Selected Polish Tales Part 39

'What's the use of making many words?' said the Jew, holding up his hands, 'Maciek and the child have been frozen to death.'

Slimak sprang to his feet and looked for something to throw at the Jew, but staggered and held on to the wall. A hot wave rushed over him, his legs shook. Then he wondered why he should have been seized with fear like this.

'Where...when?'

'In the ravines close to the railway line.'

'But when?'

'You know quite well that it was yesterday when you drove them out.'

Slimak's anger was rising.

'As I live! the Jew is a liar! Frozen to death? What did he go to the ravines for? are there no cottages in the world?'

The innkeeper shrugged his shoulders and got up.

'You can believe it or not, it's all the same to me, but I myself saw them being driven to the police-station.'

'Ah well! What harm can they do to me, because Maciek has been frozen?'

'Perhaps men can't do you harm, but, man, before G.o.d! or don't you believe in G.o.d?' the Jew asked from the other side of the door, his burning eyes fixed on Slimak.

The peasant stood still and listened to his heavy tread down to the gate and to the sound of his departing sledge. He shook himself, turned round and met Jendrek's eyes looking fixedly at him from the far corner.

'Why should I be to blame?' he muttered. Suddenly an annual sermon, preached by an old priest, flashed through his mind; he seemed to hear the peculiar cadence of his voice as he said: 'I was an hungered and ye gave me no meat.... I was a stranger and ye took me not in.'

'By G.o.d, the Jew is lying,' he exclaimed. These words seemed to break the spell; he felt sure Maciek and the child were alive, and he almost went out to call them in to supper.

'A low Jew, that Josel,' he said to his wife, while he covered her again with the sheepskin, when her shivering-fits returned. Nothing should induce him to believe that story.

Next day the village Soltys drove up with the summons for Jendrek.

'His trial does not come on till to-morrow,' he said, 'but as I was driving that way, I thought he might as well come with me.'

Jendrek grew pale and silently put on his new sukmana and sheepskin.

'What will they do to him?' his father asked peevishly.

'Eh! I dare say he'll get a few days, perhaps a week.'

Slimak slowly pulled a rouble out of a little packet.

'And...Soltys, have you heard what the accursed Jew has been saying about Maciek and the child being frozen to death?'

'How shouldn't I have heard?' said the Soltys, reluctantly; 'it's true.'

'Frozen...frozen?'

'Yes, of course. But,' he added, 'every one understands that it's not your fault. He didn't look after the horses and you discharged him. No one told him to go down into the ravines.

He must have been drunk. The poor wretch died through his own stupidity.'

Jendrek was ready to start, and embraced his parents' knees. Slimak gave him the rouble, tears came into his eyes; his mother, however, showed no sign of interest.

'Jagna,' Slimak said with concern, 'Jendrek is going to his trial.'

'What of that?' she answered with a delirious look.

'Are you very ill?'

'No, I'm only weak.'

She went into the alcove and Slimak remained alone. The longer he sat pondering the lower his head dropped on to his chest. Half dozing, he fancied he was sitting on a wide, grey plain, no bushes, no gra.s.s, not even stones were to be seen; there was nothing in front of him; but at his side there was something he dared not look at. It was Maciek with the child looking steadily at him.

No, he would not look, he need not look! He need see nothing of him, except a little bit of his sukmana...perhaps not even that!

The thought of Maciek was becoming an obsession. He got up and began to busy himself with the dishes.

'What am I coming to? It doesn't do to give way!'

He pulled himself together, fed the cattle, ran to the river for water.

It was so long since he had done these things that he felt rejuvenated, and but for the thought of Maciek he would have been almost cheerful.

His gloom returned with the dusk. It was the silence that tormented him most. Nothing stirred but the mice behind the boards. The voice was haunting him again: 'I was a stranger and ye took me not in.'

'It's all the fault of those scoundrel Swabians that everything is going wrong with me,' he muttered, and began to count his losses on the window-pane: 'Stasiek, that's one, the cow two, the horses four, because the thieves did that out of spite for the hog, Burek five, Jendrek six, Maciek and the child eight, and Magda had to leave, and my wife is ill with worry, that makes ten. Lord Christ...!'

Trembling seized him and he gripped his hair; he had never in his life felt fear like this, though he had looked death in the face more than once. He had suddenly caught a glimpse of the power the Germans were exercising, and it scared him. They had destroyed all his life's work, and yet you could not bring it home to them. They had lived like others, ploughed, prayed, taught their children; you could not say they were doing any wrong, and yet they had made his home desolate simply by being there. They had blasted what was near them as smoke from a kiln withers all green things.

Not until this moment had the thought ever come to him: 'I am too close to them! The gospodarstwos farther off do not suffer like this. What good is the land, if the people on it die?'

This new aspect was so horrible to him that he felt he must escape from it; he glanced at his wife, she was asleep. The cadence of the priest's voice began to haunt him again.

Steps were approaching through the yard. The peasant straightened himself. Could it be Jendrek? The door creaked. No, it was a strange hand that groped along the wall in the darkness. He drew back, and his head swam when the door opened and Zoska stood on the threshold.

For a moment both stood silent, then Zoska said:

'Be praised.'

She began rubbing her hands over the fire.

The idea of Maciek and the child and Zoska had become confused in Slimak's mind; he looked at her as if she were an apparition from the other world. 'Where do you come from?' His voice was choked.

'They sent me back to the parish and told me to look out for work. They said they wouldn't keep loafers.'

Seeing the food in the saucepan, she began to lick her lips like a dog.

'Pour out a basin of soup for yourself.'