King Stakh's Wild Hunt

The left-overs of a very modest supper were removed from the table. We remained in our armchairs before the fireplace. Janoŭskaja looked around at the black windows behind which the branches of enormous trees rubbed against, and said:

“Perhaps you are ready for sleep now?”

This strange evening had put me into such a mood that I had lost all desire for sleep. And here we were sitting side by side looking into the fire.

“Tell me,” she suddenly said. “Do people everywhere live as we do here?”

I glanced at her, puzzled: hadn't she ever been anywhere outside of her home? As if she had understood me, she said: “I've never been anywhere beyond this plain in the forest… My father, he was the best man living on earth, taught me himself, he was a very educated man. I know, of course, what countries there are in the world. I know that not everywhere do our fir-trees grow, but tell me, is it everywhere so damp and cold for man to live on this earth?”

“Many find life cold on this earth, Miss Janoŭskaja. The people who thirst for power are to blame for that, they wish for power that is beyond their ability to exert. Also money is guilty, money for the sake of which people grab each other by the throat. However, it seems to me that not everywhere is it so lonely as it is here. Over there, beyond the forests, there are warm meadows, flowers, storks in the trees, as well as impoverished and oppressed people; but there the people somehow seek escape. They decorate their homes, women laugh, children play. While here there is very little of all that.”

“I suspected that,” she said. “That world is alluring, but I am not needed anywhere except at Marsh Firs. And what should I do there for money if money is necessary? Tell me: such things as love and friendship, do they exist there, at least now and then? Or is it so only in the books that are in my father's library?”

Again I did not for a moment suspect that this was an equivocal joke, though I was in quite an awkward position: sitting at night in a room and conversing with a young lady whom I hardly knew, talking about love, the subject having been brought up by her…

“Sometimes those things happen there.”

“There, that's what I say. It's impossible that people lie. But here we have nothing of the kind. Here we have the quagmire and gloom. Here we have wolves… wolves with fiery eyes. On such nights it seems to me that nowhere on this earth, nowhere does the sun shine.”

It was terrifying to see a dry black gleam in her eyes, and in order to change the subject, I said:

“It can't be that your father and mother did not love each other.”

Her smile was enigmatic:

“Our people do not love. This house sucks the life out of its people. And then who told you that I had a mother? I don't remember her, nobody in this house remembers her. At times it seems to me that my appearance in this world was of my own doing.”

In spite of the naivety of these words, I understood that this was an unknown scene from Decameron and one must not laugh, because it was all so terrible. A young girl was sitting near me talking of things that she had long been hiding in her heart and which, however, had no greater reality for her than angels in heaven had for me.

“You are mistaken,” I growled, “love nevertheless, even though rarely, does come our way on earth.”

“Wolves cannot love. And how can one love, if death is all around? Here it is, beyond the window.”

A very thin, transparent hand pointed to the black spots on the windows. And again her fine voice:

“Your lying books write that it is a great mystery, that it is happiness and light, that when love comes to a man and there is no reciprocation, he kills himself.”

“Yes,” I answered, “otherwise there would be neither men nor women.”

“You lie. People kill others, not themselves. I don't believe in it, I've never experienced it, which means that it doesn't exist. I don't wish to kiss anybody, about which your books write so much and so queerly, — people bite each other.”

Even now such talk frightens some men, what then is there to say about those times? I am not an unfeeling sort of person, but I felt no shame: she spoke about love as other women do about the weather. She did not know it, she had not been awakened, was quite cold, cold as ice. She could not even understand whether it was shameful or not. And her eyes looked frankly into mine.

This could not have been coquetry. This was a child, not a child even, but a living corpse.

She wrapped her shawl about her and said:

“Death reigns on earth. That I know. I don't like it when people lie about what has never existed on our earth.”

Beyond the walls the wind howled. She shrugged her shoulders and said quietly:

“A terrible land, terrible trees, terrible nights.”

And again I saw that same expression on her face and did not understand it.

“Tell me, they are large cities — Vilnia and Miensk?”

“Rather large, but Moscow and Petersburg are larger.”

“And there, too, the nights bring no comfort to people?”