Hania

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!"

CHAPTER III

MEDITATIONS AND EUREKA

THE wound became inflamed.

I see how my fair readers will begin to drop tears over my hero, and hence, before any of them faint, I will hasten to add, that my hero did not die of the wound. Long life was predestined to him. For that matter, if he had died, I should have broken my pen and stopped this story; but as he did not die I continue.

In truth, then, the wound grew inflamed, but unexpectedly it turned to profit for the lord secretary of the chancery of Barania-Glova, and turned in this very simple way: The wound drew the humors from Pan Zolzik's head, therefore he began to think more clearly, and saw at once that, up to that time, he had been committing pure folly. For just listen: The secretary had a design, as they say in Warsaw, on Repa's wife, and that is not to be wondered at, for she was a woman whose equal was not to be found in the whole district of Oslovitsi, therefore he wanted to get rid of Repa. If once they took Repa into the army, Pan Zolzik might say to himself, "Now frolic, my soul, with thy coat off." But it was not so easy to substitute Repa for the mayor's son. A secretary is a power. Zolzik was a power among secretaries; there was this misfortune, however, that he was not the last resort in recruiting. In this case, one had to do with the district police, with the military commissioner, with the chief of the district, with the commander of the guard. Not all at least of these were interested in presenting the army and the State with Repa instead of Burak. "To inscribe him in the recruiting list, and what further?" asked my sympathetic hero. "They will verify the list, and it must be compared with the parish record; and since it will be hard to muzzle Repa's mouth, they will give a reprimand, and perhaps throw the secretary out of his office, and thus finish the matter."

The greatest men have committed follies under the influence of passion, but just in this is their greatness, that they open their eyes in proper season. Zolzik said to himself that in promising Burak to inscribe Repa in the list of recruits he had committed his first stupidity; in going to Repa's wife and attacking her at the hemp, he had committed the second; when he frightened her and her husband with the enrolment, he committed the third stupidity. Oh, lofty moment! in which a man truly great says to himself, "I am an ass!" thou didst come to Barania-Glova, thou didst descend, as if on wings, from that region where the lofty rests on the sublime, for Zolzik said to himself plainly, "I am an ass!"

But was he to reject the plan now, when he had shed his own blood for it (in his enthusiasm he had said, the blood of his own breast)? Was he to reject the plan when he had sanctified it by a new pair of trousers, for which he had not paid Srul, the tailor, and a pair of nankeens, he did not know himself whether he had worn them twice? – No, and never! On the contrary now, when to his projects against Repa's wife was added a desire for vengeance against both, and Kruchek with them, Zolzik swore to himself that he would be a fool unless he poured tallow into Repa's skin.

He meditated over methods the first day, while changing poultices; he meditated the second day, while changing poultices; he meditated the third day, while changing poultices; and do you know what he thought out? Well, he didn't think out anything!

On the fourth day, the guard brought him diachylum from the apothecary in Oslovitsi; Zolzik spread it on a cloth, applied it, and how wonderful were the effects of this medicament! Almost simultaneously he cried out, "I have found it!" In fact, he had found something.

CHAPTER IV

WHICH MAY BE ENTITLED: THE BEAST IN THE SNARE

A FEW days later, I do not know well whether five or six, in a private room of the public-house in Barania-Glova sat Burak the mayor, the councilman Gomula, and young Repa. The mayor took his glass, —

"You might stop quarrelling, when there is nothing to quarrel about."

"But I say that the Frenchman will not give up to the Prussian," replied Gomula, striking the table with his fist.

"The Prussian is cunning, the dog blood!" answered Repa.

"What good is it that he is cunning? The Turk will help the Frenchman, and the Turk is the strongest."

"What do ye know! The strongest is Harubanda [Garibalda]."

"You must have got out of bed shoulders first. But where did you pull out Harubanda?"

"What need had I to pull him out? Haven't people said that he sailed down the Vistula in boats with a great army? But the beer in Warsaw didn't please him, for generally it is better at home, so he went back."

"Don't lie for nothing. Every Schwab 8 is a Jew."

"But Harubanda is no Schwab."

"What is he?"

"Well what? He must be Cæsar and that's the end of it!"

"You are terribly wise!"

"You are not wiser."

"But if you are so wise, then tell what was the surname of our first father?"

"How? Yadam, of course."

"That is a Christian name; but his surname?"

"Do I know?"

"See there! But I do. His surname was Skrushyla."

"You must have the pip."

"If you don't believe, then listen: —

"'Gwiazdo morza, któraś PanaMlekiem swojém wykarmilaTyś śmiercì szczep, który wszczepiłPierwszy rodzic, wszczepił.'" 9

"Well, and isn't it Skrushyla?"

"You are right this time."

"You had better take another drink," said the mayor.

"Your healths, gossips!"

"Your health!"

"Haim!"

"Siulim!"

"God give happiness!"

All three drank; but since that was at the time of the Franco-German War, Councilman Gomula returned again to politics.

"Well, drink again!" said Burak, after a while.

"The Lord God give happiness!"

"The Lord God reward!"

"Well, to your health!"

They drank again, and, since they drank arrack, Repa struck his empty glass on the table, and said, —

"Ei! that was good! good!"

"Well, have another?" asked Burak.

"Pour it out!"

Repa grew still redder; Burak kept filling his glass.

"But you," said he at last to Repa, "though you are able to throw a korzets of peas on your shoulder with one hand, would be afraid to go to the war."

"Why should I be afraid? If to fight, then, fight."

"One man is small, but very brave; another is strong, but cowardly," said Gomula.

"That is not true!" answered Repa. "I am not cowardly."

"Who knows what you are?"

"But I will go," said Repa, showing his fist, which was as big as a loaf of bread. "If I should go into one of you with this fist, you would fly apart like an old barrel."

"But I might not."

"Do you want to try?"

"Be quiet!" interrupted the mayor. "Are you going to fight or what? Let us drink again."

They drank again; but Burak and Gomula merely moistened their lips. Repa emptied a whole glass of arrack, so that his eyes were white.

"Let us kiss now," said the mayor.

Repa burst into tears at the embraces and kisses, which was a sign that he was well drunk; then he fell to complaining, lamenting bitterly over the blue calf which had died two weeks before in his cowhouse at night.

"Oh, what a calf that was which the Lord God took from me!" cried he, piteously.

"Well, don't mourn aver the calf!" said Burak. "A writing has come to the secretary from the government, that the landlord's forests will go to the cottagers."

"And in justice!" answered Repa. "Was it the landlord who planted the forest?"

Then again he began to lament, —

"Oi! what a calf that was! When he bunted the cow with his head while sucking, her hind part flew up to the crossbeam."

"The secretary said – "

"What is the secretary to me?" asked Repa, angrily. "The secretary is no more for me, —

"'He is no more for meThan Ignatsi – '"

"Let us drink again!"

They drank again. Repa grew calm somehow, and sat down on the bench; that moment the door opened, and on the threshold appeared the green cap, the upturned nose, and the goatee of the secretary.

Repa, who had his cap pushed to the back of his head, threw it at once on the floor, stood up and bellowed out:

"Be praised."

"Is the mayor here?" asked the secretary.

"He is!" answered three voices.

The secretary approached, and at the same moment flew up Shmul, the shopkeeper, with a glass of arrack. Zolzik sniffed it, made a wry face, and sat down at the table.

Silence reigned for a moment. At last Gomula began,

"Lord secretary?"

"What?"

"Is that true about this forest?"

"True. But you must write a petition as a whole commune."

"I will not subscribe," said Repa, who had the general peasant aversion to subscribing his name.

"No one will beg of thee. If thou wilt not subscribe, thou wilt not receive. Thy will."

Repa fell to scratching his head; the secretary, turning to the mayor and the councilman, said in an official tone, —

"It is true about the forest; but each one must surround his own part with a fence to avoid disputes."

"That's it; the fence will cost more than the forest is worth," put in Repa.

The secretary paid no attention to him.

"To pay for the fence," said he to the mayor and the councilman, "the government sends money. Every one will receive profit even, for there will be fifty rubles to each man."

Repa's eyes just flashed, though he was drunk.

"If that is so, I will subscribe. But where is the money?"

"I have the money," said the secretary. "And here is the document."

So saying, he took out a paper folded in four, and read something which the peasants did not understand, though they were greatly delighted; but if Repa had been more sober, he would have seen how the mayor muttered to the councilman.

Then, O wonder! The secretary, taking out the money, said, —

"Well, who will write first?"

All subscribed in turn; when Repa took the pen, Zolzik took away the document, and said, —

"Perhaps thou are not willing? All this is of free will."

"Why shouldn't I be willing?"

"Shmul!" called the secretary.

Shmul appeared in the door. "Well, what does the lord secretary wish?"

"Come here as a witness that everything is of free will." Then, turning to Repa, he said, "Perhaps thou art not willing?"

But Repa had subscribed already, and fixed on the paper a jew 10 no worse than Shmul; then he took the money from Zolzik, fifty whole rubles, and, putting them away in his bosom, cried, —

"Now give us some more arrack!"

Shmul brought it. They drank once and a second time; then Repa planted his fists on his knees and began to doze. He nodded once, nodded a second time; at last he dropped from the bench, muttering, "God be merciful to me a sinner," and fell asleep.

Repa's wife did not come for him; she knew that if he were drunk he would abuse her, perhaps. He used to do so. The next day he would beg her pardon, and kiss her hands. When he was sober, he never said an evil word to the woman; but sometimes he attacked her when he was drunk.

So Repa slept all night in the public house. Next morning he woke at sunrise. He looked, stared, saw that it was not his cottage, but the dram-shop, and not the room in which they were sitting the evening before, but the general room, where the counter was.