King Stakh's Wild Hunt

“Oh! Mr. Biełarecki, it's dreadful. What am I guilty of, why must I answer for the sins of my forefathers? An excessive weight has been laid on the weak shoulders of mine. It's a clinging weight and a heavy one. If you could know how much blood, and dirt, how many murders, orphans' tears are on every coat-of-arms of the gentry! How many murdered or frightened to death, how many unfortunates! We haven't the right to exist, even the most honest of us, the very best of us. The blood in our veins is not blue, it's dirty blood. Don't you think that we are all up to the twelfth generation responsible for this and must answer for it, answering with suffering, poverty and death? We were indifferent to the people that suffered tortures side by side with us and from us, we considered the people cattle, we poured out wine, while they shed their blood. They had nothing but bad bread. Mr. Dubatoŭk, my neighbour, once came to my father and told him an anecdote about a peasant woman who took her son to the priest and the priest treated them to “kuldoons”, those delicious baked potato pancakes stuffed with meat and cheese. The child asked what they were. The mother with that innate peasant delicacy pushed him with her foot under the table and whispered: “Hush!” The child ate up what was on his plate, then sighed and said quietly: “And I've eaten a dozen of these hushes.” Everybody who heard this anecdote laughed, but I was ready to slap Dubatoŭk in the face. There's nothing funny in the fact that children have never seen “kuldoons”, have never eaten any meat. Their hair is thin, their legs are crooked, at the age of fourteen they are still children, but at twenty-five they are ancient, their faces wrinkled and old. No matter how you feed them, they give birth to the same kind of children, if they do, at all, have any. They answered us with rebellions, savage rebellions, because they suffered unheard of wrongs. And then we had them executed. This one here on the wall, with a beaver collar, tortured his cousin to death because he had deserted to the detachment of Vasil Vaščyła, the leader of the 1740 rebellion.

His cousin's name was Aghei Hrynkievič-Janoŭski. How indifferent we were to everybody and everything. The same two-footed people as we are, they lived on grass, although our land is generous and bountiful. We bartered our land, sold it to greedy neighbours, to anybody who wanted it, while the peasants loved the land like their own mother, and starved for a lack of bread. And who will blame them when they take up their pitchforks and thrust them into our chests? It seems to me that even after 100 years when we have all died out, if the descendants of these unfortunates accidentally find one of the gentry — they will have the right to kill him. The earth is not for us.”

I looked at her in astonishment. This vehement inspired outburst made her face look unusual. And I suddenly understood she was not at all ugly, not at all! Here before me was an unusual girl, surprisingly beautiful, with a mixture of madness and beauty. Gracious me! What beauty it was!!! In all probability such were our ancient “prophetesses” who fought in the detachments of Murashka and the Peasant Christ, the leaders of the rebellions around Miensk and in Prineman in the 17th century. It was an unearthly beauty, a tormented face with bitter lips and enormous dry eyes.

And suddenly it all disappeared. Again here in front of me was sitting the previous creature, puny and starved. But now I knew her true worth.

“Even so, I do not want to die, not at all. How I wish to see the sun, the meadows, so different from those I know, and to hear childish laughter. My desire for life is great, although I haven't the right to live. It is only the dream of life that has given me the strength to endure the experiences of the last two years, even though there is no way out for me. These steps that we have here at night, the Little Man, the Lady-in-Blue. I know that I shall die. And this is King Stach's doing. If not for this Wild Hunt of his — we should probably yet live. The Hunt will kill us.”

If previously I had been almost entirely indifferent to this emaciated child of the gentry, after her passionate outburst I understood that some miracle had occurred and changed her into a real person. I felt it necessary to help her.

And thus, lying with my eyes open in the darkness of the night, I thought almost till the very morning, that if yet yesterday I had decided to leave this abominable place and this high-born hostess of mine within two days, I should now remain here a week, two weeks, a month, to find the answer to all these secrets and return to this person the peace she deserves.

Chapter The Third