King Stakh's Wild Hunt

So boundless was the faith which this man called forth in me, that our hands met in a strong handshake and my smile was a friendly one.

“Why were you expelled?”

“Oh, some nonsense. It began when we decided to honour the memory of Shevchenko. We were threatened that the police would be brought into the university.” He even began to blush. “Well, we rebelled. And I shouted that if they only dared to do that with our sacred walls, we would wash that shame off them with our blood, and the first bullet would strike the man who had given that order. Then it became noisy and I was grabbed. And in the police-station, when I was asked my nationality, I answered: “Write — Ukrainian.”

“Well said.”

“I know it was very imprudent for those who had taken up the struggle.”

“No, that was good for them, too. One such answer is worth dozens of bullets. And it signifies that everybody is fighting a common enemy. There is no difference between the Belarusian and the Ukrainian if the lash is held over them.”

We looked at the dancers silently until Śvieciłovič winced.

“Dancing. The devil knows what it's like. A waxworks show of some kind… antedeluvian pangolins. In profile not faces but ugly mugs. Brains the size of a thimble, and paws like a dinosaur's with 700 teeth. And their dresses with trains. And the frightening faces of these curs… We are after all an unfortunate people, Mr. Biełarecki.”

“Why?”

“We have never had any really great thinkers among us.”

“Perhaps it's better so,” I said.

“And nevertheless we are a people without a land to settle on. This infamous trade of one's country over a period of seven centuries. In the beginning it was sold to Lithuania[6], then, before the people had hardly become assimilated, to the Poles, to everybody and anybody, regardless of honour and conscience.”

The dancers began to cast glances at us.

“You see, they are looking at us. When a person's soul is screaming, they don't like it. They all belong to one gang here. They trample on the little ones, they repudiate honour, sell their young daughters to old men. You see that one over there — Sava Stachoŭski? — I would not put a horse into the same stable with him, for the horse's morals would be endangered. And this Chobaleva, a provincial Messalina. And this one, Asanovič, drove a serf's daughter into her grave. Now he can't do that, hasn't got the right to, but all the same he continues to lead a dissolute life. Unfortunate Belarus! A kind, complaisant, romantic people in the hands of rascals. And so it will always be while this nation allows itself to be made a fool of. It gives up its heroes to the rack and itself sits in a cage over a bowl of potatoes or turnips, looking blank, and understanding nothing. Much would I pay the man who at last shook off from his people's neck this decaying gentry, these stupid parvenues, these conceited upstarts and corrupt journalists, and made the people become masters of their own fate. For that I would give all my blood.”

Apparently my senses had become very sharp: all the time I felt somebody's look on my back. When Śvieciłovič had finished, I turned around and was stupified. Standing behind us was Nadzieja Janoŭskaja, and she had heard everything. But it was not she, it was a dream, a forest sprite, a being out of a fairy-tale. Her dress was like that worn by women in the Middle Ages: no less than 50 lengths of Vorša golden satin had gone into its making. And this dress had over it another, a white one, with free designs in blue that seemed as if of silver as the colours played in the numerous cuts hanging from the sleeves and the hem of the dress. Her tightly tied waist was bound by a thin golden cord falling almost to the floor in two tassels. On her shoulders was a thin “robok” made of a white and silver tinted cloth. Her hair was gathered in a net, an ancient head-dress reminding one somehow of a little ship woven from silver threads. From both hornlets of this little ship a thin white veil hung down to the very floor.

This was a Swan-Queen, the mistress of an amber palace, in a word, the devil alone knows what, but only not the previous ugly duckling. I saw Dubatoŭk's eyes popping out of his head, his jaws sagging: he, too, had evidently not expected such an effect. The violin screamed. Silence fell.

This attire was quite uncomfortable and it usually fetters the movement of a woman unaccustomed to it, makes her heavy and baggy, but this girl was like a queen in it, as if she had all her life worn only such clothing: her head proudly thrown back, she floated dignified and womanly. From under her veil her large eyes smiled archly and proudly, stirred by a feeling of her own beauty.

Dubatoŭk grunted even, so surprised was he, and he came up to her with quickening steps. With an incomprehensible expression of pain in his eyes, he took her face in the palms of his hands and kissed her on the forehead, muttering something like “such beauty”.

And then his lips again broke out into a smile.