Selected Polish Tales Part 64

When they saw Yakob they waved their hands cordially and called out to him, 'Old man, old man!'

Yakob did not reply; he shrunk into himself. Shame filled his soul. He looked at them vacantly. His forehead was wrinkled as with a great effort to remember something, but he could think of nothing but a huge millwheel turning under red, smooth waves. Suddenly he remembered: it was the young Cossack who had given him his brother's clothes.

'The other one,' he shouted, pointing to his m.u.f.fler, 'where did you leave him?'

Soldiers came between them and pushed the crowd away.

There was a terrific crash in the mill; a thick red cloud rushed upwards, dotted with sparks. Under this cloud an ever-increasing ma.s.s of people was flocking towards the spot where Yakob was; they were murmuring, pulling the soldiers by their cloaks. Women, children, and old men pressed in a circle round him, gesticulating, shouting: 'It was he...he...he!'

Words were lost in the chaos of sounds, faces became merely a dense ma.s.s, above which fists were flung upwards like stones.

Yakob tripped about among the soldiers like a fawn in a cage, raised and lowered his head, and clutched his rags; he could not shut his quivering mouth, and from his breast came a cry like the sob of a child.

The crowd turned upon him with fists and nails; he hid his face in his rags, stopped his ears with his fingers, and shook his head.

The prisoners had been dispatched, and it was Yakob's turn to be taken before the officer in command of the battalion.

'Say that I...that I...' Yakob entreated his guard.

'What are you in such a hurry for?'

'Say that I...'

The soldiers were sitting round a camp-fire, piling up the f.a.ggots.

Soup was boiling in a cauldron.

'Say that I...' he begged again, standing in the thick smoke.

At last he was taken into the school-house.

The officer in command stood in the middle of the room with a cigarette between his fingers.

'I...I...' groaned Yakob, already in the door. His dishevelled hair made him look like a sea-urchin; his face was quite disfigured with black marks of violence; behind his bleeding left ear still stuck the cigarette. His swollen upper lip was drawn sideways and gave him the expression of a ghastly smile. His eyes looked out helpless, dispirited, from his swollen lids.

'What do you want to say?' asked the officer, without looking at him.

Something suddenly came over him.

'It was I,' he said hoa.r.s.ely.

The soldier made his report.

'They gave me food,' Yakob said, 'and this m.u.f.fler and breeches, and they beat me.'

'It was you who showed them the way?'

'It was.'

'You did show them the way?'

He nodded.

'Did they beat you in the cottage?'

Yakob hesitated. 'In the cottage we were having supper.'

'They beat you afterwards, on the way?'

He again hesitated, and looked into the officer's eyes. They were clear, calm eyes. The guard came a step nearer.

The officer looked down, turned towards the window and asked more gently: 'You had supper together in the cottage. Then you went out with them. Did they beat you on the way?'

He turned suddenly and looked at Yakob. The peasant stood, looked at the grey snowflakes outside the window, and his face, partly black, partly pallid, was wrinkled in deep folds.

'Well, what have you got to say?'

'It was I...' This interrogation made him alternately hot and cold.

'You who beat them, and not they who beat you?' laughed the officer.

'The meat is still there in the cottage, and here is what they gave me,' he said, holding up the m.u.f.fler and tobacco.

The officer threw his cigarette away and turned on his heel. Yakob's eyes became dull, his arm with the m.u.f.fler dropped.

The officer wrote an order. 'Take him away.' They pa.s.sed the schoolmaster and some women and soldiers in the pa.s.sage.

'Well...well...' they whispered, leaning against the wall.

The guard made a sign with his hand. Yakob, behind him, looked dully into the startled faces of the bystanders.

'How frightened he looks...how they have beaten him...how frightened he looks!' they murmured.

He put the m.u.f.fler round his neck again, for he felt cold.

'That's him, that's him,' growled the crowd outside.

The manor-house was reached. The light from the numerous windows fell upon horses and gun-carriages drawn up in the yard.

'What do you want?' cried the sentry to the crowd, pushing them back.

He nodded towards Yakob. 'Where is he to go?'

'That sort...' murmured the crowd. Yakob's guard delivered his order.

They stopped in the porch. The pillars threw long shadows which lost themselves towards the fence and across the waves of the stream beyond, in the darkness of the night.

The heat in the waiting-room was overpowering. This was the room where the bailiff had so often given him his pay. The office no longer existed. Soldiers were lying asleep everywhere.

They pa.s.sed on into a brilliantly lighted room. The staff was quartered there. The general took a few steps across the room, murmured something and stood still in front of Yakob.

'Ah, that is the man?' he turned and looked at Yakob with his blue eyes that shot glances quick as lightning from under bushy grey eyebrows.