Selected Polish Tales Part 50

'When the fields are fresh and green.

And the spring revives the world.'

But after the third verse the singing suddenly ceased and a voice called out gloomily:

'Doggy, go and bark at the Almighty!'

At first I did not know what this peculiar command meant, but after a short pause I heard the thin bark of a dog, and as the gate of the enclosure was open I drew nearer and saw in the wide open door of the yurta a small black dog, tiny and light, repeatedly raising itself on its hindlegs and barking up at the blue sky while it jumped and turned about.

Of course I went away and put off my visit to a more suitable occasion.

At last I saw him. He was of middle stature, quite greyheaded, and he looked very neglected. The ashen complexion common to all exiles distinguished him in a high degree, so that it gave me pain to look into his face with the black shadows.

If he had not been talking, and moving about, it would have been hard to guess that one was looking at a living being. And yet, glances like lightning would sometimes dart from the large eyes surrounded by broad, dark circles, and they showed that death had not yet numbed the inner life of this moving corpse, but that he was still capable of emotion.

As long as he was sitting I could bear the sight of his suffering face, but when he got up I had to turn away my eyes, for then his clump-feet seemed to cause him the greatest agony.

He spoke Polish correctly and with a pure accent. He carefully avoided any direct or indirect allusion to his past, and shrank equally from information about his native country. He talked exclusively about the present, princ.i.p.ally about his dog, with whom he held long conversations. Only once in the course of the few weeks during which I visited him did he get animated: that was when I mentioned Plotsk; his eyes shone as with a hidden fire while he asked: 'Do you know that part?'

I answered that I had lived there for a year, and he said, half to himself:

'I suppose it is all quite changed, so many years have pa.s.sed. You probably were not born at the time when I came to Siberia. In what part of the province did you stay?'

'Not far from Raciaz.'

He opened his mouth, but he felt he had said too much, or that I was listening with curiosity; enough--he only uttered a long-drawn 'Oh...'

and was silent again.

This was the only allusion Kowalski ever made to his past. I felt inclined to draw him out, but he knew how to parry these attempts in a delicate way by calling his dog and saying to him while he caressed him: 'Go, bark at the Almighty!' And the obedient creature would continue for a long time to bark at the sky.

As soon as Kowalski gave this order, it was a sure sign that he would not open his mouth except for conversation about his dog, of which he never tired.

Although this dog was quite ordinary, he was in several ways distinguished from his Yakut brothers. For one thing he had no name and was simply addressed as 'Doggy', though he was his master's pet and was attached to the house and enclosure.

'Why didn't you give your dog a name?' I asked casually.

'What's the good of a name? If people had not invented so many names and called each other simply "Man", they would perhaps remember better that we are all men together.'

So the dog remained nameless. He was of a graceful and delicate build and fast, quite unlike the heavier, thickset, thick-coated native dogs; his hair was short, soft, and silky. His appearance had condemned him to an isolated and lonely life. Attempts at partic.i.p.ation in the canine social life had failed deplorably; he had returned from these expeditions lame and bleeding all over, and after some vain repet.i.tions he had given up the hope of satisfying his social instincts and did not leave the enclosure any more. He was surprisingly sedate for his delicate organism and thin, mobile little frame, but this was not the calm sedateness of the strong, s.h.a.ggy Yakut dogs, against whom he obviously harboured a certain hatred and bitterness, because these big, powerful creatures would not recognize the rights of the weak. Except for his master, he showed no affection for anyone and accepted no favours--perhaps he had no belief in them, and only responded to a caress with a low growl.

Some weeks pa.s.sed and Kowalski was no better, on the contrary he seemed to get worse with every day, and we were all convinced that this illness was his last. G.o.d knows whether he was equally convinced, but he certainly had a foreboding of his death, for he hardly ever talked now. For a few days longer he obstinately struggled against the weakness which was overpowering him, and walked about his yurta, even tinkered at some brushes which he had begun; at last he gave it up and took to his bed. One morning, when I had just sat down to my breakfast, the locksmith Wladyslaw Piotrowski, Kowalski's nearest friend, came to my window and asked me to accompany him to our patient.

'It might ease his last hour when he sees that he is not quite forsaken,' said the kind man. 'Perhaps you would like to take a book with you,' he added. I took the New Testament and went with him.

'Is he so very bad?' I asked on the way.

'I should think so; he looks quite black and says himself that he is sure he will die to-day.'

We soon arrived at Kowalski's yurta. There was no trace of the usual sick-room smell of medicines, for Kowalski believed neither in doctors nor in medicines. But an air of sadness and desolation pervaded the room. The little dog lay curled up under the bed, from which, notwithstanding the open window, an unpleasant smell reminded one that the sick man was no longer able to get up.

He looked so unlike a living being that we concluded, on entering and seeing him lying there with his eyes closed, that he was dead. The locksmith went up to the bed, put his hand under the bedclothes and touched his feet; they were cold. But Kowalski called out loudly and emphatically as I had never heard him before:

'I am alive! I am glad that you have come, for I should like to speak to you of death.'

The haste and anxiety with which these words were uttered bore out our premonition that we had only just come in time; we looked at each other; Kowalski caught this look and understood it.

'I know,' he said, 'that I shall die soon, it would be vain to hide from myself what I can see quite clearly. That is why I want to speak to you. I was afraid no one would come... I was afraid no one would hear what I have got to say and that he whom you call the Merciful G.o.d would take away my power of speech... I thank you for your thought. May you not be lonely either when your hour of death calls you from an unhappy life.'

Kowalski stopped; only his brow, which was alternately contracted and smoothed, showed that the dying man was trying with his last remnant of strength to collect his thoughts and to retain the last spark of life.

It was early morning, and the sun threw two great sheaves of golden rays through the window on to the wall where the bed stood. From the wide expanse of fields and the archipelago of islands in the river, redolent with luxurious vegetation, life and the echoes of life and movement emanated like a melodious song, a great hymn of thanksgiving in the bright suns.h.i.+ne; it penetrated to the bed of the dying man and formed an indescribable contrast to what was pa.s.sing inside the yurta.

This brightness, this noise as of a great song of life, was like an irony, like scorn levelled at the deathbed of this living corpse....

Meanwhile Kowalski had begun to speak.

'Long ago,' he said--'it must be about forty years--I was exiled to the steppes of Orenburg. I was young and strong, I trusted in G.o.d and had confidence in men and in myself. I may have been right or I may have been wrong, but I thought it was my duty not to leave my energy to the chance of fate, but to try and find a wider field of activity than was open to me in this country. Homesickness too urged me on, and after two years I escaped....

'I was punished by being sent to Tomsk, but this did not daunt me. I started my life afresh with renewed energy, lived on bread and water until I had saved enough for what I needed, and escaped again....

'For this second flight I was punished as an obstinate backslider, and it took several years before I could make another attempt, but that time I got farther away than before. It was an unusually hard winter, I had no money and only insufficient clothing. My feet were frostbitten, and I lost my toes. That was a hard blow, especially as they sent me beyond the Yenessi this time.

'My situation was difficult; the country was dreary and desolate, it was hard to earn a living. But although I had no toes I managed to learn a trade or two, and one or the other used to bring me in a little income, small but sure.

'This time I waited six years, then, without regard for the state of my feet, I started off again....

'You see, I had no more confidence in my strength. I was ill and broken, it was not the same goal as before that drew me westwards.... I wanted to die there... to die there....

'I dreamt of dying on my mother's grave as of a great happiness.

'My life had been such that no one except my mother had ever been good to me; I had had no sweetheart, no wife, no children....

'And now, feeling weak and forsaken, I longed for the grave of this one being who had loved me.

'In sleepless nights I felt her hand touching my head, her kiss and the hot tears with which she took her last leave of me, conscious perhaps that our separation would be eternal. I do not know even now whether the longing for my mother or for my native land was the stronger. But it was a hard pilgrimage this time. I could not walk fast because of the wounds on my feet which kept breaking open. I often had to hide for days in the woods like a wild animal.

'Vultures and crows[1]--ill omens of the end--circled over my head, scenting their prey. Worn out with hunger I broke down from time to time, and...fool that I was, I always prayed. I implored the Almighty G.o.d, the merciful G.o.d, the just G.o.d, the G.o.d of the poor, the G.o.d of the forsaken:

[Footnote 1: Siberian fugitives look upon them with superst.i.tion.]

'"Help me, have mercy on me! Gracious Father! send me death, I ask for no other mercy than death! I will give it to myself, but only there...."

'Two years pa.s.sed before I reached the province of Perm. I had never before got so far. My heart began to beat joyously, in my head there was only one thought: "I shall see my beloved native soil, and I shall die at my beloved mother's grave." When I left the Ural behind me I definitely believed in my salvation, I threw myself down upon the ground, and for a long, long time I lay there, sobbing and thanking G.o.d for His grace and His mercy. But He, the Merciful, was only preparing His last blow, and that same day.... Then they took me as far as Yakutsk!...