Kitabı oku: «Hania», sayfa 18
"As you like; then pay eight hundred rubles."
"I do not say that I am not sorry for the money."
"But since you think that it will come back to you, why are you sorry? Do not count too much on your mayorship, though; they don't know everything about you yet; if they only knew what I know – "
"You take more chancery money than I do."
"I am not speaking of the chancery now, but of times a little earlier."
"Oh, I am not afraid! I did what was commanded."
"Well, you will explain that somewhere else."
After he had said this, the secretary took his cap and went out of the chancery. The sun was very low; people were returning from the field. First, the secretary met five mowers with scythes on their shoulders; they bowed to him, saying, "Praised." The lord secretary nodded to them with his pomaded head, but did not answer, "For the ages," since he judged that it did not become a man with education to do so. That Pan Zolzik had education, all knew; and only those might doubt who were either malicious, or in general of evil thought, – people to whom every personality raising its head above the common level was as salt in the eye, and would not let them sleep.
If we had proper biographies of all our celebrated people, we should read in the life of this uncommon man, that he gained his first knowledge at Oslovitsi, the capital city of the district of Oslovitski, in which district Barania-Glova also is situated. In the seventeenth year of his life, this young Zolzik had advanced as far as the second class; and would have gone higher as promptly, had it not been that, on a sudden, stormy times came, which interrupted forever his career in the exact sciences. Carried away by the usual enthusiasm of youth, Pan Zolzik, who moreover had been persecuted still earlier by unjust professors, stood at the head of the more actively watchful of his colleagues, made cats' music for his persecutors, tore his books, broke his rule and pens, and, rejecting Minerva, entered on a new career. In this new career he arrived at the office of communal secretary; and as we have heard already, was even dreaming of becoming sub-inspector. He did not succeed badly as secretary. Accurate knowledge rouses respect at all times; and since, as I have remarked, my sympathetic hero knew something about almost every inhabitant in the district, all felt for him respect, mingled with a certain caution, lest they might in any way offend an individuality so uncommon. Even persons of "intelligence" bowed to him, and peasants took off their caps at a distance, saying, "Praised."
Here I see, however, that I must explain more clearly why Pan Zolzik did not answer to the "Praised," with the usual "For the ages of ages." I have mentioned already that he considered that as unbecoming in a man of education; but there were other reasons also. Faculties which are thoroughly self-acting are generally bold and radical. Pan Zolzik had arrived at the conviction that "the soul is a breath; and that is the end of the question." Moreover, the secretary was reading "Isabella of Spain, or the Secrets of the Court of Madrid," just then in course of publication by the Warsaw publishing house of Pan Breslauer. This novel, remarkable in every regard, pleased him so much and penetrated him so deeply that on a time he had even a plan to leave all and go to Spain. "Marfori succeeded," thought he; "why should not I also succeed?" He might have gone, indeed, for he was of the opinion that "in his stupid country a man was merely going to loss;" but happily he was detained by circumstances which this epopaea will mention further on.
In fact, as a result of reading that "Isabella of Spain," which was issued periodically, to the greater glory of literature, by Pan Breslauer, Pan Zolzik looked very sceptically at the clergy, and therefore at everything connected directly or indirectly with the clergy. This was the reason why he did not give the mowers the usual answer, "For the ages of ages," but went on; he went on and on, till he met girls coming home from the harvest field with sickles on their shoulders. They were just passing a great pool, and went, one after another, goose fashion, raising their skirts behind, and exposing their red legs. Then Pan Zolzik said, —
"How are ye, titmice?" And he stopped on the very path; when any girl passed, he caught her around the waist, kissed her, and then pushed her into the puddle. But that was just for sport, and the girls cried, "Oi! oi!" laughing till their back teeth could be seen. Afterwards, when they had passed, the secretary heard, not without pleasure, how they said, one to another, "But that is a nice cavalier; he is our secretary!" "And he is as blooming as an apple!" The third one said, "And his head has the smell of a rose; so that when he catches you around the waist your head is just dizzy!"
The secretary went forward, full of pleasant thoughts. But farther on, near a cottage, he heard a conversation about himself; and he halted behind the fence. Beyond the fence was a dense cherry orchard, in the orchard bees, and not far from the beehives two women were talking. One had potatoes in her apron, and was peeling them with a small knife, while the other was saying, —
"Oi! my Stahova, I am so afraid that they will take my Franek and make a soldier of him, that my flesh creeps."
"You must go to the secretary," answered the other. "If he cannot help you, no one can help you."
"And what can I take him, my Stahova? It is not possible to go with empty hands to him. The mayor is better; you can take him white crawfish, or butter, or linen under your arm, or a hen; he will take anything without grumbling. But the secretary won't look. Oh, he is terribly proud! For him you must just open your handkerchief, and out with a ruble!"
"Ye'll not wait," muttered the secretary to himself, "till I take eggs or a hen from you. Am I some kind of a bribe-snatcher? But go with your hen to the mayor."
Thus thinking, he pushed apart the branches of the cherry-tree and was going to call to the women, when he heard all at once the sound of a brichka behind him. The secretary turned and looked. In the brichka was sitting Pan Victor, a young student, with his cap on the side of his head, and a cigarette between his teeth; the brichka was driven by that Franek of whom the women were talking a moment before.
The student bent over the side of the brichka, saw Pan Zolzik, waved his hand to him, and cried, —
"How art thou, Pan Zolzik? What news in the village? Dost thou always pomade thy hair two inches deep?"
"The servant of my lord benefactor!" said Zolzik, bowing low. But when the brichka had gone a short distance, he muttered, —
"May thy neck break before the end of the journey!"
The secretary could not endure that student. He was a cousin of the Skorabevskis, and came to visit them every summer. Zolzik not only could not endure the young man, but feared him like fire, for he was always jesting; a great rogue, he made a fool of Zolzik as if purposely, and was the only man in the whole place who made no account of him. Once even Pan Victor had happened in during a session of the communal council, and told Zolzik explicitly that he was an idiot, and the peasants that they had no need to obey him. Zolzik would have been glad to take revenge; but – what could he do to the student? As to others, he knew even something of each one, but of Pan Victor he knew nothing.
The arrival of that student was not to his liking; therefore Pan Zolzik went on with a cloudy brow, and did not halt till he came to a cottage standing a little way in from the road. When he saw it, his forehead grew bright again. That was a cottage poorer, perhaps, than others, but it had a neat look. The space in front was swept clean, and sweet-flag was scattered in the yard. Near the fence lay pieces of wood; in one of them was sticking an axe with its handle erect. A little farther was a barn with open doors; near it a building which was both a shed and a cowhouse; still farther was a field in which a horse was nipping grass, and moving about with fettered feet. Before the shed was a large manure heap on which two pigs were lying. Near this ducks were walking along. Close to the pieces of wood a cock was scratching the ground among chips, and whenever he found a grain, or a worm, he called "Koh! koh! koh!" The hens flew to the call, in hot haste, and seized the dainty, pulling it from one another.
By the door of the cottage a woman was scutching hemp, and singing, "Oi ta dada! Oi ta dada! da-da-na!" Near her lay a dog with his forelegs stretched out; he was snapping at flies which were lighting on his cut ear.
The woman was young, perhaps twenty, and remarkably handsome.
She wore a white shirt drawn together with red strings, and on her head was the ordinary peasant cap. She was as healthy as a mushroom; she was broad in the shoulders and hips, slender in the waist, active, – in one word, a deer. She had delicate features, a head not large, and a complexion perhaps even pale, but somewhat gilded by sun-rays, very dark eyes, brows as if painted, a small delicate nose, and lips like cherries. Her fine dark hair was dropping out from under the cap.
When the secretary approached, the dog lying near the scutching-bench rose, thrust his tail under him, and began to growl, showing his teeth from moment to moment as if he were laughing.
"Kruchek!" cried the woman, with a thin, resonant voice, "wilt thou lie down! May the worms bite thee!"
"Good-evening," began Zolzik.
"Good-evening, lord secretary!" answered the woman, not ceasing to work.
"Is yours at home?"
"He is at work in the woods."
"But that is too bad; I have an affair with him from the commune."
An affair with the commune for common people always means something evil. The woman stopped working, looked with alarm at the secretary, and inquired with concern, —
"Well, what is it?"
Zolzik meanwhile passed through the gateway and stood near her.
"Let us have a kiss, then I'll tell you."
"Keep away!" said the woman.
But the secretary had succeeded already in putting his arm around her waist, and drawing her toward him.
"I will scream!" said she, pulling away vigorously.
"My pretty one, – Marysia!"
"Oh, this is just an offence against God! Oh!"
She struggled still more vigorously; but Pan Zolzik was so strong that he did not let her go.
At this moment Kruchek came to her aid. He raised the hair on his back, and with furious barking sprang at the secretary; and, since the secretary was dressed in a short coat, Kruchek seized his nankeen trousers, went through the nankeen, caught the skin, went through the skin, and when he felt fulness in his mouth, he began to shake his head madly and tug.
"Jesus! Mary!" cried the lord secretary, forgetting that he belonged to the esprits forts.
But Kruchek did not let go his hold till the secretary seized a billet of wood and pounded him uncounted times on the back with it; when Kruchek got a blow on his spine, he sprang away whining piteously. But after a while he jumped at the man again.
"Take off this dog! take off this devil!" cried the secretary, brandishing the stick with desperation.
The woman cried to the dog, and sent him outside the gate. Then she and the secretary gazed at each other in silence.
"Oh, my misfortune! Why did you look at me?" asked Marysia, at length, frightened by the bloody turn of the affair.
"Vengeance on you!" shouted the secretary. "Vengeance on you! Wait! Repa will be a soldier. I wanted to save him. But now – you will come yourself to me! Vengeance on you!"
The poor woman grew as pale as if some one had struck her on the head with a hatchet; she spread out her hands, opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something; but meanwhile the secretary raised his cap with green binding from the ground, and went away quickly, brandishing the stick in one hand, and holding his badly torn trousers with the other.
CHAPTER II
SOME OTHER PERSONS AND DISAGREEABLE VISIONS
AN hour later, perhaps, Repa came home from the woods with the carpenter Lukash, on the landlord's wagon. Repa was a burly fellow, as tall as a poplar, strong, just hewn out with an axe. He went to the woods every day, for the landlord had sold to Jews all the forest which was free of peasant privileges. Repa received good wages, for he was a good man to work. When he spat on his palm, seized the axe, gave a blow with a grunt and struck, the pine-tree groaned, and chips flew from it half an ell long. In loading timber onto wagons he was also the first man.
The Jews, who went through the woods with measures in their hands and looked at the tops of the pines, as if hunting for crows' nests, were amazed at his strength. Droysla, a rich merchant from Oslovitsi, said to him, —
"Well, Repa! devil take thee! Here are six groshes for vodka. No! here, wait; here are five groshes for vodka!"
But Repa did not care, – he just wielded his axe till the woods thundered; sometimes for amusement he let his voice out through the forest, —
"Hop! Hop!"
His voice flew among the trees, and came back as an echo. And again, nothing was heard but the thunder of Repa's axe; and sometimes the pines too began to talk among their branches with a sound as is usual in a forest.
At times, also, the wood-cutters sang; and at singing, Repa too was the first man. One should have heard how he thundered forth with the wood-cutters a song which he had taught them himself, —
"Something shouted in the woods,
B-u-u-u-u!
And struck terribly,
B-u-u-u-u!
That's a mosquito that fell from the oak,
B-u-u-u-u!
And he broke a bone in his shoulder,
B-u-u-u-u!
That was an honest mosquito,
B-u-u-u-u!
He is flying barely alive,
B-u-u-u-u!
And they asked the mosquito,
B-u-u-u-u!
Oi, is a doctor not needed?
B-u-u-u!
Or any druggist?
B-u-u-u!
Only a spade and a pickaxe,
B-u-u-u-u!"
In the dramshop, too, Repa was first in everything: he loved sivuha; and he was quick at fighting when he had drunk anything. Once he made such a hole in the head of the house-servant, Damaz, that Yozvova, the housekeeper, swore that his soul could be seen through it. Another time, but that was when he was barely seventeen years of age, he fought in the dramshop with soldiers on furlough. Pan Skorabevski, who was mayor at the time, took him to the chancery, and gave him a couple of blows on the head; but for appearance' sake only, then, being satisfied, he inquired, —
"Repa, have the fear of God! How didst thou manage them? There were seven against thee."
"Well, serene heir," answered Repa, "their legs were worn out with marching, and the moment I touched one he fell to the floor."
Pan Skorabevski quashed the affair. For a long time he had been very friendly to Repa. The peasant women even whispered into one another's ears that Repa was his son.
"That can be seen at once," said they; "he has the courage of a noble, the dog blood!"
But this was not true; though everybody knew Repa's mother, no one knew his father. Repa himself paid rent for a cottage and three morgs of land, which became his own afterward. He cultivated his land; and, being a good worker, his affairs went on well. He married, and met such a wife that a better could not be found with a candle; and surely he would have been prosperous, had it not been that he liked vodka a little too well.
But what could be done? If any one mentioned the matter, he answered right off, —
"I drink from my own money, and what's that to you?"
He feared no one in the village; before the secretary alone had he manners. When he saw from a distance the green cap, the stuck-up nose and goatee walking in high boots along the road slowly, he caught at his cap. The secretary knew also some things against Repa. During the insurrection certain papers were given Repa to carry, and he carried them.
When he came that day from the woods to his cottage, Marysia ran to him with great crying, and began to call out, —
"Oh, poor man, my eyes will not look long on thee; oh, I shall not weave clothes for thee, nor cook food long for thee! Thou wilt go to the ends of the earth, poor unfortunate!"
Repa was astonished.
"Hast eaten madwort, woman, or has some beast bitten thee?"
"I haven't eaten madwort, and no beast has bitten me; but the secretary was here, and he said that there was no way for thee to escape from the army. Oi! thou wilt go, thou wilt go to the edge of the world!"
Then he began to question her: how, what? – and she told him everything, only she concealed the tricks of Pan Zolzik; for she was afraid that Repa would say something foolish to the secretary, or, which God keep away! he would attack him, and harm himself in that way.
"Thou foolish woman!" said Repa, at last, "why art thou crying? They will not take me to the army, for I am beyond the years; besides, I have a house, I have land, I have thee, stupid woman, and I have that tormented lobster there too."
While saying that he pointed to the cradle where the "tormented lobster," a sturdy boy a year old, was kicking and screaming to make a man's ears split.
The woman wiped her eyes with her apron, and said, —
"What does this all mean, then? Or does he know of the papers which thou wert carrying from forest to forest?"
Repa began now to scratch his head. "He does indeed!" After a while he added, "I will go and talk with him. Maybe it is nothing terrible."
"Go, go!" said Marysia, "and take a ruble with thee. Don't go near him without a ruble."
Repa took a ruble out of the box, and went to the secretary.
The secretary was a single man, so he had no separate housekeeping, but lived in the house of four tenements standing at the dam, – the so-called "brick house." There he had two rooms, with a separate entrance. In the first room there was nothing but some straw and a pair of gaiters; the second was both a reception and a sleeping room. There was a bed in it, almost never made up; on the bed two pillows without cases, from these pillows feathers were dropping continually; near by was a table, on it an inkstand, pens, chancery books, a few numbers of "Isabella of Spain," published by Pan Breslauer, two dirty collars of English make, a bottle of pomade, paper for cigarettes, and finally a candle in a tin candlestick, with a reddish wick and a fly drowned in the tallow close to the wick.
By the window hung a large looking-glass; opposite the window stood a bureau on which were the very exquisite toilet articles of the secretary, – jackets, vests of fabulous colors, cravats, gloves, patent-leather shoes, and even a cylinder hat which the lord secretary wore whenever he had to visit the district capital of Oslovitsi.
Besides this, at the moment of which we are writing, in an armchair near the bed rested the nankeen trousers of the lord secretary; the lord secretary himself was lying on the bed and reading a number of "Isabella of Spain," published by Pan Breslauer.
His position, not the position of Pan Breslauer, but the secretary, was dreadful, so dreadful, indeed, that one would need the style of Victor Hugo to describe it.
First of all, he feels a raging pain in his wound. That reading of "Isabella," which for him had been always the dearest pleasure and recreation, now increases, not only the pain, but the bitterness which torments him after that adventure with Kruchek. He has a slight fever, and is barely able to collect his thoughts. At times terrible visions come to him. He has just read how young Serrano arrived at the palace of the Escurial covered with wounds after a brilliant victory over the Carlists.
The youthful Isabella, pale with emotion, receives him. The muslin rises in waves above her bosom.
"General, thou art wounded!" says she with trembling voice to Serrano.
Here it seems to the unhappy Zolzik that he is really Serrano.
"Oi! oi! I am wounded!" repeated he, in a stifled voice. "Oh, queen, pardon! But may the most serene – "
"Rest, general! Be seated. Be seated. Relate thy heroic deeds to me."
"Relate them I can, but as to sitting I cannot in any way," cries Serrano, in desperation. "Oi! – Pardon, O queen! That cursed Kruchek! I wish to say Don José – Ai, ai! ai!"
Here pain drives away dreaming. Serrano looks around; the candle is burning on the table and spluttering, for just then it begins to burn the fly which had dropped into the tallow; other flies are crawling along the wall Oh! this is the house of four tenements, not the palace of the Escurial! There is no Queen Isabella here. Pan Zolzik recovers presence of mind. He rises in the bed, moistens a cloth in a dish of water standing near the bed, and changes the application on his wound.
Then he turns to the wall, dozes, or rather dreams half asleep, half awake, and is going again evidently by extra post to the Escurial.
"Dear Serrano! my love! I will dress thy wounds myself," whispers Queen Isabella.
Then the hair stands on Serrano's head. He feels the whole horror of his position. How is he to refuse obedience to the queen, and how is he in this case to yield himself to the dressing of his wound? Cold sweat is coming out on his forehead, when suddenly – the queen vanishes, the door opens with a rattle, and before him stands neither more nor less than Don José, Serrano's sworn enemy.
"What dost thou wish? Who art thou?" shouts Serrano.
"I am Repa!" answers Don José, gloomily.
Zolzik wakes a second time; the Escurial becomes the brick house again, the candle is burning, the fly is crackling in the wick, and blue drops are scattered; in the door stands Repa, and behind him – but the pen drops from my hand – through the half-open door are thrust in the head and shoulders of Kruchek. The monster holds his eyes fixed on Pan Zolzik, and seems to laugh.
Cold sweat in very truth is coming out on the temples of Pan Zolzik, and through his head flies the thought, "Repa has come to break my bones, and Kruchek to help him."
"What do ye both want here?" cries he, in a terrified voice.
Repa puts the ruble on the table, and answers, —
"Great, mighty lord secretary! I have come about the conscription."
"Out! out! out!" cries Zolzik, into whom courage enters in one instant. And falling into a rage he rises to spring at Repa; but at that moment his wound, received in the Carlist war, pains him so acutely that he drops again on the pillow, giving forth smothered groans.
"Oi! ye!"
