King Stakh's Wild Hunt

I looked at the armchair and saw a plate on it. Some unfinished food in it and a spoon. Bierman quickly removed everything.

“I beg your pardon, I had decided, how shall I put it?… to satisfy my appetite.”

“But, please, go on eating,” I said.

“Oh! Unthinkable! To eat in the presence of a highly respected gentleman. I just… could not.”

The lips of this porcelain doll pleasantly rounded out.

“Have you never noticed what an unpleasant sight is a person eating? Oh! It's awful! He chews dully, and reminds one of cattle. There is a striking resemblance in all people to some kind of animal. This one guzzles like a lion, that one champs, I beg your pardon, like the animal the prodigal son pastured. No, my dear sir, I never eat in the presence of anybody.”

I took a seat. The room was furnished very modestly. An iron bed, reminding one of the guillotine, a dinner-table, two chairs, another table with books and papers piled on it. Only the table-cloth on the first table was unusual, a very heavy one, blue and golden, hanging down to the very floor.

“You are surprised, aren't you? Oh! Honourable Sir, it's the only thing that has remained from former times.”

“Mr. Bierman…”

“I'm listening to you, sir.”

He sat down, bent his doll-like head, opened wide his large grey eyes and raised his eyebrows.

“I want to ask you whether you haven't any other plans of this house?”

“M-m-no. There is one more, made about 30 years ago, but it's plainly stated there that it is a copy of the one that I gave you, and only some new partitions are indicated. This is it. Take it, please.”

I examined the paper. Bierman was right. “But tell me, isn't there any hidden room on the second floor near the room with an empty closet?”

Bierman thought awhile. “I don't know, Respected Sir, I don't know, Sir. There must be a personal secret archive of the Janoŭskis somewhere, but where it is, I do not know.”

His fingers were moving quickly across the table-cloth, knocking out some kind of a march that I could not understand.

I stood up, thanked him and left.

“What had frightened him so?” I thought. “His fingers beating away, his white face! This devil of a bachelor has begun to fear people…”

And, however, an obtrusive thought continued to drill my brain.

“Why? Why? There's some dirty business going on here. And why does the word ‘hands’ keep whirling in my brain? Hands, hands. What is connected here with hands? There must be something hidden in this word, if it so persistently repeats itself in my subconsciousness”.

I left him firmly convinced it was necessary to be very watchful. I didn't like this doll-like man and especially his fingers, which were twice as long as normal ones and wriggled on the table like snakes.

Chapter The Eighth

The day was grey and gloomy, such an indifferent grey day, that I wanted to cry on my way to the estate belonging to the Kulšas. Low grey clouds were creeping over the peat-bogs. The landscape lay before me looking like a monotonous barrack. Grey spots were moving about here and there on the smooth brown surface of the plain: a shepherd was grazing sheep there. I walked along the edge of the Giant's Gap, and there was no place, literally, for the eye to rest on. Something dark lay in the grass. I came up closer. It was an enormous stone cross about three metres long. It was knocked down long ago, for the hole in which it had stood was almost level with the ground and was covered with undergrowth. The letters on the cross were hardly visible:

“God's slave, Raman, died a quick death here. People wandering by, pray for his soul, so that someone should pray for yours, because it is your prayers that are especially to God's liking.”

I stood long near it. So this is where Raman the Elder perished!

“Sir, kind sir,” I heard a voice behind my back.

I turned around. A woman in fantastic rags was standing behind me with a hand outstretched. Young she was and quite pretty, but her face with its yellow skin was so frightful that I lowered my eyes. In her arms lay a child.

I gave her some money.

“Perhaps the gentleman has at least a tiny piece of bread? I'm afraid I won't be able to reach my place. And Jasik is dying…”

“But what's wrong with him?”

“I don't know,” she answered tonelessly.

I found a sweet in my pocket and gave it to the woman, but the baby remained indifferent to it.

“Then what shall I do with you, my poor one?”

A peasant was riding along the road in a cart driven by a bull. I called to him, took out a rouble and asked him to take the woman to Marsh Firs, she should be fed there and given shelter.

“May God give you health, sir,” the woman whispered, in tears. “Nobody anywhere has given us anything to eat. May God punish those who drive people from the land!”

“And who drove you off?”

“A gentleman.”

“What gentleman?”

“The gentleman, Antoś. Such a skinny one he is…”

“But what's his surname? Where's your village?”