Tales by Polish Authors

A thick mist was already gathering in the low-lying country, chilling the man through as he worked. The darkness was coming on in unseen waves, creeping along the slopes of the hills, gathering to itself the dreary colours of the stubble-fields, the water-courses, the clefts in the hills, and the rocks.

As the waves of mist met, others – white, transparent, and scarcely visible – which rose from the marshes, crept along in streaks, winding in balls round the undergrowth, trembling and curling over the surface of the water. The cold, damp wind drove the mist along the bottom of the valley, till it was stretched out flat like a face on the canvas of a picture.

'The mist is coming on,' Walkowa murmured. It was that moment of twilight, when every form seems to be visibly reducing itself to dust and nothingness, when a grey emptiness spreads over the surface of the earth, looks into the eyes, and oppresses the heart with unconscious sorrow. Terror seized Walkowa. Her hair stood on end, and a shudder passed through her body. The mists rose like a living thing, stealthily crawling over towards her; they came up from behind, retreated, lay in wait, and again crept forward in more impetuous pursuit. Her hands were clammy with the damp, it soaked through her skin to the bone, it irritated her throat, and tickled her chest. Then she remembered her child, whom she had not seen since noon. He was lying asleep, – locked up in a room quite alone, – in a cradle of lime wood, suspended from the beams of the ceiling by birch-twigs. Surely he was crying now, – choking, – sobbing? The mother heard that cry, as wailing and pitiful as that of a solitary bird in a desert place. It rang in her ears, it tormented a particular spot in her brain, it tore at her heart. She had not thought about him all day, for her hard work had scattered all her thoughts, in fact, it had drained and annihilated her power of thinking; but now the uncanny sensations caused by the twilight compelled her to concentrate herself and fasten her mind upon this small morsel of humanity.

'Walek' she said timidly, when the man brought up the barrow, 'shall I be off to the cottage and finish scraping the potatoes?'

Gibała did not answer, as though he had not heard. He seized the barrow and set forth. When he returned, the woman implored again: 'Walek, shall I be off?'

'Eh?' he grumbled carelessly.

She knew what his anger meant; she knew that he could catch a man under the ribs, gather up his skin in handfuls, and, having shaken him once or twice, throw him down like a stone among the rushes. She knew he was capable of tearing the handkerchief from her head, twisting her hair in a knot round his fist and dragging her in terror along the road; or, in a fit of absent-mindedness, of pulling his spade out of the swamp quickly, and cutting her across the head without considering – whether it had hit, or not hit her.

But impatient anxiety, kindled to the point of pain, rose above the fear of punishment. At moments the woman thought of running away; it only meant creeping into the little ravine, leaping across the brooklet, and then making straight through the fields and plantations. As she stooped and filled her barrow, she was already escaping in thought, leaping like a marten, scarcely feeling the pain of running barefoot across the stubble, overgrown with thick blackthorn and blackberries. The sharp clods would sting not only her feet but her heart. She would come running to the cottage, and open the bolt with the wooden key; the warmth and close air of the room would meet her face; she would clasp the cradle … Walek would kill her when he returned to the cottage, – beat her to death: – but what then? That would be for later…

As soon, however, as Walek emerged from the mist, she was seized afresh by a dread of his fists. Again she humbly begged him, although she knew that her tormentor would not set her free:

'Perhaps the baby is dead in there.'

He answered nothing, threw down the strap of the barrow from his shoulder, approached his wife, and, by a movement of the head, pointed to the stakes up to which they must dig that day. Then he seized the spade, and began to throw mud into his barrow, time after time. He worked without thinking, quickly, – as fast as he could breathe. When he had filled the barrow he pushed it forward, running at top speed, and said as he left:

'Push yours too, you lazy brute…'

She took this mild concession to the object of her love, this brutal goodness, this hardness and severity as if it had been a caress. For it would be possible to finish the work far sooner if they both wheeled the mud. Rapidly and impetuously she now imitated his movements, like a monkey, and shovelled up the mud four times more quickly, no longer drawing on her muscular peasant's strength, but on her nervous power. Her chest rattled, dazzling colours passed under her eyelids, she felt faint, and large burning tears fell from her eyes into that cold, evil-smelling filth, – tears of unheeded pain. Every time she struck the spade into the ground she looked to see if it was still far to the stakes; her barrow ready, she seized it, and ran at full tilt after the man.

The mists rose high; they drew past the rushes and stood over the tops of the alders in an unmoving wall. The trees loomed through them as patches of indefinite colour, astonishingly large, but imperfect forms, which ran across the deep gorge like monstrous, terrible apparitions.

Their heads fell forward; their hands executed a uniform movement; their bodies were bowed to the ground…

The wheels of the barrows clattered and whined. Waves of mist like milk when poured into water, swayed amid the darkening hills.

The evening star shone low in the sky, and tremblingly threw its feeble light across the darkness.

TEMPTATION

STEFAN ŻEROMSKI

Countess Anna Krzywosąd – Nasławska's youngest son had decided to take Holy Orders. From boyhood he had shown an unusual fondness for prayer, had been silent and obedient, and worn an earnest, pious expression. He had been educated in Rome under the eye of a distant cousin – a Cardinal – and completed his course at the seminary there with distinction, when barely twenty. Having not yet attained the proper age to hold any spiritual office, he went back to his own country for the first time for many years, and stayed at his mother's house.

He occupied a corner room in the mansion, as cold and damp as any monastic cell; he slept on the ground, fasted unceasingly, read Latin books, very probably scourged himself at nights, and wore a hair shirt under his shabby cassock. He was unspeakably good and gentle, forgave injuries, and was over-modest.

When he sat down, it was on the very edge of the chair, as if anxious that when he rose quickly his cassock should hinder him and make him move like a priest; he walked on tiptoe as if a mystic heel protected him from the dust of the earth; he shunned society, he murmured a prayer at the sight of a village girl.

Every day at dawn he left the house, and went into the fields. He felt that there he could be in closest communication with his Creator, there ecstatic visions came to him most clearly. He followed the beaten track through numberless rye-fields to the upland, where a half-ruined little chapel lay hidden in the shade of the pine forest.

One morning he went there as usual. The landscape was still buried in the night-mist, but a violet streak of daybreak had begun to spread on the horizon. The bearded rye brushed against his knees and scattered large dewdrops, yet the pathway was not damp, being sheltered by the full drooping ears. The corn, feebly illumined by the early morning light, rose in great waves along the hill, where the undulating line of the fields showed against the wood. The scent of earth and ripening corn hung on the breeze, bringing a sense of health, strength, and youth. From the dark gloom of the huge trees, whose tops were beginning to break up the expanse of dawning blue, came the keen, damp breath of the forest. The seminarist walked along slowly and lazily, passing his hand over the surface of the rye. Sky larks and crested larks rose at his feet, and dropped again like stones into the thickly-growing corn.

The dawn was now tinging the horizon with a rosy light; it burst forth like a wide flash of lightning, illuminating the rifts and curves in the dark clouds which lay idly over the wood. Unexpectedly hundreds of red firs, crowning the summit of the hill, emerged tall and grand from the night, their boughs standing out prominently against the transparent background of blue, as if stretching out their arms to the approaching sun.

Suddenly a thrill passed through the earth. The next moment a puff of wind, the forerunner of daybreak, stirred the boughs of the firs, and announced alike to plant, to grass, and corn – the coming of the sun.

It seemed as if the earth were quivering, as if her heart began to beat. Then the wind spread its wings, and hovered over the scented trunks, over the osiers and corn in the distance. A long, soothing moment of death-like silence followed, and then that mysterious moment of early dawn, when each living plant glows in its every part as if on fire.

The student walked with his face turned eastwards. Words of prayer rose from his heart to his lips as the sap rises to the bark of the pines when Spring comes. He went up to the little chapel, opened the grey wooden door, studded with nails, and fell on his face with outstretched hands before the picture of Christ, clumsily drawn by a rustic hand.

He felt as if his soul had fled from earth to the very Throne of God. The scales had fallen from his eyes in a moment: he was gazing on the face of the Eternal.

All at once a rough, coarse peasant's song was heard:

'It was then that I liked you best, Hanka,When you bleached yourself in the fields, in the fields, like a gosling.'

This was answered by a woman's voice, approaching from a distance:

'I did not bleach myself, I bleached a linen shirt,But you, Kaśka, thought that I was painted.'

The young man rose from the ground, and stood at the door of the chapel. He saw a sturdy farmer's lad in shirt sleeves, bare-foot, in a straw hat, and loaded like a horse, with juniper wood. This strapping fellow was taking up a kilo of roots – digging out bushes with the clods, and moistening his hands in the branches. A girl was going along the path, carrying a load of weeds on her back. The corners of her petticoat were turned up and tucked into her belt, her broad shoulders were bent together under the heavy burden, only her head, tied round with a red handkerchief, was raised towards the hill where the lad was working. When she reached the turn of the path, he stopped her, pulled down the hem of her skirt from her waist, and laid her bundle on the ground. She pushed him away with her hands, laughing.

The student shaded his eyes with his hand, but dropped it again the next minute, as the sound of the two singing a fresh song echoed through the glade. It was strange music. The wood, like a tuned string, seemed to quiver in harmony with the sound of those two voices:

'In the garden is a cherry tree,In the orchard there are two;I have loved you, Hanuś, since you were small,Nobody else but you.'

They went down into the hollow through the corn, which reached up to their heads, bent towards one another. Those two heads stood out in sharp relief against the dark rye, while the giant, brazen shield of the sun was rising over the ridge. They walked thus for a long time, never completely hidden by the corn.

Tears flowed from under the young man's closed eyes, and he clenched his hands convulsively. Words unknown to him, words known as longing and the desire for love, forced themselves unnoticed to his lips.

In a vision he saw moist eyes and a girl's long braided hair rising and sinking in some sea cavern. An unknown force, inexpressibly sweet, a force which could be neither expelled nor conquered, rose within him, carrying him far away into space. His soul threw off its fetters, and rushed forth in its wild freedom, as a colt starts for a mad gallop…

SRUL – FROM LUBARTÓW

ADAM SZYMAŃSKI

I

It happened in the year…; but no matter what year. Suffice it to say that it happened, and that it happened at Yakutsk in the beginning of November, about a month after my arrival at that citadel of frosts. The thermometer was down to 35 degrees Réamur. I was therefore thinking anxiously of the coming fate of my nose and ears, which, fresh from the West, had been making silent but perceptible protests against their compulsory acclimatization, and to-day were to be submitted to yet further trials. These latest trials were due to the fact that one of the men in our colony, Peter Kurp, nicknamed Bałdyga,10 had died in the local hospital two days before, and early that morning we were going to do him a last service, by laying his wasted body in the half-frozen ground.

I was only waiting for an acquaintance, who was to tell me the hour of the funeral, and I had not long to wait. Having wrapped up my nose and ears with the utmost care, I set out with the others to the hospital.

The hospital was outside the town. In the courtyard, and at some distance from the other buildings, stood a small shed – the mortuary.

In this mortuary lay Bałdyga's body.

When the doors were opened, we entered, and the scene within made a painful impression on the few of us present. We were about ten people, possibly a few more, and we all involuntarily looked at one another: we were standing opposite a cold and bare reality, not veiled by any vestige of pretence…

In the shed, – which possessed neither table nor stool, nothing but walls white with hoarfrost and a floor covered with snow, – lay a large bearded corpse, equally white, and tied up in some kind of sheet or shirt. This was Bałdyga.

The body, which was completely frozen, had been brought near the light to the door, where the coffin was standing ready.

Never shall I forget Bałdyga's face as I saw it then with the light full upon it, and washed by the snow. There was something strange and indescribably sad in the rough, strongly marked countenance; the large pupils and projecting eyeballs seemed to look far away into the distance towards the stern frosty sky.

'That man, – he was a good sort,' one of those present said to me, noticing the impression which the sight of Bałdyga made on me. 'He was always steady and industrious; people who were hard up used to go to him and he would help them. But there never was anyone so obstinate as Kurp: he believed to the last that he would go back to the Narev.11 Yet before the end came it was plain that he knew he would never get there.'

Meanwhile the petrified body had been laid in the coffin, and placed upon the small one-horse Yakut sledge.

Then the tailor's wife – a person versed in religious practices, – undertook the office of priest for such time as we could give her, and began to sing 'Ave Maria,' while we joined in with voices broken with emotion. After this we proceeded to the cemetery.

We walked quickly; the frost was invigorating, and made us hasten our steps. At last we reached the cemetery. We each threw a handful of frozen earth on to the coffin… A few deft strokes of the spade … and in a moment only a small freshly turned mound of earth remained to bear witness to Bałdyga's yet recent existence in this world. This witness would not last long, however, – scarcely a few months. The spring would come, and, thawed by the sun, the mound on the grave would sink and become even with the rest of the ground, and grass and weeds would grow upon it. After a year or two the witnesses of the funeral would die, or be dispersed throughout the wide world, and if even the mother who bore him were to search for him, she would no longer find a trace on the earth. But, indeed, none would seek for the dead man, nor even a dog ask for him.

Bałdyga had known this; we knew it too: and we dispersed to our houses in silence.

The day following the funeral the frost was yet more severe. There was not a single building to be seen on the opposite side of the fairly narrow street in which I lived, for a thick mist of snow crystals overspread the earth, like a cloud. The sun could not penetrate this mist, and although there was not a living soul in the street, the air was so highly condensed through the extreme cold that I continually heard the metallic sound of creaking snow, the sharp reports of the walls and ground cracking in the frost, or the moaning song of a Yakut. Evidently those Yakut frosts were beginning, which reduce the most terrible Arctic cold to insignificance. They fill human beings with unspeakable dread. Every living thing feels its utter helplessness, and although it cowers down and shrinks into itself for protection, knows quite well – like the cur worried by fierce mastiffs, – that all is in vain, for sooner or later the inexorable foe is bound to be victorious.

And Bałdyga was continually in my mind, as if he were alive. I had sat for hours at my half-finished task. Somehow I could not stick to work; the pen fell from my hand, and my unruly thoughts ranged far away beyond the snowy frontier and frosty ground. In vain I appealed to my reason, in vain I repeated wholesome advice to myself for the tenth time. Hitherto I had offered some resistance to the sickness which had consumed me for several weeks; to-day I felt completely overcome and helpless. Homesickness was devouring and making pitiless havoc of me.

I had been unable to resist dreaming so many times already; was it likely I should withstand the temptation to-day? The temptation was stronger, and I was weaker than usual.

So begone frost and snow, begone the existence of Yakutsk! I threw down my pen, and surrounding myself with clouds of tobacco smoke, plunged into the waters of feverish imagination.

And how it carried me away!.. My thoughts fled rapidly to the far West, across morasses and steppes, mountains and rivers, across countless lands and cities, and spread a scene of true enchantment before me. There on the Vistula lay my native plains, free from misery and human passions, beautiful and harmonious. My lips cannot utter, nor my pen describe their charm!

I saw the golden fields, the emerald meadows; the dense forests murmured their old legends to me.

I heard the rustle of the waving corn; the chirping of the feathered poets; the sound of the giant oaks as they haughtily bid defiance to the gale.

And the air seemed permeated by the scent of those aromatic forests, and those blossoming fields, adorned in virgin freshness by the blue cornflowers and that sweetest beauty of Spring, – the innocent violet.

… Every single nerve felt the caress of my native air… I was touched by the life-giving power of the sun's rays; and although the frost outside creaked more fiercely, and showed its teeth at me on the window panes more menacingly, yet the blood circulated in my veins more rapidly, my head burnt, and I sat as if spellbound, deaf, no longer seeing or hearing anything round me…

II

I did not notice that the door opened and someone entered my room, neither did I see the circles of vapour, which form in such numbers every time a door is opened that they obscure the face of the person entering. I did not feel the cold: it penetrates human dwellings here with a sort of shameless, premeditated violence. In fact, I had seen or heard nothing until suddenly I felt a man close to me, and even before catching sight of him, found myself involuntarily putting him the usual Yakut question:

'Toch nado?' ('What do you want?')

'If you please, Sir, I am a hawker,' was the answer.

I looked up. Although he was dressed in ox and stag's hide, I had no doubt that a typical Polish Jew from a small town stood before me. Anyone who had seen him at Lossitz or Sarnak would have recognized him as easily in Yakut as in Patagonian costume. I knew him at once. And since, as I have said, I was as yet only semi-conscious, and had asked the question almost mechanically, the Jew now standing before me did not interrupt my train of thought too harshly; the contrast was, therefore, not too disagreeable. Quite the reverse. I gazed into the well-known features with a certain degree of pleasure; the Jew's appearance at that moment seemed quite natural, since it carried me in thought and feeling to my native land, and the few Polish words sounded dear to my ear. Half dreaming still, I looked at him kindly.

The Jew stood still for a moment, then turned, and retreating to the door, began to pull off his multifarious coverings.

Then I came to myself, and realized that I had not yet answered him, and that my sagacious countryman, quite misinterpreting my silence, was anxious to dispose of his wares to me. I hastened to undeceive him.

'In heaven's name, man, what are you doing?' I cried quickly, 'I do not want to buy anything; I am not wanting anything. Do not unload yourself in vain, and go away with God's blessing!'

The Jew stopped undoing his things, and after a moment's consideration, came towards me with his long fur coat12 half trailing behind him, and began to mumble quickly in broken sentences: 'It's all right; I know you won't buy anything, Sir. I saw you, for I have been here a long time, a very long time… I didn't know before that you had come… You come from Warsaw, don't you, Sir? They only told me yesterday evening that you had been here four months already; what a pity it was such a time before I heard of it! I should have come at once. I have been searching for you to-day for an hour, Sir. I went quite to the end of the town, – and there's such a frost here, – confound it!.. If you will allow me Sir, – I won't interrupt for long?.. Only just a few words…'

'What do you want of me?'

'I should only like to have a little chat with you, Sir.'

This answer did not greatly surprise me. I had already come across not a few people, Jews among them, who had called solely for the purpose of 'having a little chat' with a man recently arrived from their country. Those who came were interested in the most varied topics imaginable; there were the inquisitive gossipers pure and simple, there were the people who only enquired after their relations, and there were the politicians, including those whose heads had been turned. Among those who came, however, politics always played a specially important part. So it did not surprise me, I repeat, to hear the wish expressed by a fresh stranger, and although I should have been glad to rid my cottage as quickly as possible of the unpleasant odour of the ox-hide coat, – badly tanned, as usual – I begged him in a friendly way to take it off and sit down.

The Jew was evidently pleased. He took a seat beside me at once and I could now observe him closely.

All the usual features of the Jewish race were united in the face beside me: the large, slightly crooked nose and penetrating hawk's eyes, the pointed beard of the colour of a well-ripened pumpkin, the low forehead, surrounded by thick hair; all these my guest possessed. And yet, strange to say, the haggard face expressed a certain frank sincerity, and did not make a disagreeable impression on me.

'Tell me where you come from, what your name is, what you are doing here, and why you wish to see me?'

'Please, Sir, I am Srul, from Lubartów. Perhaps you know it, – just a stone's throw from Lublin? – Well, at home everyone thinks it a long way from there, and formerly I thought so too. But now,' he added with emphasis, 'we know that Lubartów is quite close to Lublin, a mere stone's throw.'

'And have you been here long?'

'Very long; three good years.'

'That is not so very long; there are people who have lived here for over 20 years, and I met an old man from Vilna in the road, who had been here close upon 50 years. Those have really been a long time.'

But the Jew snubbed me. 'As to them, I can't say. I only know that I have been here a long time.'

'You must certainly live quite alone, if the time seems so long to you?'

'With my wife and child – my daughter. I had four children when I set out, but, may the Lord preserve us, it was such a long way, we were travelling a whole year. Do you know what such a journey means, Sir?.. Three children died in one week – died of travelling, as it were. Three children!.. An easy thing to say!.. There was nowhere even to bury them, for there was no cemetery of ours there… I am a Husyt,' he added more quietly. 'You know what that means Sir?.. I keep the Law strictly … and yet God punishes me like this…' He grew silent with emotion.