King Stakh's Wild Hunt

“Dirty jokes in the house where you are eating should be punished not with a whip across the face, but with an honest bullet. He insults the dignity of people who are helpess against him, who cannot answer him. The court must deal with such affairs, must fight for justice. You speak of peaceful residents. Why then don't you pay any attention to the fact that these peaceful residents are being murdered by unknown criminals? Your district is being terrorized, but you sit here with your incoming and outgoing papers… Disgraceful!”

“The discussion of the case concerning the murder by an offender against the State, who is, however, a resident here and an aristocrat, will be taken up not with you,” hissed the judge. “The Russian Court does not refuse anybody defence, not even criminals. However this is not the question. You know that for insulting a policeman we can… sentence you to two weeks imprisonment or fine you, or as our forefathers had it, banish you from the bounds of the Janoŭski region.”

He was very sure of himself.

I became angry:

“You can do that, applying force. But I shall find justice against you in the province. You shield the murderers, your police-officer discredited the laws of the Empire saying that you don't intend to engage in an examination of the murder of Śvieciłovič.”

The judge's face became covered with an apoplexic raspberry colour. He stretched his neck as a goose does and hissed:

“And you have witnesses, where are they?”

The solicitor, as a worthy representative of the conciliatory principle of the Russian law-court, smiled bewitchingly:

“Naturally, Mr. Biełarecki has no witnesses. And in general, this is foolishness: the police-officer could not have said that. Mr. Biełarecki simply imagines this. The opponent's word he did not grasp.”

From a tin box he took out some fruit-drops, threw them into his mouth, smacked his lips and added:

“For us of the aristocracy, Mr. Biełarecki's attitude is particularly understandable. We do not want to make you unpleasant. Let yourself leave peaceful from here. Then everything here, how to say, will come right in the end, and we'll hush up the case. So then, good?”

Strictly speaking, that was the cleverest way out for me, but I remembered Janoŭskaja.

“What will happen to her? For her it can end in death or madness. I'll leave, and she, the silly little thing, can be hurt by anybody and everybody, perhaps only not by a lazy fellow.”

I sat on the chair, pressed my lips hard, and hid my fingers between my kness so they shouldn't betray my excited state.

“I will not leave,” I said after a silence, “until you find the criminals who conceal themselves in the form of apparitions. And afterwards I'll disappear from here forever.”

The judge sighed:

“It seems to me that you'll have to leave quicker than we can catch these… miph…”

“Mythical,” the lawyer prompted.

“That's it, mythical criminals. And you'll leave not of your own free will.”

All my blood rushed to my face. I felt my end had come, that they would do with me whatever they wished, but I staked everything, played my last card, for I was fighting for the happiness of her who was dearest to me of all.

With unbelievable strength I stopped the trembling of my fingers, took out from my purse a large sheet of paper and threw it under noses. But my voice broke with fury:

“It seems you have forgotten that I am from the Academy of Sciences, that I am a member of the Imperial Geographic Society. And I promise you that as soon as I am free I shall complain to the Sovereign, and not a stone shall remain of your stinking hole. I think that the Sovereign will not spare the three villains who wish to remove me so that they may commit their dirty deeds.”

For the first and the last time did I name as my friend a person whom I was ashamed to call my country-man even. I had always tried to forget the fact that the ancestors of the Romanovs, Russian tsars, come from Belarus.

And these blockheads did not know that half the members of the Geographic Society would have given much for it not to be called an Imperial one.

But I almost screamed:

“He will intercede! He will defend!”

I think that they began to waver somewhat. The judge again stretched his neck and… nevertheless whispered:

“But will it be pleasant for the Sovereign that a member of such a respected society had dealings with a State criminal? Many honourable landed gentlemen will complain of this to that very Sovereign.”

They had edged me in like borzois, those Russian wolfhounds. I settled myself more comfortably in my seat, crossed my legs, put my hands on my chest and spoke calmly (I was calm, so calm that to drown would have been preferable.)

“And don't you know the local peasants? They are, so to say, sincere monarchists. But I promise you, if you banish me from here, — I shall go to them..”

They grew green.