King Stakh's Wild Hunt

by Uladzimir Karatkevich

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

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

  Lumps of clay, marsh dirt and paling flew 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 that the most forsaken places are met with in these marshes — 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 the thick brown marsh mass had stopped his mouth, that now that 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.

  An unearthly howl was heard and 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 I myself who had uttered those heart-rending cries. How ashamed I felt!

  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 of their own accord.”

  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. And indeed, when about thirty minutes had passed, ahead of us in this dank and pitch-dark night a warm and beckoning light appeared.

  We soon saw that it was not a woodsman's hut and not a tarsprayer's hut as I had thought at first, but some kind of a tremendous building, a building too large even for the city. In front of us — a flower-bed, a black opening in the fir-tree lane through which we had come, and all around wet grass.

  The entrance had a kind of high roof over it, on the door there was a heavy bronze ring.

  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, 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:

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

  “Biełarecki is my name. I'm with my coachman.”

  “Count Biełarecki?”

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

  The voice became severe:

  “Well then, go your way, my good man, back to where you came from. Just think of it! He hopes he is a Count! Jokes in the night? Come on, off with you! 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 these parts. 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 softening, called after 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 happen 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…” 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 it's only from that side that there's no fence. That's how lucky you were. You're a fortunate man. The Heavenly Mother saved you! Oh! Good God! Oh! God's 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, jand a dim orange-coloured stream of light pierced 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, and on her head was a starched cap. The face was covered with kind wrinkles, the nose hooked, the mouth immence — resembling a nutcracker, the 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”. In the hands of this old woman there were tremendous oven prongs: a weapon to defend herself with! I was about to burst into laughter, but remembered in time the cold outside and the rain, and 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 where it smelled of mice, and immediately pools of water ran down from our clothes onto the floor. I glanced at my feet and was horrified: almost up to my knees there was a brown mass of mud that looked like boots.

  The old woman only shook her head.

  “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 where the fireplace was lit. “You've had a narrow escape. Take off your clothes, dry yourselves. Have you any other clothes to get into?”

  My sack luckily was dry. I changed my clothing before the fireplace. Our clothes — mine and the coachman's — the woman dragged away somewhere 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 u
p 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 go to sleep with Jan, it won't be comfortable for you here… Jan!”

  Jan appeared. An almost blind old man about 60 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, alone with oven prongs in her hands, had not been afraid to open the door to two men who had appeared in the night from no one knew where, but after I had seen Jan, I understood that he had been somewhere in hiding and she had depended on him for help.

  The help was “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. It was approximately six inches taller than Jan himself, the gun barrel had notches in it and was bell-shaped at the end, the riflestock and butt-stock were worn from long handling, the slow match was hanging down. In a word its place was in an Armoury Museum. Such guns usually shoot as do cannon, and they recoil on the shoulder with such force that a person unprepared for the shock drops down like a sheaf on the ground.

  And for some reason or other I thought with pleasure of the marvelous English six-shooter that was in my pocket.

  Hardly able to move his unbending legs, Jan led the coachman to the door. I noticed that even his hands were trembling.

  “Dependable aid for the mistress,” I thought.

  But the mistress touched me by the shoulder and invited me to follow after her into the “apartments”. We passed through yet another small room, the old woman opened another door, and I quietly gasped in surprise and delight.

  Meeting our gaze was a great entrance-hall, a kind of a drawing-room, a customary thing in ancient castles. And oh! The beauty there!

  The room was so enormous that my gloomy reflection in the mirror somewhere on the opposite wall seemed no bigger than the joint of my little finger. The floor was made of oak “bricks” already quite worn, the exceptionally high walls were bordered at the edges with shining fretwork blackened by the years, the windows almost under the ceiling, small ones in deep lancet niches.

  In the dark we had evidently hit on a side porch, for to the right of me was the front entrance: a wide door, also a lancet one, divided by wooden columns into three parts. The flowers, leaves and fruit carved on the columns were cracked with time. Behind the door in the depth of the vestibule was the entrance door, — a massive, oak door, bound by darkened bronze nails with square heads. And above the door an enormous dark window into the night and darkness. On the window a ship of forged iron, a masterpriece of workmanship.

  I walked along the hall in amazement: what splendour, and how all had been neglected due to people's carelessness. There was massive furniture along the walls — it squeaked even in answer to footfalls. Here an enormous wooden statue of St. George, one of the somewhat naive creations of the Belarusian national genius, and at the feet of the statue a layer of white dust, as if someone had spread flour over it; this unique work had been spoiled by wood-lice. And here hanging down from the ceiling was a chandelier, also of surprising beauty, but with more than half of its pendants missing.

  It might have seemed that no one lived here, were it not for an enormous fireplace, its flames lighting up the entrance-hall with an uncertain flickering light.

  Almost in the middle of this splendid entrance-hall a marble staircase led up to the first floor, where everything was almost the same as on the ground floor — the same enormous room, even a similar fireplace also lit, except that on the walls the black wood (probably oak) alternated with shabby coffee-coloured damask wall-paper and on this wall-paper in all their splendour were portraits in heavy frames. And in addition near the fireplace there stood a small table and two armchairs.

  The old woman touched me by the sleeve:

  “Now I'll lead you to your room. It's not far from here along the corridor. And afterwards… perhaps you would like to have supper?”

  I did not refuse, for I hadn't eaten anything all day.

  “Well then, sir, wait for me…”

  She returned in about ten minutes, a broad smile on her face, and in a confidential tone said to me:

  “You know the village goes to bed early. But we here don't like to sleep, we try to go to bed as late as possible. And the mistress doesn't like visitors. I don't know why she suddenly consented to admit you into her house, and even lets you share her supper-table. (I hope, sir, you will excuse me). You are evidently the most worthy of all those who have been here in the last three years.”

  “You mean then,” I said, surprised, “that you are not the mistress?”

  “I'm the housekeeper,” the old woman answered with dignity. “I am the housekeeper. In the best of the best houses, in a good family, understand this, Mr. Merchant. In the very best of the best families. This is even better than being the mistress of a family not of the very best.”

  “Then what family is this?” I asked imprudently. “And where am I?”

  The old woman's eyes blazed with anger.

  “You are in the castle of Marsh Firs. And you ought to be ashamed of yourself not to know the owners. They are the Janoŭskis. You understand, the Janoŭskis! You must have heard of them!”

  I answered that I had, of course, heard of them. And this reassured the old woman.

  With a gesture worthy of a queen, she pointed to an armchair, (approximately as queens do in the theatre when they point to the executioner's block ready for their unlucky lover: “There's your place, you ill-fated one”), asked to be excused and left me alone.

  The change in the old woman surprised me greatly. On the ground floor she moaned and lamented, spoke with that expressive intonation of the people, on the first floor she immediately changed, became the devil alone knows what. Apparently, on the ground floor she was at home, whereas on the first she was nothing but the housekeeper, a rare guest, and changed correspondingly with the passage.

  Remaining alone, I began to examine the portraits that gleamed on the walls. There were about seventy of them, some ancient and some quite new — and a sad sight they made.

  Here a nobleman dressed in something like a sheepskin coat — one of the oldest pictures — his face the face of a peasant, broad, healthy, with thick blood in his veins.

  And here another, this one already in a long silver-woven tunic with a girdle, a wide beaver collar falling across his shoulders (a sly proto-beast you were, young man!). Next to him a powerful-looking man with shoulders like stone and a sincere look about him, in a red cloak (at his head a shield with the family coat-of-arms, the top half smeared with black paint). And farther on, others just as strong, but with oily eyes, lopped off noses, their lips hard.

  Beyond them portraits of women with sloping shoulders, women created for caresses. Faces were such that would have made an executioner weep. Most likely some of these women did actually lay their heads on the executioner's block in those hard times. It is unpleasant to think that these women took their food from their plates with their hands, and bedbugs made their nests in the canopies of their beds.

  I stopped off at one of the portraits, fascinated by a strangely wonderful, incomprehensible smile, a smile which our old masters so inimitably painted. The woman looked at me mysteriously and with compassion.

  “You, you little man,” her look seemed to say. “What have you experienced in life? Oh! If you could have seen the torches blazing on the walls of the hall during feasting and revelry, if you could have known the delight in kissing your lovers till they bled, to make two men fight a duel, to poison one, to throw another to the executioner, to aid your husband to fire from the tower at the attacking enemies, to send yet another lover to the grave for love of you, and then to take the blame on yourself, to lay your head with its white wide forehead and intricate hair-do on the block.”

  I swear upon my honour that t
hat is what she said to me, and although I hate aristocrats, I understood, standing before these portraits, what a fearful thing is “an ancient family”, what an imprint it leaves on its descendants, what a heavy burden their old sins and degeneration lay on their shoulders.

  And I understood also that uncountable decades had flown by since the time when this woman sat for the painter. Where are they now, all these people with their hot blood and passionate desires, how many centuries have thundered over their decaying bones?

  I felt the wind of the centuries whistling past my back, and the hair on my head stood on end.

  And I felt also the cold that reigned in this house, a cold that even the fireplaces burning night and day could not drive out.

  Enormous, gloomy halls with their dusty smell, with their creaking parquet floors, their gloomy corners, their eternal draughts, the smell of mice and dust and cold, such a cold that made your heart freeze, a cold that centuries had gone into making, a cold created by an entailed estate, the exclusive right of inheritance belonging to the eldest son, by an enormous, now impoverished and almost extinct family.

  Oh! What a cold it was! If our late decadents, singing praises to the dilapidated castles of the gentry, were left here overnight, for just one night even, they would very soon ask to be taken out and put on the grass in the warm sunshine.

  A brave rat ran diagonally across the hall. I winced.

  I turned to more of the portraits. These portraits were of a later period. And altogether different. The men had a kind of a hungry look, a discontented look. Their eyes like those in old seladons, on their lips an incomprehensible, a subtle smile and unpleasant causticity. And the women were different: their lips too full of lust, their look mannered and cold. And very obvious were their hands, now much weaker hands: beneath their white skin, both in the men and the women, blue veins were visible. Their shoulders had become narrower and were thrust forward, while the expression on their faces showed a markedly increased voluptuousness.

  Life, what cruel jokes you play on those who for centuries live an isolated life, and come into contact with the people only to bring bastards into the world!