King Stakh's Wild Hunt

by Uladzimir Karatkevich

  I got from Janoŭskaja 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 Janoŭski 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 his steps? After all, perhaps he had been able to dig up old plans, to make use of some acoustic secret of the castle and frighten people every night with the sound of 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even promised to help, since his uncle and grandfather had been stone-masons at the Janoŭski's before serfdom had been repealed.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.”

  We decided not to trouble Bierman as yet, so as not to frighten him prematurely.

  Then I began to make a detailed study of the letter written by an unknown person to Śvieciłovič. I used many, many sheets of paper before I managed to restore the text of the letter at least approximately:

  “Andrej! I learned that you are interested in the Wild Hunt of King Stach, and also that Nadzieja Ramanaŭna is in danger (further nothing understandable)…my da… (again much missing) Today I spoke with Mr. Biełarecki. He agrees with me and has left for town… Drygants — chief… When you receive this letter — go immediately to… plain where three pines stand by themselves. Biełarecki and I will wait… ly ma… what's going on in this world! Come without fail. Burn this letter, because it is very dangerous for me…Yo… fr… They are also in mortal danger which only you can ward of… (again much burnt)…me.

  Your well-wisher, Likol…”

  The devil knows what this is all about! This deciphering gave me almost nothing. Well, once again I became convinced that the crime had been a planned one. And in addition I learned that an unknown “Likol” (what a heathen name!) had cleverly made use of our being on friendly terms, of which only he could have guessed. And nothing, nothing more! Whereas in the meantime an enormous grey stone was laid on the grave of a person who could have been one hundred times more useful for our country than I. And if not today, then tomorrow, such a stone may be weighing down upon me too. And then what will happen to Nadzieja Janoŭskaja?

  That day brought me yet another bit of news: I received a subpoena. On surprisingly bad grey paper in high-faluting words an invitation to appear at the court in the chief town of the district. It was necessary to leave. We arranged with Ryhor about a horse, I told him what I thought about the letter, and he informed me that Haraburda's house was being watched, but nothing suspicious had been noticed.

  Again my thoughts turned to Bierman.

  This quiet evening, not at all typical for autumn, I thought long over what was awaiting me in the district town, and I decided not on any account to remain there for long. I was already about to go to bed and have a good sleep before my trip, when suddenly, on making a turn in the lane, I saw Janoŭskaja on a bench covered with moss. A dark greenish light fell on her blue dress, on her hands with fingers interlaced her eyes wandering, an absent-minded look in them, such a look that one sees in a person lost in thought.

  The word which I had given myself did not waver, the memory of my dead friend even strengthened this word, and nevertheless for a few minutes I felt a triumphant rapture at the thought that I could have held in my arms this dear slim figure and pressed her to my breast. But bitterly did my heart beat, for I knew that this would never be.

  However, I went out to her from behind the trees almost quite calm.

  Here she lifted her head, saw me, and how sweetly, how warmly did her radiant eyes begin to shine.

  “It's you, Mr. Biełarecki. Sit down here beside me.”

  She was silent for a while, then she said with surprising firmness:

  “I'm not asking you why you beat a person so hard. I know that if you did do such a thing, it means it was impossible to have done otherwise. But I am very uneasy about you. You must know: there is no justice here. These pettifoggers, these liars, these — terrible and thoroughly corrupt people can condemn you. And although it isn't a crime for an aristocrat to beat a policeman, they can exile you from here. All of them together with the criminals form one large union. It will be in vain to beg justice of them: this noble and unfortunate people will perhaps never see it. But why didn't you control yourself?”

  “I took the part of a woman, Miss Nadzieja. You know, there is such a custom with us.”

  And she looked me in the eyes so piercingly that it made me feel cold. How could this child have learned to read hearts, what had given her such strength?

  “This woman, believe me, could have endured it. If you are exiled this woman will pay too high a price for the pleasure you received in venting your feelings on some vulgar fool.”

  “I'll return, don't worry. And Ryhor will guard your peace during my absence.”

  Without saying a word, she closed her eyes. After a while she said:

  “Ah! You haven't understood anything… As if it is this defence that matters. You should not go to the district town. Stay here for another day or two, and then leave Marsh Firs forever.”

  Her hands, their fingers trembling, lay on my sleeve.

  “Do you hear, I beg you, beg you very sincerely.”

  I was too much taken up with my own thoughts and therefore didn't quite grasp the meaning of her words, and said:

  “At the end of the letter to Śvieciłovič the signature is ‘Likol’. Is there any such gentleman here in this region whose given name or surname begins like that?”

  Her face immediately darkened as the day darkens when the sun disappears.

  “No,” she answered, her voice trembling as if offended. “Unless it's Likolovich… This is the second part of the surname of the Kulšas.”

  “Well, it can hardly be that,” I answered indifferently.

  And having looked at her attentively, only then did I realize what a brute I was. From under her palms with which she had covered her eyes, I saw a heavy, superhuman lonely tear rolling out and creeping down, a tear that would break down a man in despair, not to speak of a young girl, almost a child.

  I am always at a loss and become a cry-baby on seeing women's or children's tears, while this tear was such a tear, God forbid anyone should see in his life, the tear in addition of a woman for whose sake I'd willingly be turned into ashes, be smashed into pieces, if that would help to stave off sadness from her.

  “Miss Nadzieja, what's the matter?” I muttered, and involuntarily my lips formed into a smile, the like of which one can see on the face of an idiot attending a funeral.

  “Nothing,” she answered almost calmly. “It's simply that I shall never be… a real person. I am crying for Śvieciłovič, for you, for myself. It's not even for him that I am crying, but for his ruined youth, — I understand that well! — for the happiness predestined for us, the sincerity we lack. The best, the most worthy are destroyed. Remember how once you said: ‘We have no princes, no leaders and prophets, and like leaves are we tossed about on this sinful earth.’ We must not hope for anything better, lonely are the heart and the soul, and nobody responds to their call. And life burns out.”

  She stood up, with a convulsive movement broke a twig that she was holding in her hands.

  “Farewell, my dear Mr. Biełarecki. Perhaps we shall not see each other any more. But to the end of my life I shall be grateful to you… And this is all.”

  And here something broke within me. Without realizing it, I blurted out, repeati
ng Śvieciłovič's words:

  “Let them kill me — and as a dead man I shall drag myself here!”

  She did not answer me, she only touched my hand, silently looked me in the eyes and left.

  Chapter The Fourteenth

  One might suppose that the sun had turned round once (I use the word “suppose” because as a matter of fact the sun had not shown itself from behind the clouds) when I arrived in the district town in the afternoon. It was a small town, flat as a pancake, worse than the most ill-kept of small towns, and it was separated form the Janoŭski region by some 18 versts of stunted forests. My horse tramped along the dirty streets. All around instead of houses were some kind of hen-coops, and the only things that distinguished this small town from a village were the striped sentry-boxes near which stood moustached Cerberuses in patched regimental coats, and also two or three brick shops on a high foundation. Emaciated goats with ironical eyes belonging to poor Jews were looking me over from the decayed, ragged eaves.

  In the distance were the moss-covered, tall, mighty walls of an ancient Uniate Church with two lancet towers over a quadrangled dark stone building.

  And over all this the same desolation reigned as everywhere: tall birches grew on the roofs.

  In the main square dirt lay knee-deep. In front of the grey building of the district court, beside one of the wings, lay about six pigs, trembling with cold and from time to time trying unsuccessfully to creep under one another to warm themselves. This was each time followed by offended grunting.

  I tied my horse to the horse line and, making my way along squeaking steps, came up into a corridor that smelled of sour paper, dust, ink and mice. A door, covered with worn-out oilcloth, led into the office. The door was almost torn off and was hanging down. I entered and at first saw nothing: such little light came through the small, narrow windows into this room filled with tobacco smoke. A bald-headed, crooked little man, his shirt-tail sticking out at the back of his pants, raised his eyes and winked at me. I was very much surprised: the upper lid remained motionless, while the lower one covered the entire eyes as in a frog.

  I said who I was, gave my name.

  “So you have come!” the frog-like man was surprised. “And we…”

  “And you thought,” I continued, “I would not appear at the court, would run away. Lead me to your judge.”

  The protocol-keeper scrambled out from behind his writing-desk and with stamping feet went in front of me into the midst of this smoky hell.

  In the next room behind a large table three men were sitting. They were dressed in frock-coats so bedraggled that it seemed they were made from old fustian. They turned their faces towards me and in their eyes I noticed identical expressions of greediness, insolence and surprise — for I had actually appeared.

  These men were the judge, the prosecutor and an advocate, one of those advocates who skin their clients like a plaster and then betray them. A hungry, greedy and corrupt judicial pettifogger with a head resembling a cucumber.

  And these were neither the fathers nor the children of judicial reform, but rather minor officials of the days before Peter the Great.

  “Mr. Biełarecki,” his voice reminding me of peppermint, “we expected you. Very pleasant. We respect people with the lustre of the capital.” He did not invite me to be seated, kept his eyes fixed on a piece of paper: “You, probably, know that you have committed something resembling criminal, when you beat up a district police officer for some harmless joke? This is a criminal act, for it is in exact contradiction to the morals and manners of our circuit and also the code of laws of the Russian Empire.”

  And the look that he cast at me through his eye-glasses was a very proud one. This descendant of Šamiaka's was so terribly pleased that it was he who was administering justice and meting out punishment in the district.

  I understood that if I did not step on his toes I would be lost. Therefore I moved a chair up and sat astride it.

  “It seems to me that politeness has been forgotten in the Janoŭski region. Therefore I have seated myself without an invitation.”

  The prosecutor, a young man with dark blue circles under his eyes, such as are to be seen among those suffering from a shameful disease, said dryly:

  “It's not for you, sir, to talk about politeness. No sooner did you appear here than you immediately began disturbing the peaceful lives of our residents. Scandals, fights, an attempt to start a duel ending fatally at a ball in the house of the honourable Miss Janoŭskaja. And in addition you considered it possible to beat up a policeman while he was on duty. A stranger, but you pry into our lives.”

  A cold fury stirred within me somewhere under my heart.

  “Dirty jokes in the house where you are eating should be punished not with a whip across the face, but with an honest bullet. He insults the dignity of people who are helpess against him, who cannot answer him. The court must deal with such affairs, must fight for justice. You speak of peaceful residents. Why then don't you pay any attention to the fact that these peaceful residents are being murdered by unknown criminals? Your district is being terrorized, but you sit here with your incoming and outgoing papers… Disgraceful!”

  “The discussion of the case concerning the murder by an offender against the State, who is, however, a resident here and an aristocrat, will be taken up not with you,” hissed the judge. “The Russian Court does not refuse anybody defence, not even criminals. However this is not the question. You know that for insulting a policeman we can… sentence you to two weeks imprisonment or fine you, or as our forefathers had it, banish you from the bounds of the Janoŭski region.”

  He was very sure of himself.

  I became angry:

  “You can do that, applying force. But I shall find justice against you in the province. You shield the murderers, your police-officer discredited the laws of the Empire saying that you don't intend to engage in an examination of the murder of Śvieciłovič.”

  The judge's face became covered with an apoplexic raspberry colour. He stretched his neck as a goose does and hissed:

  “And you have witnesses, where are they?”

  The solicitor, as a worthy representative of the conciliatory principle of the Russian law-court, smiled bewitchingly:

  “Naturally, Mr. Biełarecki has no witnesses. And in general, this is foolishness: the police-officer could not have said that. Mr. Biełarecki simply imagines this. The opponent's word he did not grasp.”

  From a tin box he took out some fruit-drops, threw them into his mouth, smacked his lips and added:

  “For us of the aristocracy, Mr. Biełarecki's attitude is particularly understandable. We do not want to make you unpleasant. Let yourself leave peaceful from here. Then everything here, how to say, will come right in the end, and we'll hush up the case. So then, good?”

  Strictly speaking, that was the cleverest way out for me, but I remembered Janoŭskaja.

  “What will happen to her? For her it can end in death or madness. I'll leave, and she, the silly little thing, can be hurt by anybody and everybody, perhaps only not by a lazy fellow.”

  I sat on the chair, pressed my lips hard, and hid my fingers between my kness so they shouldn't betray my excited state.

  “I will not leave,” I said after a silence, “until you find the criminals who conceal themselves in the form of apparitions. And afterwards I'll disappear from here forever.”

  The judge sighed:

  “It seems to me that you'll have to leave quicker than we can catch these… miph…”

  “Mythical,” the lawyer prompted.

  “That's it, mythical criminals. And you'll leave not of your own free will.”

  All my blood rushed to my face. I felt my end had come, that they would do with me whatever they wished, but I staked everything, played my last card, for I was fighting for the happiness of her who was dearest to me of all.

  With unbelievable strength I stopped the trembling of my fingers, took out from my purse a large sheet o
f paper and threw it under noses. But my voice broke with fury:

  “It seems you have forgotten that I am from the Academy of Sciences, that I am a member of the Imperial Geographic Society. And I promise you that as soon as I am free I shall complain to the Sovereign, and not a stone shall remain of your stinking hole. I think that the Sovereign will not spare the three villains who wish to remove me so that they may commit their dirty deeds.”

  For the first and the last time did I name as my friend a person whom I was ashamed to call my country-man even. I had always tried to forget the fact that the ancestors of the Romanovs, Russian tsars, come from Belarus.

  And these blockheads did not know that half the members of the Geographic Society would have given much for it not to be called an Imperial one.

  But I almost screamed:

  “He will intercede! He will defend!”

  I think that they began to waver somewhat. The judge again stretched his neck and… nevertheless whispered:

  “But will it be pleasant for the Sovereign that a member of such a respected society had dealings with a State criminal? Many honourable landed gentlemen will complain of this to that very Sovereign.”

  They had edged me in like borzois, those Russian wolfhounds. I settled myself more comfortably in my seat, crossed my legs, put my hands on my chest and spoke calmly (I was calm, so calm that to drown would have been preferable.)