt, are you?”

“Whatever hunt are you speaking of? We’re wet through, from head to foot, can hardly stand on our feet. For God’s sake let us in.”

The woman remained silent, then in a hesitating voice she inquired:

“But whoever are you? What’s your name?”

“Belaretsky is my name. I’m with my coachman.”

“
Count
Belaretsky?”

“I hope I am a Count,” I answered with the plebeian’s lack of reverence for titles.

The voice hardened:

“Well then, go on, my good man, back to where you came from. Just to think of it, he
hopes
he is a Count! Joking about serious things like that in the middle of the night? Come on, off you go! Go back and look for some lair in the forest, if you’re such a smart fellow.”

“My dear lady,” I begged, “gladly would I look for one and not disturb people, but I am a stranger in this area. I’m from the district town; we’ve lost our way, not a dry thread on us.”

“Away, away with you!” answered an inexorable voice.

In answer to that, anybody else in my place would have probably grabbed a stone and begun beating on the door with it, swearing at the cruel owners, but even at such a moment I could not rid myself of the thought it was wrong to break into a strange house. Therefore I only signed and turned to the coachman.

“Well then, let’s leave this place.”

We were about to return to our carriage, but our ready agreement had apparently made a good impression, for the old woman softened and called us:

“Just a moment, wayfarers, but who are you, anyway?”

I was afraid to answer “an ethnographer”, because twice before after saying this I had been taken for a bad painter. Therefore I answered:

“A merchant.”

“But how did you get into the park when a stone wall and an iron fence encircle it?”

“Oh! I don’t know,” I answered sincerely. “We were riding somewhere through the marsh, fell somewhere through somewhere, we hardly got out... Something roared there too...” Truth to tell, I had already given up all hope, however, after these words of mine the old woman quietly sighed and said in a frightened voice:

“Oh! Oh! My God! Then you must have escaped through the Giant’s Gap for only from that side there’s no fence. That’s how lucky you were. You’re a fortunate man. The Heavenly Mother saved you! Oh, good God! Oh, heavenly martyrs!”

And such sympathy and such kindness were heard in those words that I forgave her the hour of questioning at the entrance. The woman thundered with the bolts, then the door opened, and a dim orange-coloured stream of light pierced through the darkness of the night.

A woman stood before us, short of stature, in a dress wide as a church bell with a violet-coloured belt, a dress which our ancestors wore in the times of King Sas, wearing a starched cap on her head. Her face was covered with a web of wrinkles. She had a hooked nose and an immense mouth, resembling a nutcracker with her lips slightly protruding. She was round like a small keg, of medium height, with plump little hands, as if she were asking to be called “Mother dear”. This old woman held tremendous oven prongs in her hands – armour! I was about to burst into laughter, but remembered in time how cold and rainy it was outside, and therefore kept silent.
How many people even to this very day keep from laughing at things deserving to be laughed at, fearing the rain outside?

We went into a little room that smelled like mice, and immediately pools of water ran down from our clothes onto the floor. I glanced at my feet and was horrified – a brown mass of mud enveloped my legs almost up to my knees, making them look like boots.

The old woman only shook her head.

“See, I told you it was that scary thing! You, Mr. Merchant, must light a big candle as an offering to God for having escaped so easily!” And she opened a door leading into a neighbouring room with an already lit fireplace. “You’ve had a narrow escape. Take off your clothes, dry yourselves. Have you any other clothes to get into?”

Luckily, my sack was dry. I changed my clothing before the fireplace. The woman dragged away our clothes – mine and the coachman’s – and returned with dry clothing for the coachman. She came in paying no attention to the coachman being quite naked, standing bashfully with his back turned to her.

She looked at his back that had turned blue and said disapprovingly:

“You, young man, don’t turn your back to me. I’m an old woman. And don’t squeeze your toes. Here, take these and dress yourself.”

When we had somewhat warmed up at the fireplace, the old woman looked at us with her deep sunken eyes and said:

“Warmed up a bit? Good! You, young man, will retire for the night with Jan at his quarters, it won’t be comfortable for you here... Jan!”

Jan showed up. An almost blind old man about sixty years of age, with long grey hair, a nose as sharp as an awl, sunken cheeks and a moustache reaching down to the middle of his chest.

At first I had been surprised that the old woman all alone with only oven prongs in her hands had not been afraid to open the door to two men who had appeared in the middle of the night who knows from where. However, after seeing Jan I understood that all this time he had been hiding somewhere behind her and she had counted on him for help.

His help would be “just grand”. In the hands of the old man I saw a gun. To be exact, it wasn’t a gun. “A musket” would be a more correct name for the weapon the man was holding. The thing was approximately six inches taller than Jan himself, the gun barrel had notches in it and was bell-shaped at the end, the rifle stock and butt stock were worn from long handling, the slow match was hanging down. In other words, the item’s rightful place was long ago in an Armoury Museum. Such guns usually shoot like cannons, and they recoil on the shoulder with such a feedback that if unprepared for the shock a person drops down on the ground like a sheaf.