King Stakh's Wild Hunt (30 page)

It was reality, the woman from the portrait, resembling Nadzeya Yanovsky, and at the same time not at all like her. The face elongated and calm, as peaceful as death – the expression altogether a different one. She herself was taller and stronger. The eyes looked lifeless but penetrating, deep as a pool.

The Lady-in-Blue came floating over, was already here in her amazing attire, which in the moonlight fog played like shining waves; she was floating into the middle of the room, reaching out with her waving hands.

I felt that I had finally quite awakened, but my feet were in chains. The surprising apparition was moving towards me.

“What can have happened to the lady of the house, perhaps she is dead now and that is why such an indescribable fright took hold of me just now in my dream?”

This thought gave me strength. I threw off the blanket with my feet and prepared for an attack. When she floated up closer, I grabbed her outstretched hands. In one hand I held the sleeve of her magic attire, some kind of a veil slipped out of my fingers; in the other was something surprisingly weak and warm.

With a strong jerk I pulled her towards me and I heard a scream. I understood the essence of the phenomenon when I saw a look of fright on her face again, as if she had awakened from sleep; in her eyes there appeared a meaningful light, an expression of pain, alarm and something else comparable to what one can see in the eyes of a dog awaiting a blow. The Lady-in-Blue began to tremble in my arms, unable to utter a sound, and then broke into convulsive weeping.

The resemblance of this creature to Nadzeya Yanovsky was so startling that I, forgetting myself, screamed:

“Miss Nadzeya, calm yourself! What’s the matter? Where are you?”

She couldn’t say a word. Then the pupils of her eyes filled with horror.

“Ah!” she screamed and shook her head in fright.

Awakened while sleepwalking, she as yet understood nothing except the fear in her tiny, trembling little heart. Indescribable fear overtook me, too, for I knew that from such a fright people often lose their minds or remain dumb.

I was slow to grasp what I was doing, how to save her, but I began to cover her with kisses, kissing her sweet smelling long hair, frightened, trembling eyelids, her cold hands.

“Nadzeya, my beloved! My dearest! Don’t fear! I’m right here, I’m with you. I’ve destroyed King Stakh! Now nobody will disturb your peace, your rest. Now you are safe.”

Slowly, very slowly, consciousness returned to her. She opened her eyes again. And I stopped kissing her.

Although that was harder than death itself.

“What is it? What room is this? Why am I here?” her lips whispered.

I was still holding this little reed, without which I, a strong man, would instantly be broken. I held her because I knew that if I let go of her, she would fall.

And in the meantime, fright rushed into her eyes, fright mixed with such distraction that I regretted having awakened her.

“Miss Yanovsky! For God’s sake, calm yourself! There’s no need to be afraid any longer. All, all will be well and bright for you in this world.”

She did not understand. A black shadow was creeping towards her from somewhere in a corner – a cloud had evidently floated across the moon. She looked at it and the pupils of her eyes became wider and wider and wider.

Suddenly a wind began to rattle some half broken shutters somewhere; it howled, it whined and whimpered in the chimney. So striking was its resemblance to the distant thunder of the hoofs of the Wild Hunt, to its inhuman yell: “Roman! Come out!” that I shuddered.

She suddenly began to scream, pressing herself to me. I felt her breasts and her knees under the thin fabric, and I, overcome by an irresistible desire, held her hard in my arms.

“That accursed money! Damned money! Take me away, take me away from here, take me away! You are a big and strong man, my master, take me away from here! I cannot, I cannot... It’s so frightening here, so cold, so dark and gloomy! I don’t want to die, don’t want to die!”

And still pressing herself to me, on catching my look hid herself on my breast.

I turned my face away, I was choking, but I couldn’t help myself. The sensation overpowered me, a weak man, and I gave in – everything became fused in a fiery whirlpool and she forgave me even the pain.

The moon hid behind the house, the last gleams fell on her face, on her hair that had fallen on my hand, on her happy and peaceful eyes looking into the dark.

I was ready to burst into tears of happiness, happiness that binds two virgins coming together, tears because nobody had ever touched my hand with her face like that before, and I thought with horror that she, my first and only one, forever mine, might have become like that woman in the Kulsha’s house if those villains had achieved their aim.

That will not be. With tenderness, kindness, with everlasting gratefulness, I shall do whatever may be necessary to cure her somnambulism. Not a single stern word will she hear from me. For was it not unimaginable fright, the expectation of death, a mutual desire for ordinary warmth which brought us together, married us? Had we not risked our lives for each other’s sake? Did I not then receive her as the greatest gift a man can have, a gift I had not hoped for?

And that is all. On the following day, for the first time, the sun together with slight hoarfrost fell on the mossy castle walls. The tall grass was bestrewed with a cold white powder and was reddening under the first sun rays. And the walls were rose coloured, they had even become younger, awakened from a heavy sleep that had reigned over them for three years. The bright window panes looked young, pale rays shining on them, the Earth at the walls was moist, and the grass was damp.

We were leaving. The carriage was standing in front of the castle and our modest belongings were being tied on behind it. I led Lady Yanovsky out of the house. She was wrapped up in a light fur coat and I sat beside her. We cast a last glance at the castle in which we had experienced such suffering and unexpectedly for us had found love, such love that a man could, without regret, give up even his life for its sake.

“What do you think you will do with all this?” I asked. Yanovsky winced as if it were cold.

“The antique things will go to museums, the rest let the muzhyks take, the muzhyks who rose in defence of their huts and saved me. The castle – let it be turned into a hospital, a school, or something like that.” And she smiled an ironical smile. “An entailed estate! How much blood, such a tangle of meanness, sordid crimes and intrigue. And for the sake of what? For a handful of gold... No, let’s forget about it, about this entailed estate.”

I put my arms round her narrow shoulders.

“I thought as much. That’s the way. We don’t need all this, now that we have found each other.”

In the castle we left a new housekeeper – that widow I had once found with her child along the road. The other servants remained as they were.

And we sighed slightly when the castle disappeared behind the turning in the lane. The nightmare was over.

When we rode out of the park onto the heather land along the Giant’s Gap, with the gates closed behind us for the last time, and in the distance the burial mounds were already coming into sight, I saw a man standing at the roadside.

The man making long strides came up to meet us. He took the horse by the bridle, and we recognized Ryhor. He was standing in his leather coat, his entangled hair falling on his face and on his kind, childish eyes.

I jumped out of the carriage.

“Ryhor, my dear fellow, why didn’t you come to see us off?”

“I wanted to meet you alone. It’s hard for me after all we’ve done. You are right to leave. Here everything would remind you of the past.”

He stuck his hand in his pocket, blushed, and took out a clay doll.

“This is for you, Miss Nadzeya... Maybe you’ll keep it near you... you’ll remember...”

Nadzeya drew his head to her and kissed him on the forehead. Then she took off her earrings and put them in the dark wide palm of the hunter.

“For your future wife.”

Ryhor grunted, shook his head.

“So long... So long... The quicker you leave the better... or else you may see me whimpering like an old woman... You are children. I wish you the best of everything, the very best in the world.”

“Ryhor! My friend! Come away with us, you’ll stay with us a while, while they’re looking for Dubatowk and the others. Some good-for-nothing fellow might kill you here.”

Ryhor’s eyes became severe, he chuckled:

“Huh, just let anyone try!”

And his hands gripped his long gun, his veins even swelled.

“I’ve a weapon in my hands. Here it is. Just let them try to take it! I won’t leave. My domain is this forest. And this domain must be a happy one.”

“And I believe in that,” I said simply.

When we had ridden away, I again saw from the edge of the forest his big silhouette on the mound. Ryhor was standing against the background of a crimson sky with his long gun in his hands, the gun reaching above his head, and on him his closely fitting leather coat that he wore turned inside out. The wind was playing with his long hair.

We rode through the woods day and night. The following morning we were met by the sun, by wet, tall grass and by joy! It was only now that I began to understand the difference between the Yanovsky region and this other land.

Enormous nests of storks and a sky blue silence over the clean huts.

Then how was my lady from the eighteenth century to look at this new world, if even I, during such a short period, had forgotten all this?

I glanced at her who was to be my wife. Her eyes were wide open and happy. She pressed herself against me and from time to time sighed, as a child does after tears. I much desired that she should feel even better. And I bent to kiss her hand.

What worried me at this time and later, too, was her illness. Therefore I rented a small house with a garden on the outskirts of the city. The doctors said that everything would pass while living a peaceful life. And indeed, it did pass, when we had been living together two months and she told me that we should have a child.

We surrounded each other with such a sea of kindness and attention, with such love, that even after seventy years I wonder whether it was all a dream. Everywhere life was kind to us, even in Siberia where I found myself in 1902. She was more than just a wife to me – she was a friend until death.

We lived long and happily, as in the song:

While
over the
land
Sunshine did
reig
n
...

But even now I sometimes see in a dream the grey heather and the stunted grass of the waste land, and King Stakh’s Wild Hunt leaping, dashing through the marshes. The horses’ bits do not tinkle; the silent horsemen are sitting up straight in their saddles. Their hair, their capes, their horses’ manes are waving in the wind, and a lonely star is burning overhead.

King Stakh’s Wild Hunt is racing madly across the Earth in terrifying silence.

I awaken and think that its time is not yet over. Not as long as gloom, cold and darkness, injustice and inequality, and this dark horror that had created the legend of King Stakh, exists on Earth. Across the land, half drowned in fog, still rovers the Wild Hunt.

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