King of the Fields

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  At this time Cybula learned that Laska, his daughter, had survived the attack and now lay ill in her grandmother’s tent. He immediately insisted on going down as a spy, but the Lesniks refused to listen. If he should be discovered and killed, who among them could take his place? Another man was sent instead; he brought back the news that Laska had recovered, and that she was to marry Krol Rudy on the day of the new moon.

  One dark moonless night, while Laska lay sleeping in her grandmother’s tent, she imagined she felt someone touching her lightly. She woke up with a start, ready to scream; then she heard her father’s hushed voice: “Don’t be afraid, daughter. It is your father.”

  Old Mala was also awakened, and when she learned who their visitor was, she said, “Leave her alone, Cybula. If the woyaks find you here, they will tear us to pieces. Laska is going to marry Krol Rudy. You know I have lost everything, and she is all I have left.”

  “Who is this you are marrying, daughter? A man who has killed your sisters, your brothers, your mother?”

  “What do you want?” answered Laska. “I was sick. They had already prepared a grave for me. I can’t go with you to the mountains, I am too weak. Besides, I can’t leave Grandmother alone. He will take his revenge on her.”

  “Come with me, both of you. The cold days are over, it is warm in the mountains. Come and live in my cave. My brothers, the hunters, are preparing to come here and wipe out Krol Rudy and his men.”

  “When will they be coming?” asked Mala.

  “Anytime. Maybe even tomorrow.”

  “What should I do, Grandmother?” Laska asked.

  Mala sighed. “You are too weak to climb up the mountains. You will stumble along the way and fall, and the vultures will peck your eyes. Laska, marry Krol Rudy and let him fatten you up with his pretzels and his smoked meats. When you recover your strength, you will be yourself. I myself will soon be dead, and you won’t have an old woman to drag across the mountains.”

  “Grandmother, you may be right,” Cybula said, “but meanwhile, the krol will lie with her and make her belly swell up.”

  “Others have already lain with her,” said Mala. “She was raped on the night of the raid. It’s a wonder that she is not carrying someone’s child.”

  Laska was silent for a long time.

  “Does Krol Rudy know this?” Cybula asked.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Mala answered.

  “When he finds out that I am not a virgin, he will instantly kill me. Better death than this life we live,” Laska said.

  Cybula waited a while, and then he said, “I’ll be back. We’ll all be back.” And he left as quietly as he had arrived. He walked along the ground, watching and listening. His ears picked up the faintest rustle. His eyes pierced through the darkness like a wolf’s. He suddenly spotted a small girl emerging from a tent. She had come out to relieve herself. Cybula waited. When she stood up, he pounced on her, quickly covered her mouth with his hand, and began to drag her with him. The girl struggled and gasped for air. He half carried, half dragged her, and soon they were outside the camp. In a sack he was carrying some rope, the hide of an animal, as well as a bow and arrows and a roasted bird. He removed his hand from the girl’s mouth and said, “Try not to scream, or I’ll strangle you on the spot.”

  “Mother …”

  “Who is your mother? Who are you?”

  “My mother is Kora and I am Yagoda.”

  “Kora is alive? I am Cybula.”

  “Let me go. My mother …”

  “You must come with me. If you don’t come willingly, I will tie you up and drag you by force. I am not your enemy. My brothers, the hunters, and I will soon be coming to kill all the Poles. We will set Krol Rudy on a stake and pierce him all the way to his head. Your father, Kostek, and I were like brothers. We used to hunt together. On the day you were born we planted a branch from a cherry tree near his tent. It was I who persuaded him to name you Yagoda.”

  “My mother won’t know what’s become of me. She’ll sob and wail and tear her hair.”

  “She’ll know. We have our spies and we’ll let her know.”

  “Let me go.”

  “No.”

  Cybula took the rope from his bag and tied it around Yagoda’s waist. Whenever she started to whine, he slapped her mouth and she fell silent. When they were far away from the camp, he set her down, tore a chunk from the bird, and gave it to her. When they had finished eating, he threw her to the ground and raped her. Later he asked, “Who did this to you before me, the woyaks?”

  “No,” she answered. “Krol Rudy himself.”

  (3)

  The Lesniks, the Poles, and the other tribes who spoke more or less the same language had various customs for contracting a marriage. In some tribes the men bought their wives, in others they kidnapped them. If the young couple belonged to separate tribes, the groom lived with the bride’s parents after the wedding and only years later moved his family back with his wife to his own native tribe. Sometimes the marriage was arranged strictly by the parents, and the young couple first met on the day of their wedding. An animal was sacrificed to Baba Yaga, or some other goddess, and then the groom showed off to the bride’s father his skills as hunter and marksman. Brides had to be guarded by young maidens, day and night, against any intrusion of evil spirits. In former times a bride could be burned at the stake for losing her virginity before her marriage. With the rise of fieldwork and the rule of kniezes and pans, a bride often was forced to submit to a pan before submitting to her husband. Sometimes the marriage ceremony itself was bound up with rites for invoking rain and for expelling the demons who hid in fields and in bundles of wheat. One tribe even staged a mock funeral—bride and groom were led to their graves accompanied by hymns and laments—in order to fool witches and sorcerers who robbed grooms of their vigor and gave brides long bleedings. On the day before her wedding, the bride wove sprays of flowers into her hair, then circled the camp from tent to tent to invite the people to the ceremony. In every tent she knelt before the invited guests and kissed their feet. The groom was meanwhile regaled by his friends with jokes, teased with advice, and challenged to duels. Some hunting tribes had a custom of putting the young couple to bed but not allowing the groom to touch his bride until the stargazer signaled the arrival of the proper moment.

  Because Krol Rudy and his kniezes and pans stemmed from diverse regions, and because so many young Lesnik men were dead or in hiding and the women pregnant with their enemies’ offspring, Krol Rudy decided to marry Laska without fanfare or ceremony. The pans simply accompanied him to Mala’s tent, and there Mala turned Laska over to her husband’s care. The old grandmother murmured a few silent words under her breath, and no one could tell whether she blessed the union or cursed it. The Poles were by this time entirely intoxicated. They waved their swords at Krol Rudy, and for a while it seemed that they meant to prevent his marriage. But Krol Rudy overcame them, and they moved aside and let him pass through.

  Krol Rudy’s house was still not finished. During the summer the stench had grown even more overpowering, and through the four-cornered opening in the wall all sorts of flies, butterflies, moths, and bees had flown in. In the corners cobwebs were hanging. Because he stored food supplies in his house, field mice scurried across the floor. His woyaks were growing drunker and louder. The last of their horses had died, and they were skinning it, preparing to eat it. Krol Rudy could suppress his yen for the bitter drop, but he could not repress his bitter feelings. That one of the mountain men had managed to steal into the camp and carry Yagoda off meant that the woyaks he had assigned to watch the camp were sleeping.

  The Lesniks in the mountains could easily trample the fields or set them on fire or do any manner of damage. Several of his pans had told the krol that it was senseless to dally and wait for the harvest. The woyaks were fit for smashing heads, burning homes, raping women, but when it came to work, they were lazy. They were accustomed to roam and to plunder, not to settle down and toil. Some
of them had already been insolent to the kniezes, even to Krol Rudy. There were many woyaks and only a handful of kniezes. Several of his most powerful kniezes had died during the winter. Some of the woyaks had gone partly or completely insane. They stopped using human language and grunted or roared like animals, laughed, wept, attacked old women, and were unfit for hunting or plowing. Several of them should have been flogged to death or hanged, to set an example for the others. But the kniezes knew that any punishment could set off an uprising among the hungry woyaks.

  Krol Rudy had pinned all his hopes on the harvest. But there was not much rain during the spring. It was foolish to be taking a wife and thinking of children when so many perils confronted him. However, Krol Rudy refused to give up. Should he wander still farther? Attack still more small camps and destroy them? He, Krol Rudy, had wanted to bring bread to those people who spoke a language similar to his own. He had wanted to make of them one nation—a nation of Poles. Often he awakened at night and lay on his bed, unable to sleep. His own bodyguards could have entered and finished him off. Quite a few chieftains and krols had come to such an end. He had heard of a land where krols were crowned for a single year, after which they were put to death. He had heard of a place where the krol married for only a year or two. As soon as the queen gave birth to a child, she was declared a goddess and beheaded by the krol himself, so that when her body died, her spirit either soared up to the gods and prayed for her people or else plunged into the depths where the dead rule and became a queen of the underworld.

  When now Krol Rudy brought Laska to his cabin—in keeping with custom, he carried her over the threshold—the room’s stench made her grimace and ask for some water. Her illness had left Laska weak and pale. Krol Rudy brought out meat and a pretzel, but she could not eat. Every now and then a kniez or a woyak stuck his head through the opening in the wall to see whether the krol was lying with his bride. Krol Rudy covered the hole with a pelt, carried Laska to his bed, and lowered himself down on her. But he found he was entering through an open door. He struck her face, and she confessed that on the night of the raid two woyaks had raped her.

  “Who are they? What are their names?” Krol Rudy demanded.

  “How should I know? It was dark, and my mother was lying near me in a pool of blood. They hurt me and left.”

  “They never returned?”

  “Never.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Krol Rudy gave her a shove, pushing her off his bed. He said, “You may not know who they are, but they know who you are. And tonight they are laughing at me. Everyone knows my shame by now, but I don’t know whom to punish.”

  “How could they know you’d choose me to be your wife? They slaughtered and raped in the dark of night.”

  “You are making excuses for them?”

  “No.”

  Krol Rudy would have liked to stand up and strangle Laska, or to plunge a sword into her breast. But he restrained himself. It was not her fault, and it would cause an uproar in the camp. He should have chosen Yagoda, not Laska. Yagoda was a virgin. But Cybula had carried her off into the mountains. Krol Rudy asked, “Are you pregnant?”

  “No, my period came.”

  He helped her to her feet and carried her back to his bed. The thought that a woyak might chance by and kill him did not frighten him. How could one fear death and the grave when out of the earth sprang so much life? An odd thought began to take shape in his mind: when he died, he would like to be buried and to have a field planted over his bones. Perhaps man would stop shedding the blood of animals and nourish himself on the bounties of soil, sun, rain.

  (4)

  Cybula had been following the tracks of an animal. By its footprints, he knew it was a large beast, probably a “he.” But what sort of beast it was, Cybula could not decide. What was more, its tracks led consistently down the mountain, all the way to the valley. That made Cybula suspicious, because the mountain animals did not travel so deep into the valley. It must be an animal he had never encountered before. He did not bring Yagoda along this time, because she was having her period. Cybula followed the footprints, spear and bow at hand, ready to aim for the animal’s rump the moment he saw it. But then a bizarre thing happened: the tracks suddenly vanished, as if the animal had grown a pair of wings and flown away, or else the earth had swallowed it up. Cybula was tired and sat down, and he took out a chunk of smoked meat. His meal made him drowsy, and soon he was fast asleep. The light of the full moon woke him up. A breeze carried the animal’s scent to his nostrils—a scent he had never smelled before—and he rose and followed it, not so much to capture the animal as to see what sort of creature it was. The hunters often told tales of animals that outwitted men with magic or with tricks.

  Suddenly Cybula stopped short, as if thunderstruck. Before him stretched a vast field of wheat, its spikes already high, and the stalks packed close to one another. The moon showered its silver beams on the field. Some who had escaped from the camp had told him that Krol Rudy’s crop had failed, that the soil was too rocky, the wheat grew sparse and short, the husks were empty. But it seemed they had lied to him, or else what his eyes were seeing was a dream. With the tips of his fingers Cybula crushed a husk of wheat and tasted the kernels. They had an unusual flavor. A longing to plunge into the field took hold of him, a yearning to lose himself in the lush growth. He was often told by the older hunters that those who plowed the earth bruised it, and the grains that it brought forth were poisoned. But over this field hovered something godly and blessed. A bright light shone from the moon, as if day and night had intermingled and become one. To Cybula it seemed that the sky had never been so crowded with stars as on that night, as if it were a field itself, strewn with sparkling crops.

  It was not in Cybula’s nature to bow down and worship either men or gods. But he fell to his knees and paid homage to the field as one would to a god. He inhaled deeply, taking its aroma into himself. He murmured a prayer to the hidden power which brought so much wonder out of the womb of the earth.

  Cybula stood up and began to move deeper into the valley. He wanted to see the hut (or perhaps by now a big cabin) where Laska lived with Krol Rudy, but he thought that a guard was sure to be stationed there. It pained Cybula to think that his only daughter lay with her mother’s murderer, kissing and fondling him. A bitter taste filled his mouth. Men made wombs for their enemies. In a way the same was also true of sons. The very best that man possessed was given away to strangers. Cybula continued to walk. The night turned colder, the moon hid behind an elongated cloud with scales resembling those of a fish or a snake. Suddenly Cybula found himself standing before Kostek’s scorched hut. Kora was there, Yagoda’s mother. It was then that Cybula knew why that strange vanishing animal—a night spirit probably—had led him to his home of old: to bring Kora to Yagoda. He had no time to lose. Everything had to be done with haste. He threw himself at the door and pushed it open. The moon illuminated the room, and Cybula could see Kora’s half-clad body asleep. She lay on a pile of hides. The air smelled of rotting meat, garlic, urine. With one hand he grabbed Kora’s throat, and with the other he covered her mouth. “I am Cybula,” he hissed. “Come with me.”

  He tried to drag her along, but she resisted, trembling and choking. In her terror she could not grasp who he was and what he wanted. A terrible cry broke from her throat. She clung to his leg, pulled him down, fighting with him. She tore at his face with her nails. He wrestled himself free, and with his fist he struck her forehead, her nose, her skull. He was terrified that the woyaks might come by and tear him limb from limb. He realized he had lost his spear and his bow. He dropped Kora and ran outside. He crouched on the ground and searched for his weapons. The sweat blinded his eyes. He heard a ringing in his ears. A sweet-sour fluid flooded his mouth. “I must not weaken!” he resolved. At that moment it was as if a flash went through his brain, and he collapsed.

  When he came to, someone was ben
ding over him, trying to revive him. It was Kora. She helped him to his feet. She held tightly to his hand and tried to pull him after her. He remembered the weapons he had lost, but it would be madness to turn back. A great shame overcame him for his weakness. Together he and Kora passed by the field once again, and he caught a glimpse of it. The moon had disappeared.

  The field seemed to lie in a deep, restful sleep. Only now did Cybula notice that Kora was stark naked. He took out a pelt from the sack that hung on his hip and wrapped it around her shoulders. They stood facing each other in the chill of the night. He was so agitated he could hardly speak. “It is I, Cybula,” he said. “I am your friend, not your enemy. I came to take you to Yagoda.”

  “Cybula! My Cybula!”

  Kora trembled with excitement, as if she only now realized who he was. She flung her arms around him, nearly throwing him off his feet. She kissed him, embraced him, wet his face with hers. Her body exuded a female kind of fever. She pressed him to her with such force that he could hear his ribs crack. She wailed. “They killed everyone: Kostek, our brothers, our sisters. Children’s heads were rolling on the ground! The wrath of the gods came pouring down on us! Baba Yaga …” And Kora began to tear her hair and sway to the left and the right. Cybula snapped, “Be quiet! They’ll hear you and …”

  “Why did this happen to us? It was a punishment, a punishment! The earth was red with our blood. A curse and a shame! And where were our men? They scattered like mice and left us alone.”

  “Kora, no one expected them. They came in the night like wolves. I opened my eyes and the whole camp was on fire …”

  “Brother of mine, father, friend! Every night I lay in my bed and spoke to you—to you and to Yagoda. She had awakened and gone outside. I waited, and she did not return. I looked everywhere but could not find her. I was sure the woyaks had killed her and thrown her body away. Only later did one of your men come to tell me that she was with you. My savior, my god!”