Part 23 (1/2)

BY ADAM SZYMANSKI

After leaving Yakutsk I settled in X----, a miserable little town farther up the Lena. The river is neither so cold nor so broad here, but wilder and gloomier. Although the district is some thousands of versts nearer the civilized world, it contains few colonies. The country is rocky and mountainous, and the taiga[1] spreads over it in all directions for hundreds and thousands of versts. It would certainly be difficult to find a wilder or gloomier landscape in any part of the world than the vast tract watered by the Lena in its upper course, almost as far as Yakutsk itself. Taiga, gloomy, wild, and inaccessible, taiga as dense as a wall, covers everything here--mountains, ravines, plains, and caverns. Only here and there a grey, rocky cliff, resembling the ruin of a huge monument, rises against this dark background; now and then a vulture circles majestically over the limitless wilderness, or its sole inhabitant, an angry bear, is heard growling.

The few settlements to be found nestle along the rocky banks of the Lena, which is the only highway in this as in all parts of the Yakutsk district. Continual intercourse with Nature in her wildest moods has made the people who live in these settlements so primitive that they are known to the ploughmen in the broad valleys along the Upper Lena, and to the Yakutsk shepherds, as ”the Wolves.”

The climate is very severe here, and, although the frosts are not as sharp and continuous as in Yakutsk, this country, on account of being the nearest to the Arctic regions, is exposed to the cruel Yakutsk north wind. This is so violent that it even sweeps across to the distant Ural Mountains.

At the influx of the great tributary of the Lena there is a large basin; it was formed by the common agency of the two rivers, and subsequently filled up with mud. This basin is surrounded on every side by fairly high mountains, at times undulating, at times steep.

Its north-eastern outlet is enclosed by a very high and rocky range, through which both rivers have made deep ravines. X----, the capital of the district inhabited by the ”Wolf-people,” lies in this north-eastern corner of the basin, partly on a small low rock now separated from the main chain by the bed of the Lena, partly at the foot of the rock between the two rivers. The high range of mountains forming the opposite bank of the Lena rises into an enormous rocky promontory almost facing the town. Flat at the top and overgrown by a wood, the side towards the town stands up at a distance of several hundred feet as a perpendicular wall planed smooth with ice, thus narrowing the horizon still more. As though to increase the wildness of the scenery presented by the mountains and rocks surrounding the dark taiga, a fiendish kind of music is daily provided by the furious gales--chiefly north--which prevail here continually, and bring the early night frosts in summer, and ceaseless Yakutsk frosts and snowstorms in winter. The gale, caught by the hills and resounding from the rocks, repeats its varied echoes within the taiga, and fills the whole place with such howling and moaning that it would be easy for you to think you had come by mistake into the hunting-ground of wolves or bears.

It was somewhere about the middle of November, a month to Christmas.

The gale was howling in a variety of voices, as usual, driving forward clouds of dry snow and whirling them round in its mad dance. No one would have turned a dog into the street. The ”Wolf-people” hid themselves in their houses, drinking large quant.i.ties of hot tea in which they soaked barley or rye bread, while the real wolves provided the accompaniment to the truly wolfish howling of the gale. I waited for an hour to see if it would abate; however, as this was not the case, I set out from the house, though unwillingly.

I had promised Stanislaw Swiatelki some days beforehand that I would go to him one day in the course of the week to write his home letters for him--”very important letters,” as he said. It was now Sat.u.r.day, so I could postpone it no longer. Stanislaw was lame, and, on account of both his lameness and his calling, he rarely left the house. He came from the district of Cracow--from Wislica, as far as I recollect--and prided himself on belonging to one of the oldest burgher families of the Old Town, a family which, as far as fathers' and grandfathers'

memories could reach, had applied itself to the n.o.ble art of shoemaking. Stanislaw, therefore, was also a shoemaker, the last in his family; for although the family did not become extinct in him, nevertheless, as he himself expressed it, ”Divine Providence had ordained” that he should not hand down his trade to his son.

”G.o.d has brought him up, sir, and it seems to have been His will that the shoemaker Swiatelkis should come to an end in me,” Stanislaw used to say. He had a habit of talking quickly, as if he were rattling peas on to a wall. Only at very rare moments, when something gave him courage and no strangers were present, he would add: ”Though His judgments are past finding out.... What does it matter? Why, my grandson will be a shoemaker!” He would then grow pale from having expressed his secret thought, turn round quickly, as though looking for something, s.h.i.+ft uneasily, and--as I noticed sometimes--unconsciously spit and whisper to himself: ”Not in an evil hour be it spoken, Lord!”

thereby driving away the spell from his dearest wish.

He was of middle height, fair, but nearly grey, and had lost all his teeth. He wore a beard, and had a broad, shapeless nose and large, hollow eyes; it was difficult to say what kind of person he was as long as he sat silent. But only let him move--which, notwithstanding the inseparable stick, he always did hastily, not to say feverishly--only let him pour out his quick words with a tongue moving like a spinning-wheel, and no one who had ever seen a burgher of pure Polish blood could fail to recognize him as a chip of the old block.

Stanislaw had not long carried on his trade in X----. Having sc.r.a.ped together some money as foreman, he had started a small shop; but he was chiefly famous in the little town as the one maker of good Polish sausages. He had a house next door to the shop, consisting of one room and a tiny kitchen. He did not keep a servant; a big peasant, known as Maciej, prepared his meals and gave him companions.h.i.+p and efficient protection. Hitherto, however, I had known very little of this man.

I did not often visit Swiatelki, and as a rule only when I wanted to buy something. So we had chatted in the shop, and I had only seen Maciej in pa.s.sing. But I had noticed him as something unusually large.

He was, indeed, huge; not only tall, but, as rarely happens, broad in proportion. It was this which gave his whole figure its special characteristics, and made it seem imposing rather than tall.

A house calculated for ordinary people he found narrow. Furniture standing far enough apart to suit the average man hampered Maciej. He could not take two steps in the house without knocking against something. He trod cautiously and very slowly, continually looking round; and he always had the ashamed air of a man who feels himself out of place and is persuaded that his strongest efforts will not save him from doing absurd things. I had seen Maciej a few times when, in Swiatelki's absence, he had taken his place in the shop, where the accommodation was fairly limited. An expression almost of suffering was depicted on his broad face, and especially noticeable when, on approaching the pa.s.sage between the shelves and the counter, he stood still a moment and measured the extent of the danger with an anxious look. That it existed was undoubted, for the shelves were full of gla.s.ses and jugs of all kinds, so that one push could do no little harm. It was a real Scylla and Charybdis for him. He looked indescribably comical, and was so much worried that after a few minutes the drops of perspiration ran off his forehead. Once I found him there in utter misery, waiting for someone to come. For he had fancied, when going through this pa.s.sage after settling with a customer, that he had knocked against something behind him, and, not being able to ascertain what it was, he stood and waited, afraid to move until someone came.

”G.o.d be praised that you've come!” he exclaimed with delight. ”I am fixed here as sure as a Jew comes to a wedding. _He's_ gone away and doesn't mean to come back! Good Lord! how little room there is here!

I've knocked against some teapot or other, and can't move either way.

The devil take all these shelves!” He continued his lamentations when I had set him free. ”It's always like this; it's a real misfortune, this want of room. But what does it matter to him? He fits in here; though he has to help himself with a stick, he can spin round like a top.”

”He” was, of course, the shoemaker, for Maciej's stupidity caused frequent bickerings, which, however, never became serious between them. Maciej's unwieldiness and awkwardness irritated the nervous, agile shoemaker; while, on the other hand, Maciej could not understand the shoemaker's quickness. But this was not their only cause of contention. The shoemaker, a burgher, was to a certain extent a man of position, with a deep sense of his higher rank; he wore a coat, and had needs which Maciej regarded as entirely superfluous--in fact, those of a gentleman. In addition, the shoemaker was the owner of the house, and Maciej's employer.

Apart from all this, however, the antagonism revealed in their mutual relations was not deep-seated, but in reality superficial. The shoemaker grumbled at Maciej, and sometimes made fun of him; but he always did it as if he were on equal terms with him, observing the respect due to a peasant of some standing--that is, he always used the form ”you,” and not ”thou,” in addressing him. Maciej usually received the shoemaker's grumbling in silence, but sometimes answered his taunts pretty sharply. Besides their common fate and present equality in the eyes of the law, other weighty reasons had an influence in making bearable the relations between people of different cla.s.ses in one small room.

In comparison with Maciej, the shoemaker possessed intelligence of which the latter could never even have dreamt. The shoemaker could read, and--what gave him a special charm, and no little authority in Maciej's eyes--he could scrawl the eighteen letters of his Christian and surname, although slowly, and always with considerable difficulty.

To Maciej's credit, on the other hand, besides his physical strength--that brute force which impresses even those who are not lame--stood the fact that he took service more from motives of comrades.h.i.+p than of necessity. For he possessed capital of his own, having made several hundred roubles, which were deposited at present at the shoemaker's house. Moreover--the most important thing of all--he was a conscientious and honest man. When, before knowing this, I asked the shoemaker in conversation if he could trust Maciej completely, since he lived alone with him and often left him in the shop, he repeated my question with so much astonishment that I at once realized its thorough inappropriateness. He repeated it, and, not speaking quickly, as usual, but slowly and emphatically, he gave me this answer: ”Maciej, sir, is a man--of gold.”

Immediately on my arrival the shop was closed and we went into the house. A small table with a chair on either side stood under the only window of the little room. Close behind the chairs there was a bed along one wall, and a small wooden sofa along the other. A narrow opening opposite the table led to the kitchen where Maciej lived. We sat down to consult what to write. Not only the shoemaker, but even Maciej, was in an extremely serious mood; both evidently attached no little importance to the writing of letters. The shoemaker fetched from a trunk a large parcel tied up in a sheet of paper, and, having taken out the last letters from his wife and son, handed them carefully to me. Maciej squeezed himself into the kitchen, and did not return to us. A moment later, however, his head with the large red face--but his head only--showed like the moon against the dark background of the opening.

”Why do you go so far away, Maciej?” I asked.

”Eh, you see, sir, it's not comfortable sitting in there. I've knocked a bench together here that's a bit stronger.”

The shoemaker mumbled something about breaking the chairs, but Maciej busied himself with his pipe and did not hear, or pretended not to hear.