Генрик Сенкевич
Hania
It grew dark in her eyes; she lost consciousness.
When she recovered, her shoulders were resting against the cross; in the distance a carriage from Dovborko was approaching, and in it young Pan Dovbor, with a governess from the mansion.
Pan Dovbor did not know Repa's wife; but she knew who he was, she had seen him at church; she thought then to hurry to the carriage and beg him, for God's mercy, to take even the child before the storm came; she rose to her feet, but could not advance.
Meanwhile the young man had driven up; and, seeing an unknown woman standing at the cross, he called, —
"Woman! woman! take a seat."
"May the Lord God – "
"But on the ground, on the ground."
That young Dovbor was a jester known in the whole region about; he attacked every one on the road in this fashion, trifled with them, as in this case, and then drove on farther. His laughter and that of the governess came to the ears of Repa's wife; then she saw how they began to kiss, and soon after they disappeared with the carriage in the dark distance.
Repa's wife was left alone. But it is not in vain that people say, "Women and toads thou wilt not kill, even with a scythe." After an hour or so she dragged on again, though the legs were bending under her.
"What is the little child guilty of, the golden fish, O Lord God!" repeated she, cuddling the sick Yasek to her bosom.
And then fever seized her, for she began to mutter, as if drunk.
"In the cottage is an empty cradle, and mine has gone to the war with his gun."
The wind swept the cap from her head; her beautiful hair fell to her shoulders and waved in the wind. All at once lightning flashed; the thunderbolt came so near that the smell of sulphur surrounded her, and she crouched. This brought her to herself, and she cried, "But the Word became flesh!"
She looked at the sky, which was storming, merciless, raging, and she began to sing in a trembling voice, "Whoso puts himself under the care!" A certain ominous, metallic flash fell from the clouds to the earth. She went to a forest at the roadside; but there it was still darker and more terrible. From moment to moment a noise was heard, as if the terrified trees were whispering to one another in an immense whisper, "What will happen! Oh! for God's sake!" Then came silence. Again from the forest depth was heard some voice. Shudders passed through the woman; she thought that perhaps the "evil one" was laughing at the wood devils, or perhaps the host would pass by in a terrible dance at any moment.
"If only out of the forest, if only out of the forest!" thought she; "and there ahead beyond the forest is the mill and the cabin of Yagodzinski's miller." She ran on with the last of her strength, catching at the air with parched lips. Meanwhile the sluices of heaven were opened above her head; rain, mixed with hail, fell as if from a bucket; the wind struck, and with such force that the trees were bent to the earth; the forest was filled with mist, with steam, with waves of rain; the road was not to be seen; trees were bending along the earth and roaring and splitting; around was the breaking of limbs, and then came darkness.
The woman felt weak. "Save me, O people!" cried she, in a faint voice; but no one could hear her. The wind blew the voice back into her throat. Then she understood that she could not go farther.
She took off her head-kerchief, her apron, stripped herself almost to her shift, and wrapped up the child; then, seeing a weeping birch near, she crawled to it almost on her hands and knees, and, putting down the child under the branches, fell herself by his side.
"O God, receive my soul!" cried she, and she closed her eyes.
The storm raged for some time yet, and at last fell away. But night had come; through the intervals between the clouds the stars began to shine. Under the birch was the white, motionless form of the woman.
"Now!" said some voice in the darkness. After a while the noise of a wagon and the splashing of horses' feet in the pools was heard at a distance.
This was Hershek, the cow farmer of Lipa, who had sold his geese in Oslovitsi, and was coming home. Seeing Repa's wife, he came down from his wagon.
CHAPTER X
THE VICTORY OF GENIUS
HERSHEK took the woman from under the birch, and would have taken her to Barania-Glova; but on the road he met Repa, who, seeing that a storm was coming, took his wagon and went to meet his wife. She lay all night and the next day in bed; but the following day she got up, for the little boy was sick. Her gossips came and incensed the child with consecrated garlands; and then old Tsisova, the blacksmith's wife, conjured the disease with a sieve in her hands and a black hen. In fact, it helped the child immediately; but the trouble was greater with Repa, who filled himself with vodka beyond measure; it was not possible to agree with him on any point.
Strange thing, when Marysia came to herself and inquired for the child, instead of showing her tenderness, he said gloomily, —
"Thou wilt fly through towns, and the devil will take the child. I would have given it thee, hadst thou lost him!" Only then did the woman feel great pain, at such ingratitude, and with a voice straight from the heart she tried to reproach him; but she could go no further than to cry out, "Vavron!"
And she looked at him through her tears. Repa almost sprang from the trunk on which he was sitting. For a time he was silent, and then said, in a changed voice, "My Marysia, forgive me those words, for I see that I have wronged thee." Then he roared with a great voice, and began to kiss her feet; and she accompanied him with tears. He felt that he was not worthy of such a wife. But that concord did not last long. The grief, which was festering like a wound, began at once to inflame them against each other. When Repa came home, either drunk or sober, he did not speak a word to his wife, but sat on the box and looked at the ground with a wolfish face. He would sit that way whole hours, as if turned into stone. The woman was busy around the room, worked as before, but was silent also. Later, when one wished to speak to the other, it was somehow awkward. So they lived as if in great feeling of offence, and deathlike silence reigned in the cottage. And what had they to say, since both knew that there was no help for them, that their fortune had ended? After a number of days, some evil thoughts began to come to the man's head. He went to confession to Father Chyzik; the priest would not give him absolution, and commanded him to come next day; but on the morrow, Repa, instead of going to the church, went to the inn.
People heard him say, when drunk, that if the Lord God would not help him, he would sell his soul to the devil; and they began to shun him. A curse, as it were, was hanging over the cottage. People scattered reports sharp as beggars' whips, and said that the mayor and the secretary did well, for such a rascal would bring only God's vengeance on all Barania-Glova. And against the woman old gossips began to say uncreated things.
It came about that Repa's well dried up. So Marysia went for water to the well in front of the inn; and on the way she heard boys say to one another, "There goes the soldier's wife!" "Not the soldier's wife, but the devil's wife!"
She went on without speaking a word; but she saw how they made the sign of the cross. She took the jug to go home, and there, before the inn, stood Shmul. When he saw her, he took out the porcelain pipe which hung at his beard, and called to her.
"Marysia!"
She stopped and inquired, "What do you want?"
"Were you at the village court?" asked he.
"I was."
"You were with the priest?"
"I was."
"Were you at the mansion?"
"I was."
"Did you go to the chief?"
"I did."
"And you got nothing?"
She merely sighed, and Shmul continued, —
"Well, you are such fools that in all Barania-Glova there is nothing more foolish. And what did you go for?"
"Where was I to go?"
"Where?" answered the Jew, "and on what is the contract? On paper; if there is no paper, there is no contract; tear the paper, and that is enough."
"Oh, how you talk!" said she, "if I could have got at that paper I should have torn it long ago."
"But don't you know that the secretary has the paper? Well! I know that you can do much with him; he said to me himself, 'Let Repa's wife come and ask me, and I,' said he, 'will tear the paper, and that's the end of it.'"
Marysia said nothing, but took the jug by the ear and went toward the brick house; meanwhile it had grown dark out of doors.
CHAPTER XI
ENDED MISFORTUNE
THE Great Bear had gone down already, and the triangle had risen, when the door squeaked in Repa's cottage; his wife came in quietly. She entered and stood as if fixed to the floor, for she thought that her husband would be sleeping as usual in the inn; but he was sitting on the box at the wall, with his fists resting on his knees, and looking at the floor. The coals were burning out in the chimney.
"Where hast thou been?" inquired Repa, gloomily.
Instead of answering, she fell on the floor, and lay before his feet, with great weeping and sobbing. "Vavron! Vavron!" cried she, "for thee it was that I yielded myself to shame. He deceived me, then abused and put me out. Vavron, have pity on me, at least thou, my heart! Vavron! Vavron!"
Repa took his axe out of the box.
"No," said he, with a calm voice; "thy end has come at last, poor woman. Take leave of this world now, for thou shalt see it no more; thou wilt not sit in the cottage any longer, poor woman; thou wilt lie in the churchyard – "
She looked at him with terror.
"Dost wish to kill me?"
"Well, Marysia," said he, "do not lose time for nothing; make the sign of the cross, and then will be the end; thou wilt not even feel it, poor thing."
"Vavron, wilt thou, indeed?"
"Lay thy head on the box."
"Vavron!"
"Lay thy head on the box!" cried he, with foam on his lips.
"Oh, for God's sake, save me! People! sa – "
A dull blow was heard, then a groan, and the blow of a head against the floor; then a second blow, a fainter groan; then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth blow. On the floor gushed a stream of blood; the coals in the chimney were quenched. A quiver passed through the woman from head to foot; then her body stretched, and was motionless.
Soon after a broad, bloody conflagration rent the darkness; the buildings of the mansion were blazing.
EPILOGUE.
And now I will whisper something in your ear, reader. They would not have taken Repa to the army. An agreement like the one in the inn was not sufficient. But you see peasants do not know these things; the "intelligence," thanks to neutrality also, not much! therefore Pan Zolzik, who knew a little of this, calculated that in every case the affair would drag on, and fear would throw the woman into his arms.
And that great man was not mistaken. You ask what happened to him? Repa, when he had set fire to the buildings of the mansion, was going to take vengeance on him, but at the cry of "Fire!" the whole village was up, and Zolzik escaped.
He continues in his office of secretary in Barania-Glova, and at present he has the hope of being chosen judge. He has just finished reading "Barbara Ubryk," and hopes that Panna Yadviga may press his hand any day under the table.
Whether those hopes of the judgeship and the pressure will be justified, the future will show.
THE ORGANIST OF PONIKLA
THE snow was dry, squeaking, and not over deep; but Klen had long legs, therefore he walked briskly over the road from Zagrabie to Ponikla. He went the more briskly because a good frost was coming, and he was dressed scantily in a short coat and a still shorter sheepskin overcoat above it, in black trousers and thin, patched boots. Besides, he had a hautboy in his hand; on his head a cap lined with the wind; in his stomach a couple of glasses of arrack; in his heart delight; and in his soul many causes for the delight.
That morning he had signed a contract with Canon Krayevski, as the future organist of Ponikla. Up to that time he had strolled about like any wretched gypsy, from inn to inn, from wedding to wedding, from fair to fair, from festival to festival, seeking profit with his hautboy, or on the organ, which he played better than any organist in that region. Now he was to settle down at last and have a fixed life beneath his own roof. A house, a garden, a hundred and fifty rubles a year, other earnings on occasions, a personal position, almost half spiritual, an occupation in the service of God, – who would not respect such a station?
Not long since any Matsek in Zagrabie, or Ponikla, if settled on a few morgs of land, looked on Pan Klen as a nobody; now people would take off their hats to him. An organist and, moreover, in such an immense parish – that was not a bundle of straw! Klen had been sighing this long time for that position; but while old Melnitski lived, it was not to be thought of. The old man's fingers were stiff, and he played badly; but the canon would not send him away for anything, since he had been twenty years with him.
But when the "lysa" struck the old man so badly in the pit of the heart that in three days he died, Pan Klen did not hesitate to ask for the position, and the canon did not hesitate to give it, for a better organist could not be found in that region.
How such skill came to Pan Klen on the hautboy, the organ, and various other instruments which he understood, it was difficult to discover. He had not received the gift from his father, for his father, a man of Zagrabie, served during youth in the army, and did not work in his old age at music; he twisted hemp ropes, and played on no instrument beyond a tobacco-pipe, which was always between his mustaches.
From childhood Klen did nothing but listen wherever there was music. While a stripling, he went to "blow the bellows" for Melnitski at Ponikla. Afterward, when certain musicians came to Zagrabie, he ran away with them. He strolled about whole years with that company. God knows where he played, surely wherever it happened: at fairs, weddings, and in churches; only when the company broke up, or died, did he return to Zagrabie, as poor as a church mouse, haggard, and living like a bird on a branch. He continued to play, sometimes for the public, sometimes for the Lord God.
And, though people reproached him with want of stability, he became famous. They said of him in Zagrabie and in Ponikla, "Klen, just Klen. But when he begins to play it is no offence to the Lord, and it is a delight to man!" Others said to him, "Fear God, Pan Klen, what devil is sitting within thee?"
And in real fact some sort of devil was sitting in that thin wretch with long legs. During the life of Melnitski, whenever he took the old organist's place on great holidays and festivals, he sometimes forgot himself thoroughly at the organ. This would happen, especially in the middle of mass, when people in the church were absorbed in prayer, when the censers had sent incense over the whole nave, and everything living was singing, when Klen had let himself out, and the service, with the ringing of great and little bells, with the odor of myrrh, amber, and fragrant plants, with the gleaming of lights and the glitter of the monstrance, had so elevated every soul that the whole church seemed flying off on wings to the sky. The canon, now raising, now lowering the monstrance, closed his eyes in ecstasy, and Pan Klen did the same in the choir; and it seemed to him that the organ itself was playing; that voices from the tin pipes rose like waves, flowed like rivers, rushed like torrents, gushed like fountains, poured like rain; that they were filling the whole church; that they were under the dome, and before the altar, in the rolls of incense, in the light of the sun, and in the souls of the people, – some awful and majestic like thunder, others like the singing of people, speaking in living words, still others sweet, fine, like falling beads, or the trilling of nightingales. And after mass, Pan Klen came down from the choir dazed, with eyes staring, as if after sleep; but as a simple man, he said, and thought, that he had tired himself out. The canon in the sacristy put some money in his hand, and some praise in his ear; then he went out among the people, who were thronged around the church; and there they raised their hats to him, though he lived as a lodger in Zagrabie; and they admired him beyond measure.
But Pan Klen went in front of the church not to hear, "Hei! See! There goes Klen!" But he went to see that which was dearest to him in Zagrabie, in Ponikla, and in the whole world, Panna Olka, the daughter of the tile-maker of Zagrabie. She fastened into his heart like a wood-tick, with her eyes, which were like star-thistles, with her bright face, and her lips red as cherries.
Pan Klen himself, during the rare moments in which be looked on this world with sound judgment, and in which seeing that the tile-maker would not give him his daughter, thought that it would be better to let her go; but he felt, with terror, that he could not let her go; and with great alarm he repeated to himself, "Hei! she has got in! Thou wilt not pull her out with pincers!"
For her it was surely that he stopped wandering about, for her he lived; and when he played on the organ he thought that she was listening, and therefore he played better.
And she loving, to begin with, his "talent" for music, loved him afterward for himself; and that Pan Klen was for her the dearest of all, though he had a strange, dark face, eyes that were looking somewhere else, a scant coat, a still scanter overcoat, and legs as long and as slim as the legs of a stork.
But "the father," the tile-maker, though he, too, carried air in his pockets for the most part, was unwilling to give Olka to Klen. "Any one will look at the girl," said he; "why should such a fellow as Klen fix her fate?" and he hardly let the man into the house, and sometimes he would not let him in.
But when old Melnitski died, everything changed right away.
Klen, after signing the contract, went with all speed to the tile-maker's.
"I do not say," said the tile-maker to him, "that something must surely happen right away; but an organist is not a tramp." And, inviting him into the house, he treated him to arrack, and feasted him as a guest. And when Olka came in, the father rejoiced with the young people because Klen had become a man; he would have his house, garden, and, next to the canon, would be the great person in Ponikla.
So Klen had sat with them from midday till evening, to his own great delight and to Olka's; and now he was returning by the road to Ponikla, on squeaking snow and in twilight.
It was preparing for frost; but what cared Pan Klen? He merely went faster and faster; and, while going, he thought of that day, thought of Olka, and he was warm. A happier day in his life there had never been.
After an empty, treeless road, through frozen meadows covered with snow, now red and now blue beneath the sky, he carried his gladness like a lantern which he had to light him in the dark. He remembered again and again all that had happened: his conversation with the canon; the signing of the contract; every word with the tile-maker and Panna Olka. When they were alone for a while she said to him, "It was all one to me! I would have gone with you, Anton, without that, even beyond the sea; but for father it is better in this way!" He kissed her on the elbow with great gratitude, saying, "God reward thee, Olka, for the ages of ages, amen!" And now, when he recalled it, he was a little ashamed of himself, for having kissed her on the elbow, and for having said too little to her; for he felt that if the tile-maker would have permitted, she would have gone with him to the edge of the world. Such an honest girl! And then she would have gone with him if necessary along that empty road in the snow. "Oh, thou, my pure gold!" thought Pan Klen, "since it is so, thou wilt be a lady." Then he went still more swiftly, and the snow squeaked more loudly.
Soon he began to think, "Such a woman will not deceive a man." Then great gratitude mastered him. And indeed if Olka had been there with him, he would not have held out; he would have thrown his hautboy on the ground, and pressed her to his bosom with all the strength in his bones. He ought not to have acted differently an hour earlier; but it is always so: wherever a man has to do anything or say anything from the heart, he "becomes a fool, and has a wooden tongue." It is easier to play on the organ.
Meanwhile, the golden and red stripes which were shining on the western sky changed gradually into golden ribbons and golden knots, and finally they vanished. Darkness came; and the stars twinkled in the heavens, looking sharply and dryly on the earth, as is usual in winter. The frost grew severe, and began to bite the ears of the future organist of Ponikla; so, knowing the road perfectly, Pan Klen decided to cut across the field, and reach his own house the more quickly.
After a while he seemed black on the level, snowy espanse, – tall, sticking up ridiculously. It occurred to him that to kill time he might play a little before his fingers got stiff; and as he thought so he did. His voice sounded strangely in the night and on that waste, as if he were frightened a little by that white, melancholy plain; and it sounded all the more strangely that Klen played the most joyous things. He recollected that he had begun to play and sing, after one and another glass at the tile-maker's, that Olka accompanied him gladly with her thin little voice. He wished now to play those same songs, so he began with that with which she had begun:
"Level, O God, the mountains with the valleys,
Let them be very level!
Bring, O God, my love,
Bring him early!"
But the song did not please the tile-maker, for it seemed to him a "peasant song," and he commanded Klen to sing a "noble song." Then they took up another, which Olka had learned in Zagrabie: —
"Pan Ludwig went a hunting,
He left Helunia like a picture.
Pan Ludwig came home, the music was playing.
The trumpeters trumpeting, Helunia was sleeping."
This was more to the taste of the tile-maker. But when pleasure seized them they laughed most at the "Green Pitcher." The lady in that song, before she laughed at the end, cried and sang piteously for her broken pitcher:
"My green pitcher,
Oh, the Pan broke it!"
But the Pan falls to consoling her: —
"Quiet, Panna, weep not,
I will pay thee for thy pitcher!"
Olka prolonged as much as possible, "My gre-e-e-en pitcher," and then laughed. Klen took his lips from the hautboy, and answered her as the Pan, with a great flourish: —
"Quiet, Panna, weep not – "
And now, remembering in the night that gladness of the daytime, he played to himself "My Green Pitcher," and smiled in addition, as much as his lips would allow, employed as they were in blowing the hautboy. But as the frost was violent, and his lips were freezing to the mouthpiece of the instrument, and his fingers were stiff going over the keys, he ceased to play and went on, somewhat panting, and with his face in a mist which rose from his breath.
After a time he got tired, for he had not counted on this, that in fields snow lies more deeply than on a beaten road, and that it is not easy to draw one's legs out of it. Besides, in meadows in some places there are hollows, made even by drifts through which one must wade to the knee. Klen began to regret then that he had left the road, for some wagon might have come along on the way to Ponikla.
The stars twinkled more and more sharply; the frost became more severe, but Pan Klen even sweated; still, when the wind rose at moments, and blew toward the river, he became very cold. He tried to play again, but as he had to keep his mouth closed he tortured himself all the more.
At last a feeling of loneliness seized him. Round about it was so empty, silent, and remote that he was wonder-stricken. In Ponikla a warm house was waiting for him; but he preferred to think of Zagrabie, and said to himself, "Olka is going to sleep; but there, praise be to God, it is warm in the house." And at the thought that it was warm and bright there for Olka, Pan Klen's honest heart rejoiced all the more, the colder and darker the way was for him.
The meadows ended at last, and then began pastures grown over here and there with juniper. Pan Klen was so tired now that a great desire seized him to sit down, with his hautboy, under the first sheltered bush, and rest. "But I shall freeze if I do so," thought he, and went on.
Unfortunately, among junipers, as along fences, snow-drifts form sometimes. Klen passed through a number of these, and became so exhausted that finally he said to himself, —
"I will sit down. Unless I fall asleep I shall not freeze; and to keep from sleeping, I will play again, 'My Green Pitcher.'"
He sat down, played again, again the vanishing voice of the hautboy was heard in the silence of night, and over the snow. But Klen's eyelids stuck together more and more, and the notes of the "Green Pitcher," growing weaker, and gradually growing silent, were silent altogether at last. Still he struggled against sleep; he was conscious yet; he was thinking still of Olka; but at the same time he felt himself in a greater desert, more and more alone, as if forgotten; and wonderment seized him that she was not there with him in that loneliness and that night.
He murmured, "Olka! where art thou?"
And once more he spoke as if calling her, —
"Olka!"
The hautboy dropped from his stiffened hands.
Next morning the dawn shone on his sitting figure, with the hautboy near his long legs, and his face was blue, astonished as it were, and at the same time fixed in listening to the last note of the song, "My Green Pitcher."
