Tales by Polish Authors Part 16

Nearly the whole of the broad valley, to the very edge of the wood where the dark, bare tree-tops projected beyond the border of mist, was filled by white b.a.l.l.s of vapour; the moon was moving slowly above them. Looking for a moment into the depths of the valley, she drew aside the floating veil, and touched the sleeping lake below with her silvery kiss. I stood a long while to gaze and to rest. The deep silence, the stillness which always reigns in these woods, the knowledge that no one but myself was to be found in that solitude for twenty versts round, filled me with a strange feeling of anxiety and longing. I roused myself in order to dispel this. It was unfortunately time to think of returning;--no easy matter, however, for in making my way through the wood, I had lost a clear conception of the right track. At last I hit on a small footpath, and decided to follow it in the hope that it would lead me to some inhabited spot. I had scarcely gone twenty steps before becoming persuaded that I was not walking on a path, but on one of the numerous tracks made in the wood by water or animals. It was therefore necessary to return to the place from which I had started, for only thence could I more or less trace the way leading in a bee-line through the wood. But the place had disappeared; the night had shrouded it in new and different shadows, and the mist had drawn its silver web across it. I walked for some time, searching in vain, and haunted by the thought of forest madness. I had seen people brought home from the 'taiga'[18] no longer in possession of their faculties, pale and miserable, and with the traces of terror and madness in their eyes. These unhappy men had often lost their way quite near houses, without seeing them or being able to recognize the points of the compa.s.s, although the sun was shining, and they had wandered about, crying and howling like wild animals. After recovering, they said that they had seen the demon. One of the causes of this illness is the fatigue brought on by the strain of the vain search. So I sat down on a felled trunk, resolving to wait for daybreak.

The air was cool. My clothes were wet with the mist and rain, besides being too thin for spending the night in the wood, so that I soon began to suffer from the cold. I tried to light a fire, but the matches were damp, and the only one which burnt could not set fire to the moist brushwood and logs. Having, therefore, gathered some gra.s.s, I hid my feet in it, as they were suffering the most from the cold; I examined my gun, and loaded it, and then, crouching against a tree, I tried to go to sleep.

In a situation of this kind every sense is rapidly dulled,--touch, smell, even sight; hearing alone becomes exceedingly acute. After only a few minutes I could hear my heart beating, the blood pouring through my veins, the whisper of the trees, the rustle of the mist, so that the dead silence of the wood was broken in upon by sounds, which, though scarcely audible, continued to increase. Suddenly a very real sound rang out amid these fancied ones, and forced me to open my eyes.

It came from the further end of the lake, and was like the measured strokes of an oar. I fixed my eyes on the spot whence it seemed to come. The veil of mist was trembling slightly, and beyond it, in the distance, something indistinct appeared low on the water. After a moment a small Yakut pirogue emerged from the shadows, and sped along the lake. I could perfectly well see the rower squatting in the bottom of the boat, and striking first with one, then with the other blade of his long oar, from the ends of which the water poured in a shining stream, like molten silver.

He soon approached the bank, and drew the boat to land. I crept towards him, hiding in order that he should not see me too soon, and run away, as I knew he would. He was engaged in taking something out of the boat.

'What news?' I greeted him, according to the local custom, coming slowly out of the bushes.

He started and exclaimed, but did not run away, for he recognized me, and I him. He was a poor Yakut, who lived about five versts from me.

'I know nothing! I have heard nothing! Oh, how you did frighten me,--but it's all right!' he said hastily, giving me his hand.

'What did you think it was?'

'Why should one meet a man in the wood at night time?' he answered evasively, eyeing me suspiciously from head to foot. 'You often think it's a man you know, and you talk to him as if you knew him, and then it turns out in the end not to be a man at all.'

'What are you doing here so late?'

'I am going home; it's a holiday to-morrow. I have a long way to go from here to Babylon[19] for fishing,--thirty versts. You know we're poor folk, we live by fishing,--we haven't any horses; so one is always in a boat, always in a boat. As I was dragging it through the wood I cut my foot, so I've got behindhand.'

'You have cut your foot?'

'It isn't much, for I've stopped the bleeding.'

'Then perhaps it was you whistling and calling?' I asked, remembering a strange sound I had heard a moment before.

'I!--No!' He was silent, and I noticed him lean over the boat, and cross himself.

'And what are you doing here?' he asked in his turn.

I hesitated.

'Looking for ducks,' I lied, not wishing to frighten him more.

'Ducks!' he repeated, laughing heartily, and his white teeth shone in the darkness like pearls.

'There have never been any ducks here!'

'Never been any? Why?' I asked, as I helped him to draw the boat along the edge of the wood towards the lake, which could be seen in the distance. The fisherman was limping.

'The lakes are different,' he explained, 'and there are as many lakes in our country as stars in the sky, and the stars are only the reflection of them. The lakes are as different as the stars:--there are large and small ones, and some so deep that you can't reach the bottom; or else they are shallow, or marshy. In one there are fine fish, in another small, in some the water's bad, and makes a man ill, because the cattle go into it, in others again it's as pure as air.'

We halted on the bank, let down the boat into the water, and entered it, the fisherman in front, I behind. Leaning lightly against one another, back to back, we sailed along like a G.o.d with two faces of which one was bearded and European, the other flat, clean-shaven, and Mongolian.

The Mongolian face continued its conversation, only interrupting it now and then to give me a warning not to move when the boat rocked too much.

'Everything comes from the water. Even the cow lived in the water until she was taken and tamed by man. There are different kinds of wild beasts and even people living in the water, as there are on land.

Now just look!' and he pointed with his oar to the long water-weeds swaying under the pa.s.sage of the pirogue. 'Isn't that a wood?' It was indeed a wood, dark and mysterious, visited only by fishes and drowned men. Once he had fallen in, no swimmer ever extricated himself from its thickets.

'Old people say,' the Yakut continued, 'that formerly everything was different,--everything was better, because there was more water, and that even the sables used to come up to the farm gates, and there was so much fish that it was enough to shoot an arrow into the lake to draw it back with a good catch. But now there's nothing; the sables have run away, and there isn't much fish. It's only the traders, our fathers, who save us, or we should die. They give the money to pay the taxes, they give tea, tobacco, and cotton. Eh yes! these traders! I'd just like to be a trader!'

The little boat struck the bank. We therefore drew it along to the next lake, and continued the rest of our journey in this manner, this being the sole means of travelling in summer in that country of lakes, marshes, and swampy woods.

After travelling thus for an hour along a narrow stream, overgrown with bulrushes, we ultimately arrived at the last lake. The sparks from a yurta chimney were glittering on its bank in the distance, like tiny red stars.

'I expect you are going to Chachak?' my companion asked, when we stopped on the bank. 'I am spending the night there.'

I took up some of the fisherman's things, and walked towards the yurta. I had known Chachak for some time past already. He was a queer man, who laughed at his own extravagances, and frequently even shocked the feeling of the neighbourhood. 'Chachak has made himself a cap of a whole wolf skin!' I had been told laughingly. 'Chachak has paid the merchants only two roubles for a brick of tea; "they would make too much profit by three roubles," he said!'

'What about the merchants? Did they give it to him?'

'Eh, why, his old woman gave it to them on the sly! Why! You don't know Chachak! He won't give three roubles;--he won't drink, and he won't give that!'

Chachak had been famous in his youth as the best hunter in the district, and wonders were related of his prowess and skill. He preferred bear hunting to any other, and set out to it summer and winter with his spear and gun, killing in the open field or lair, just as it happened. He was as ready for such encounters as he was for cards. Only let him hear of a bear, and from that moment he had no peace until he had tracked and killed it. Many a time he had been invited to accompany hunters who had found a den with several bears.

But burning with the fever for the chase, he had been unable to wait until morning, and had slipped away in the grey dawn with his faithful dog to hasten to the spot, where he was usually to be found, pale and splashed with the blood of the 'forest lords.' There was nothing left for his companions to do but for each to eat a portion of the hard heart and liver of the vanquished, and to drink a cup of blood, shouting the triumphant 'uch!' three times. All eyes would be upon Chachak, who would try to appear indifferent, although excited and feeling the just pride of a hero. Once, moreover, he had killed a bear with a tail, which, as everyone knows, is not a bear, but a devil. Had he not killed the 'icy demon,' who tracked people, carried off cattle, and whom neither bullet nor spear could touch? Chachak himself never spoke or boasted of his victories; he was always modest and reserved, as befits a man who possibly knows more than others. Since the accident which befell him during his last hunt, however, he had been completely changed. He had given up hunting and playing cards, become poor, and grown morose and strange:--he had lost his influence.

His yurta stood near the bank, so I quickly found myself at its gate.

A bright fire was burning within, and voices could be heard talking.

So they were not asleep yet! I went up to the door, and peeped through the c.h.i.n.k. Chachak was sitting before the fire, with his face towards me, holding a net which he was not winding, for his hand was stretched slightly in front of him while he related something to the listeners gathered round him. At his feet a small naked child played with the bra.s.s chain of a knife hanging in a wooden sheath sewn to his leather trousers above the right shin. Chachak was very animated; every now and then he bent forward towards his listeners, and stamped his ma.s.sive heel on the clay floor of the cottage.

'They have a horror of horseflesh, and eat pigs!' he was saying, 'yet a horse is a very clean and sensible animal.'

'Why, yes!' his listeners a.s.sented.

'But pigs!--I have seen them! They're disgusting! They've no hair!

They're bare, dirty, stupid, and bad tempered! They've enormous mouths, thin curling tails like snakes, small eyes, and teeth like a dog's. They're spiteful too!--When I was at Yakutsk I had an adventure with the pigs, and they all but ate me. There're lots of them there.

I had gone out by myself in the early morning to finish my pipe in the pa.s.sage; everyone was still asleep, and it had only just begun to dawn. The pigs were going round the courtyard, squealing. I was young, and liked a joke, so when they ran round me I shook my fist at them.

They rushed at me like mad!' He broke off with a laugh. 'I ran along the pa.s.sage, they after me; I jumped on to a bench, and they came grunting round me, while I kept shaking my fist at them. Ha-ha!'

He spat into his hand, and stretched it out before him.

Suddenly the door creaked. The woman exclaimed, the lads jumped up from the floor, the children began to cry.

'Who's coming? A Russian, perhaps, and pigs with him!' Chachak stopped talking, and drew back his outstretched fist.

The entrance, as is usual in a Yakut yurta, was behind the fireplace, the one source of light in the evening; thus a full minute of fear and anxious expectation pa.s.sed before I entered from the darkness. Yes, it was a 'Russian,' but a well-known one, a friend, and, into the bargain, without pigs!

Their faces brightened, and they stretched out their hands, welcoming me warmly and frankly, as guests are always welcomed in the North.

Chachak laughed, made room for me on the bench before the fire, and ordered the kettle to be put on.

'Tell us the news, and what is happening,' they begged me.

I began to relate the local news. They all listened attentively, although, as it turned out, they had already long known it. The companion of my night journey entered, and the conversation became general. The men grouped themselves round the table, on which Chachak's wife had set supper for us; freshly made soup, sour milk, and a large pile of fish, dried and smoked.

Chachak stood at the fire, warming his back, and did not join in the conversation. His daughter, a young and rather pretty girl, placed a few white china tea-cups and saucers on the table, and the usual Yakut entertainment began: tea with milk and cold refreshments, followed later by a hot supper with fish. Although the offer of meat was very tempting, and we were rather hungry, we were not equal to tasting all the dishes set before us. Chachak noticed this at once, and attacked me about it with his wonted brusqueness.

'You aren't eating? You've had enough? What's this new fashion of going to pay visits without being hungry? You Slavs eat like birds when you go to people's houses, but you go home and call out: "Wife, the samovar; put the saucepan on the fire,--I'm hungry." You're disgraceful!'