King Stakh's Wild Hunt (22 page)

“Nothing, to our regret, nothing,” the police officer answered, his voice pleasant and well modulated, his black velvety eyebrows playing. “This is a wild corner – impossible to carry out investigations here. I appreciate your noble grief... But what can be done here? Some years ago there was a vendetta here.” He pronounced it ‘vandetta’ and it was apparent he liked the word very much. “We were powerless to do anything. Such a forsaken place. For example, we could have made you, too, answerable for this, because, as you yourself say, you applied a weapon against these... say... hunters. We won’t do that. It’s none of our business, not at all. Perhaps he was murdered because of a person of the beautiful sex. People say he was in love with this – he moved his eyebrows in satisfaction – this lady, the mistress of Marsh Firs. Not bad... Or perhaps, this was a suicide? The deceased was a ‘melancholic’ fellow, ha-ha, suffered for the people.”

“But after all I myself saw the Wild Hunt.”

“Allow me not to believe you. Fairy tales have outlived themselves... It seems to me that your acquaintance with him is, in general, somewhat... say... suspicious. I have no desire to complicate matters for you, however... it is also highly suspicious of you striving so stubbornly to shift the attention of the investigation onto others, onto some Wild Hunt.”

“I have a paper showing that he was enticed out of his house.”

The officer turned purple, his eyes became shifty.

“What paper?” He asked avidly, and he reached his hand out to me. “You must hand it over, and if it is considered that this scrap of paper is worth something, it will be filed with other material concerning this case.”

I hid the paper because neither his eyes nor his greedily outstretched hand inspired trust.

“I’ll hand it over myself when and to whom I consider it necessary.”

“Well, so be it,” the policeman swallowed something, “that’s your own affair, most respected one. But I advise you not to tempt fate. The population here is a barbarous one,” he significantly looked at me, “they can kill.”

“I am not very much afraid of that. I can only say that if the police engage in discoursing instead of fulfilling their direct obligations, then it becomes necessary for the citizens themselves to take up their own defence. If the authorities exert all their efforts to hush up an affair, things give off a most unpleasant odour and make people think the most unpleasant thoughts.”

“What is this?” The brows of the policeman began creeping smartly somewhere towards his hair, “insulting the authorities, are you?”

“God forbid! But this gives me the right to send a copy of this letter to the provincial centre.”

“That’s as you like,” the police officer said, picking his teeth. “However, my dear Mr. Belaretsky, my advice to you is to reconcile yourself to things. And besides, it will hardly be pleasant for the authorities in the province to learn that a scientist is defending a former dissident in this way.”

Gallantly, in a chesty baritone, he was persuading me that a father could not have been more attentive to his son than he was to me.

“Just a moment,” I said, “is there any such law that liberals are outcasts and must be outlawed? A villain can murder them and bear no responsibility?”

“Don’t magnify things, my dear Mr. Belaretsky,” the dandy said, drawing out his words. “You are prone to magnifying life’s horrors.”

This ridiculous grumbler – and I can’t think of any other word – most certainly considered the death of a person only a “magnification of life’s horrors.”

“And I think,” I said vehemently, “that it is necessary to hand this case over to the court, that a legal investigation must be instigated. Here we have to deal with malicious intent. Here people are driven mad, of course with a definite aim in view. This gang holds the entire neighbourhood in terror, scares and murders people.”

“Now don’t, sir, no good going on like that, sir. This makes the people become more moderate. According to the rumour, the murdered one was a follower of Bacchus, given to drinking and merrymaking. And it is dangerous to manifest obvious sympathy for such fellows. A political suspect, disloyal, not trustworthy and obviously, a separatist, taking the part of the muzhyks, how should I put it... bewailing his younger brother.”

I was furious, but for the time being held myself together. To quarrel with the police was the least of my wants.

“You don’t wish to intervene in the case concerning the murder of Sir Svetsilovich?”

“God forbid, God forbid!” he interrupted. “It’s that we simply doubt whether we can unravel this case, and we cannot compel our investigator to do everything in his power to solve the case of a man whose ideas were directed in quite an opposite direction to those of all honest, loyal sons of our country.”

And with a charming smile he waved his hand in the air.

“All right. If the Imperial Russian Court does not wish to force the investigator to establish the truth in the case of the murder of Svetsilovich, who was an aristocrat, then perhaps it will wish to force the investigator to unravel the case concerning the attempt to deprive Nadzeya Yanovsky, the owner of Marsh Firs, of her sanity and her life?”

Comprehensively he looked at me, turned pink at some pleasant thought, and smacked his lips several times, lips fat and moist, and asked:

“But why are you taking such pains for her sake? You’ve decided, most certainly to make use of her yourself, haven’t you? And why not? I approve of that, in bed she is, most probably, not bad.”

The blood rushed to my face. The insult to my unfortunate friend, the insult to my beloved, whom even in my thoughts I could not call mine, became united into one. I don’t remember how a whip came to be in my hand. I choked with fury.

“You... you... skunk!”

And with all my might I dealt him a blow on his dark-pink face.

I thought he would take out his revolver and kill me. But this strong fellow only groaned. Once again I struck him across his face and threw the whip away in disgust.

Like a bullet he flew out of the room into the yard in great haste and only about half a mile away did he cry: “Help!”

When Ryhor learned about everything, he didn’t approve of what I had done. He said that I had spoiled everything, that I’d most certainly be called out to the district on the following day, and would be imprisoned for a week or banished from the region. But I had to be here, for the darkest nights had set in. I had however, no regrets. I had put all my hatred into that blow. And even if the district officials didn’t lift a finger to help me, still, now I knew well who had been my friend and who – my enemy.

Other events of this and the following day vaguely imprinted themselves on my memory: good old Dubatowk, bitter tears choking him as he cried over the dead youth, and still hardly able to move after the “treat” I had given him; Miss Nadzeya standing at the coffin, wrapped in a black mantilla, so beautiful, so pure in her mourning.

As if in a day dream I afterwards recalled the funeral procession. I was escorting Lady Yanovsky, holding her by the arm, and against the background of the grey autumn sky people were walking with their heads bared, the twisted birches throwing their dead yellow leaves at the feet of these people. The face of the murdered man was floating over the tops of their heads.

Peasant women, muzhyks, children, old men following behind the coffin, and a quiet sobbing sounding in the air. In front of us Ryhor carrying on his back a large cross made of oak.

Louder and louder, soaring upward over the entire mourning procession, over the wet land, the bewailing voices of the women began:

“But to whom then have you left us? And why have you fallen asleep, our own, our dear one? And why are your clear eyes closed, your white hands folded? And who then shall defend us against the unjust judges? While the aristocrats all around are merciless, no cross on them! Our beloved one, where then have you flown to, away from us, for whom have you deserted us, your poor little children? As if there were no brides for you all around, that you had to go and marry the Earth, you, our darling? And what kind of a hut have you chosen for yourself? No windows in it, no doors, and not the free sky over the roof – only the damp soil. And not a wife at your side – a cold board! Neither girl-friends there, nor a beloved one! Then who will kiss you on the lips, and who will comb your little head?! And why have the little lights grown dim? And why are the conifers reproving? It’s not your wife crying, your beloved! After all it’s not she who is weeping, wasting herself away. It’s people, good people, weeping over you! It’s not a little star that’s lit up in the sky! It’s the tiny wax candle in your little hands that’s begun to glow!”

The coffin was accompanied by such sincere lamentations and weeping from the people of the neighbourhood, by moaning and groaning that cannot be bought from professional wailers.

And here was the deep grave. When the time came to leave, Yanovsky fell on her knees and kissed the hand of the man who had perished for her sake. With difficulty I tore her away from the coffin when the people began lowering it into the grave. About three dozen peasants dragged over an enormous grey stone on runners and began to pull it up the hill where the lonely grave had been dug. A cross was carved on the stone and also the name and surname – in crooked, clumsy letters.

Lumps of soil ricocheted against the coffin’s cover, hiding the dear face from me. Then the enormous grey stone was placed near the grave. Ryhor and five peasants took old guns and began to shoot into the indifferent sky. The last of the Svetsilovich-Yanovskys had floated off into the unknown.

“Soon the same will happen with me, too,” Yanovsky whispered to me. “The sooner the better.”

The shots thundered. Like stone were the faces of the people.

Then, in accordance with an ancient custom among the gentry, the family coat of arms was smashed against the tombstone.

The family remained without a future. The family had become extinct.

I felt that I would go mad if I did not occupy myself in searching for and finding the guilty ones, and didn’t punish them. If there is no God, if there is no justice to be found among the authorities, I myself will be both God and Judge.

And by God, hell itself will tremble, if they fall into my hands. I shall pull out the sinews of them living.

Ryhor said that his friends were searching in the Reserve, that he himself had examined the place of the murder and found there a cigarette butt. He had also found it was a tall, slender man who had smoked the cigarette under the pines while awaiting Svetsilovich.

Besides that, he had found a paper wad from the murderer’s gun, and also the bullet that had killed my friend. When I unfolded the wad, I became convinced that the scrap of paper, too thick to be from a newspaper, was most likely a piece of a page from a journal.

I read:

“Each one of them is guilty of some offence when they are led to be executed. Forgive me, Your Highness, you’ve forgotten the crucifixion... Forgive me, God has deprived me of my reason...”

These words reminded me of something very familiar. Where could I have met something similar? And soon I recalled that I had read just these words in the journal
North-West
Antiquity!
When I asked Yanovsky who subscribed there for it, she answered in an indifferent tone, that besides themselves – nobody. And here a blow awaited me. I found out in the library that in one of the numbers of the journal a few pages were missing, and specifically those that I needed.

I grew cold – things had taken a very serious turn. The instigator of the Wild Hunt was here in the castle. But who then was it? Not I nor Yanovsky, nor the foolish housekeeper, who every day now on seeing the mistress began to cry and moreover, it was apparent that she regretted her misdeeds. And this meant that only Bierman–Hatsevich was left.

This was logical. Bierman was a runaway criminal, and was well informed of all ongoing events. It was possible that it was he who had shot at me, who had torn out a page from the journal and had killed Svetsilovich. I couldn’t understand one thing only: why had he tried to convince me that the greatest danger was the Wild Hunt and not the Little Man? And also the fact that he, Bierman, could not have killed Roman since it was not he who had invited Nadzeya to the Kulsha’s, and during the murder he was at home. However, hadn’t Svetsilovich that last day said that it was a man beyond suspicion? And how frightened he became, this Bierman, when I came into his room! And then couldn’t he have been simply the one who inspired this abomination? But really, how then in that case explain the existence of the Lady-in-Blue? And this is the most inexplicable fact in the entire affair. And most important of all it was impossible to understand what Bierman had to gain. But such a fiend might think up anything at all.

From Miss Yanovsky I received her father’s personal archive and carefully examined the material of his last days. Nothing comforting besides notes that he no longer liked Bierman; he often disappeared from the house somewhere, was too much interested in the Yanovsky genealogy, in old plans of the castle. But this, too, was a significant fact. Why not suppose that he, Bierman, was responsible also for the appearance of the Little Man, more exactly speaking, for producing the Little Man’s steps? After all, perhaps he had been able to dig up old plans, to make use of some acoustic secrets of the castle and frighten people every night with the sound of those steps.

I told Ryhor about my findings and stated my views on the subject, and he said that it was quite possible that it was so, he even promised to help, since his uncle and grandfather had been stone masons at the Yanovsky’s before serfdom had been repealed.

“Somebody is hiding here somewhere, the scoundrel, but who he is, where the passages are, how he gets into those places, we don’t know,” Ryhor sighed. “No matter, we’ll find out. But take care. I’ve met in my lifetime only two worthy men among the living. It will be a pity if something should happen to you, too. Then all these rotten people will have no right to eat bread and breathe the air.”