King Stakh's Wild Hunt (9 page)

Sounds reached me badly, for in the hall the orchestra was already piping away, an orchestra that consisted of eight veterans of the Battle of Poltava. I saw oily faces that gallantly smiled, saw lips that reached the mistress’ hand. When they bent down, the light fell on them from the top, and their noses seemed surprisingly long while their mouths seemed to have vanished. They shuffled their feet without a sound and bowed, spoke noiselessly, then smiled and floated off, and new ones came floating over to take their place. This was like a bad dream.

They grinned and it was as if they were apparitions from the graves, they kissed her hand and it seemed to me that they were sucking the blood out of her. Then they noiselessly floated on. She was so pure in her low-necked dress, but her back reddened when some newly arrived Don Juan in close-fitting trousers showed too great an ardour as he pressed her hand. These kisses, it seemed to me, smeared her hand with something sticky and filthy.

And only now did I realize how solitary she was, not only in her own house, but also amidst of this crowd.

“What does this remind me of?” I thought. “Aha, Pushkin’s Tatyana among the monsters in the hut. Enclosed, poor girl, as a doe during a hunt.”

Almost no pure looks to be seen here, but to make up for it what names! It seemed as if I was in an archive reading ancient documents of some Court of Acts and Pleas.

“Mr. Sava Matfieyevich Stakhowsky and sons,” the lackey announced.

“Mrs. Ahata Yuryewna Falendysh–Chobalev with her husband and friends.”

“Mr. Yakub Barbare–Haraburda.”

“Mr. Maciej Mustafavich Asanovich.”

“Mrs. Hanna Awramovich–Basyatskaya and daughter.”

And Bierman, standing behind me, was passing remarks.

For the first time in these days I liked him, for so much malice was there in his utterances, with what blazing eyes he met each newly arrived guest, and especially the young ones.

Suddenly an unfamiliar flash in his eyes took me aback. I involuntarily looked in the same direction he was looking in, and my eyes nearly popped out of my skull such a strange sight opened to me. A person came rolling down the steps into the hall. That’s right, rolling; no other word to describe what he was doing. The man was over two metres, approximately at my own height, but three Andreys Belaretskys would have fitted into his clothes. A tremendous abdomen, the lower legs like the thighs, as if they were hams, an incredibly broad chest, and palms like tubs. Few such giants had ever come my way, but this was not the most surprising thing about him. The clothes he was wearing can be seen today only in a museum. Red high-heeled horseshoed boots that our ancestors called “kabtsy”, tight-fitting trousers made of a thin cloth. He sported a caftan made of cherry coloured gold cloth that was ready to split on his chest and abdomen. Over the caftan this giant had pulled over a “chuga”, an ancient Belarusian coat. The chuga hung loosely in pretty folds and shiny designs on it were green, gold and black. A bright Turkish shawl was tied around it almost up to the man’s armpits.

On top of all this magnitude sat a surprisingly small head that didn’t seem to belong on such a body. His cheeks were puffed as if the man was about to burst out laughing. His long grey hair gave certain roundness to his head, his grey eyes were very small, and his long dark whiskers – they had very few grey hairs in them – reached down to his chest. The appearance of this man was a most peaceful one, if not for a “karbach”, a thick, short lash with a silver wire at its end that hung from his left hand.

In a word, he was a dogman, a provincial bear, a merry fellow and a drunkard – this was immediately apparent.

While yet at the door he did burst into a robust, merry laughter, with his bass voice making me smile involuntarily. As he walked, people stepped aside to make way for him, answering him with smiles. Such smiles could have appeared on these sour faces of these people of a nearly extinct caste only because they, evidently, loved him. “At last, at least one representative of the good old century,” I thought. “Not a degenerate, not a madman who might as well commit a crime just as easily as he would a heroic deed. Just a kind and simple titan. And how rich his Belarusian was, and how beautifully he spoke it!”

Don’t let this last observation take you by surprise. Although Belarusian was spoken among the petty gentry at this time, the gentry of that stratum of society that this gentleman apparently belonged to did not know the language. Among the guests no more than a dozen spoke the language of Martsinkevich and Karatynsky, the language of the rest was a wondrous mixture of Polish, Russian and Belarusian.

But out of the mouth of this one, while he was walking from the door to the hall on the upper floor, poured apt little words, jokes, and sayings as out of the mouth of any village matchmaker. I must confess that he captured me at first sight. Such a colourful person he was that I did not immediately notice his companion, although he also deserved attention. Imagine for yourself a young man, tall, very well-built, and what was rare in this remote corner, dressed according to the latest fashion. He would have been handsome were it not for his excessive paleness, sunken cheeks, and an inexplicable expression of animosity that lay on his compressed lips. His large eyes with their watery lustre deserved most of the attention on his fine though bilious face. They were so lifeless that it made me shiver. Lazarus, when he was risen from the dead, probably had just the eyes.

In the meantime the giant had come up to an old lackey who was somewhat blind and deaf, and suddenly jerked him by the shoulder.

The lackey had been napping on his feet, but he immediately pulled himself together, and taking in who the new guests were, smiled broadly and shouted:

“The most honourable gentleman, Hryn Dubatowk! Mr. Ales Varona!”

“A very good evening to you, gentlemen,” Dubatowk roared. “Why so sad, like mice under a hat? No matter, we’ll make you merry in a jiffy. Varona, pay attention to little ladies! I was definitely born too early. Such beauties-cuties!”

He walked through the crowd. Varona had stopped near a young lady, as Dubatowk approached Nadzeya Yanovsky. His eyes narrowed and began to sparkle with laughter.

“A good day to you and good evening, my dear!” He gave her a smacking kiss on her forehead and he stepped back. “And how slender, how graceful and beautiful you’ve become! All Belarus will lie at your feet! And may Lucifer carry tar on my back in the next world, if I, an old sinner, won’t be drinking a toast to you from the little slipper in a month from now at your wedding. Only your little eyes are somewhat sad. But no matter, I’ll make you merry right away.”

And with the fascinating grace of a bear, he turned round on his heels.

“Anton, you devil! Hryshka and Pyatrush! Has the cholera got you, or what?”

And there appeared Anton, Hryshka and Pyatrush, bending under the weight of some enormous bundles.

“Well, you louts and lubbards, place everything at the feet of the mistress. Unroll it! You rascals! Your hands, where do they grow from? Not your back by any chance? Take it, daughter!”

On the floor in front of Lady Yanovsky lay an enormous fluffy carpet.

“Keep it, my dear. It was your grandfather’s, but it hasn’t been used at all. You’ll put it in your bedroom. The wind comes in here, you, the Yanovskys, have always had feeble feet. Too bad you, Nadzeyka, did not come to live with me two years ago. I begged you to, but you wouldn’t agree. Well, be that as it may, too late now, you are all grown up. Easier for me now. To the devil with this guardianship.”

“Forgive me, dear uncle,” Yanovsky said quietly, touched by her guardian’s attention. “You know that I wanted to be where my father was... my father...”

“Well – well – well,” Dubatowk said, embarrassed. “Let it be. I myself hardly ever came to see you, knowing that you would be upset. We were friends with Roman. But no matter, my dear, we are, of course, worldly people. We suffer from overeating and too much drinking; however, God must look into people’s souls. And if he does, then Roman, although he was wont to pass the church by but not the tavern, has already long been listening to the angels in heaven, and is looking into the eyes of his poor wife, my third cousin. God – He’s nobody’s fool. The main thing is one’s conscience, whereas that hole in one’s mouth that asks for a glass of vodka is a vile thing. And they look at you from heaven and your mother does not regret that she gave life to you at the price of her own: such a queen have you become. And you’ll soon be getting married. From the hands of your guardian into the fond and strong hands of a husband. Well, what do you think?”

“I hadn’t thought of it before, and, now I don’t know,” Yanovsky suddenly said.

“Well, well,” becoming serious, said Dubatowk. “But... the man should be a good one. Don’t be in a hurry. And now another present... It is an old costume of our country, a real one. Not some kind of an imitation. Afterwards go and change your dress before the dances. There’s no point in wearing all this modern stuff.”

“It will hardly suit her, and will only spoil her appearance,” a foxy young miss of the petty gentry put in a word, trying to be flattering.

“And you keep quiet, love. I know what I am doing,” Dubatowk growled back at her. “Well, Nadzeyka, now to the very last thing. I thought long and hard about whether to give this to you, but I am not accustomed to keeping what does not belong to me. This is yours. Among your portraits one is missing. The line of ancestors must not be broken. You know that yourself, because you belong to the most ancient of all the families in the whole province.”

On the floor, freed of the white cloth covering it, stood a very old, unusual portrait, the work, apparently, of an Italian painter, a portrait which you can hardly find in the Belarusian iconography of the 17th century. There was no flat wall in the background, no coat-of-arms hung on it. There was a window opening into the evening marsh, there was a gloomy day overhead, and there was a man sitting with his back to all this. An indefinite greyish blue light shone on his thin face, on the fingers of his hands, on his black and golden clothes.

The face of this man was more alive than that of any living man, and it was so surprisingly dismal and hard that it was frightening. Shadows lay in the eye sockets and a nerve even seemed to quiver in the eyelids. And there was a family likeness between his face and that of the mistress, but all that was pleasant and nice in Yanovsky, was repulsive and terrible in the man on the portrait. Treachery, cunning symptoms of madness, an obdurate imperiousness, an impatient fanaticism, a sadistic cruelty could be read in this face. I stepped aside. The large eyes that seemed to read the very depths of my soul turned and again looked me in the face. Someone in the crowd sighed.

“Roman the Old,” Dubatowk said in a muffled voice, but it had already occurred to me who it was, so correctly had I imagined him from the words of the legend. I had guessed this was the one who was guilty of the curse, because the face of our mistress had become pale and she swayed back slightly.

I don’t know how this deathly still scene would have ended, but someone silently and disrespectfully pushed me in the chest. Involuntarily I recoiled. It was Varona making his way through the crowd, and in making his way to Yanovsky, he had pushed me aside. Calmly he continued walking without begging my pardon, he didn’t even turn around, as if an inanimate object were standing in my place.

I was born in a family of ordinary intellectuals, the intelligentsia who from generation to generation had served the Polish gentry, who were themselves learned men, nevertheless plebeians, from the point of view of this arrogant aristocrat, a man whose forefather was the whipper-in of a wealthy magnate, a murderer. I had often had to defend my dignity against such, and now all my “plebeian” pride bristled.

“Sir,” I said loudly. “You can consider it worthy of a true aristocrat to push a person aside without begging his pardon?”

He turned around.

“You are addressing me?”

“You,” I calmly answered. “A true aristocrat is a gentleman.”

He came up to me and began scrutinizing me with curiosity.

“H-m,” he said. “Who is going to teach a gentleman the rules of good behaviour?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, just as calmly and as bitingly. “Whoever that might be, it is not you. An uneducated priest must not teach others Latin – nothing will come of it.”

I saw, over his shoulder, Nadzeya Yanovsky’s face, and was happy to notice that our quarrel had diverted her attention from the portrait. The blood had returned to her face, but in her eyes there flashed something resembling alarm and fear.

“Choose your expressions carefully,” Varona said in a strained voice.

“Why? And most importantly, for whom? A well-bred man knows that in the company of polite people one should be polite, while in the company of rude fellows, the greatest degree of politeness is to repay in the same coin.”

Varona was apparently unaccustomed to being repulsed. I knew such arrogant turkey-cocks. He was surprised, but then glanced at the hostess, turned towards me again, and a turbid fury flashed in his eyes.

“But do you know with whom you are talking?”

“With whom? Not with God Himself?”

I saw Dubatowk appear at the side of the hostess. His face showed that he had become interested. Varona’s blood was boiling.

“You are speaking with me, with a man who is in the habit of pulling parvenus by the ear.”

“But hasn’t it occurred to you that certain parvenus are themselves capable of pulling your ears? And don’t come up closer, otherwise, I warn you, not a single gentleman will receive such an insult, as you from me.”

“A caddish fist fight!” he exploded.

“Can’t be helped!” I said coldly. “I have met noblemen on whom nothing else had any effect. They weren’t cads, their ancestors were long-serving hound-keepers, whippers-in, ladies’ men for the widows of magnates.”

I intercepted his hand and held it as with a nipper.

“Well...”

“Damn you!” he hissed.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen, calm yourselves,” Lady Yanovsky exclaimed, alarmed beyond expression. “Mr. Belaretsky, don’t, don’t! Mr. Varona, for shame!”