Tales by Polish Authors Part 24

"H'm--that's fine! I've listened to lots of letters, because in the gold-mines different people wrote letters for me and others. And even here, though Z---- no doubt writes very well, he writes so learnedly, like a printed book, that you don't understand a word when you listen to it. For he puts in so many words folks don't use, you can see in a moment that he comes from a Jewish or a big family, and that he has never had much to do with the people. Now, your letter goes straight to one's heart, for it's human. Oh, poor fellow! He'll cry like an old woman at a sermon when he reads it. If you would also--but I daren't ask"--and his voice sounded really very shy--"if you would write a short letter like that to my people too, oh how my old woman would cry,--she would cry!"

While I read the letter to the priest, Maciej kept quiet, listening and possibly also beginning to consider what I was to write to his wife, if I answered to the hopes he had placed in me. But when I came to the pa.s.sage in which I asked the priest about the Ma.s.s for the shoemaker's dead parents, there was a violent crash in the entrance to the kitchen, and Maciej stood before us in all his impressiveness. His appearance was so unexpected, and made with so much noise, that we looked at him in astonishment. Maciej was strangely altered, and even seemed to me to be trembling all over. He came out in silence, and standing just in front of us, with his feet wide apart as usual, he began to search for his pocket; but whether it was difficult to find in the folds of his baggy trousers, or whether for some other reason, he was a long time about it. Having found it, he drew out a small purse, and, after a long process of untying, for which he also used his teeth, he took out a crumpled three-rouble note. He stood a while holding this. At last he laid it on the table with a shaking hand, and began in an imploring, broken voice:

"If that's so--when he says the Ma.s.s, let him pray for us unhappy folks too: write that, sir. Let him pray to Almighty G.o.d and to the Holy Virgin--if it's only to bring our bones back there--and perhaps--perhaps They'll have mercy."

"Perhaps They'll have mercy," the shoemaker repeated like an echo, as he stood beside Maciej.

They stood before me--these two old men grown grey in adversity--as small children stand before a stern father, feeling their helplessness; the lame shoemaker with the hollow eyes, leaning on his stick, and that huge peasant with his hands hanging down and head bowed humbly, imploring this in a quiet whisper.

We should certainly have sat there a long while in painful musing if it had not been for the shoemaker. Stanislaw was the first to rouse himself from the lethargy into which we had fallen.

"What the devil are we doing! Maciej, bestir yourself! The sausages are burning in there, and the brandy is getting stale! Eh, Maciej, look sharp!"

Maciej crept to the kitchen, and returned to us--not, to say the truth, very quickly--preceded by the smell of well-fried sausages. We shook off our lethargy so slowly, however, that even the brisk shoemaker had to make an effort to put a good face on it. His first toast was, "The success of the letters." To this Maciej responded with "Amen," and a sigh which might have come from a pair of blacksmith's bellows. The vodka did its work, however. Our recent emotion strengthened its effect, and after two gla.s.ses even an observant person would never have guessed what we had thought and felt here a few moments earlier, but for the letters lying in Stanislaw's trunk.

The last vestiges of sadness were charmed away by the little song which Stanislaw began to sing:

"The splinters fall in showers Where woodmen trees are felling; Oh, good and pretty children Are dear beyond all telling!"

But in his present cheerful frame of mind Maciej protested energetically against even this slight echo of sadness.

"Eh! just you shut up about your children! I've five of them, and I don't care as much for them all together as you do for the one."

The shoemaker evidently acknowledged the justice of this bold remark, for he pa.s.sed it over in silence, and only proposed to Maciej with a gesture to put on the samovar. Maciej did his work in the kitchen noisily and cheerily. He had completely forgotten about his favourite place, "the little bench a bit stronger," and he returned to us without delay. His voice, always absolutely unsuited to the acoustic properties of the room, now sounded as perhaps it once did in those years on the fields of Mazowsze. When he spoke, it was simply a shout, for he did not modify the intonation by any expression whatever. He talked about his work, gesticulated, and waved his arms; when obliged to stand up, he moved suddenly, and the same when he sat down; he became indignant, and retracted his words; he squeezed his fingers together and spread them out; but he did all this slowly and accurately, just in the way he spoke. He said not a single word nor related a single fact without supporting and ill.u.s.trating it by expressive mimicry, by a movement or a pose, which he always tried to make as near the original as possible. So when I returned to his protests against the shoemaker's sadness, and asked him: "Have you five sons, Maciej?" he answered: "Five, like the five fingers on my hand"; and, holding up his fist, he carefully spread out his fingers one by one. He laughed long and heartily at this, in the way that only children laugh, his whole body shaking.

But it was not only his laugh that was childlike; Maciej's big broad face, portraying his inward calm, reminded me of the face of a little child whose thoughts have as yet not influenced its features. In proportion to his height and breadth Maciej's head seemed to me smaller than it really was. His wide neck diminished it still more.

But when he sat down, resting his hands on his knees in his usual manner, somehow his head disappeared entirely, and then from behind he was very like a pointed hayrick, while from the side he reminded me of those clumsy but impressive figures which people of past ages cut out in rocks and stone.

The longer I looked at him, the stronger became my wish to know this huge fellow rather better, and to ascertain something more about him.

I therefore decided to profit by the occasion, which possibly might not soon occur again, and to spend the whole evening with the shoemaker.

Maciej chattered tremendously; he talked bidden and unbidden, and was even more loquacious than I could have hoped. Although he talked disconnectedly, with continual long digressions from the subject, I listened to him with growing interest. His anecdotes were chiefly about his life in the gold-mines. However familiar that life was to me from a number of different stories, I listened to him patiently, for I was interested in the very ticklish question of how he could have saved together several hundred roubles in surroundings where riches can always be acc.u.mulated, but rarely in a legitimate manner.

"I worked--slaved--in the gold-mines," Maciej continued on his return from the kitchen. "At first they put me to work underground, but the inspector saw me, and called out, 'Who's that huge fellow?' as if he'd never seen a big man before, the low scoundrel! He was told: 'That's Maciej, one of the Poles.' 'He's a good-looking Pole. Bring him here.' They sent for me, and I came and took off my cap"--Maciej touched his head. "But I didn't bow. Oh no! why should I? 'What a blockhead! Where do you come from?' he asked. 'Ha-ha! and where am I likely to come from if not from Poland!' Afterwards he asked again: 'Can you bake bread?' 'Is he making a fool of me, or what does he mean?' I thought to myself, but I didn't let on, and said: 'That's a woman's work, not a man's'--so I explained to him; devil knows if he understood or not! But he ordered them to take me on as baker's a.s.sistant.

"There just was drunkenness and thieving and carrying on in the bakery! Good G.o.d! But I didn't interfere; I just did what they said, and they didn't tell me to superintend or look after things. When my mates saw that I obeyed them, and worked enough for two, and didn't meddle with anything, they began to carry on worse than ever. It was like a tavern for the drinking that went on. The inspector came one, two, three times: everyone in the bakery was drunk; I was the only one at work and kneading the loaves of bread. He looked and went away. He came again the next day, and there was quite a battle going on in the house; they were having a drunken fight. He ordered them to be put into prison, and he asked me again: 'Now you know how to make bread; you've learnt it, haven't you?' So I understood he wasn't joking, and laughed: 'Oh yes, I've learnt it,' I said.

"He put me to be head baker. They dealt out all the flour used in the bakery for the whole week--and there was a lot used, for we baked for more than two hundred people. So I did my work, and weighed the flour to make it last out. Scarcely was the week over, when the inspector came again: 'Well, Maciej,' he said, 'have you had enough flour?' I just said nothing, but took him to the bakery and showed him what was left--nearly three sacks. When he saw that he opened his eyes ever so wide. 'Good! good!' he said; and he called the storekeeper and told him to make a note of how much was left, and to save half of it and give me half as reward.

"Now, in these gold-mines it just happens one way or the other: sometimes such a lot of people come you don't know where to put them, and sometimes, when they start running away, there aren't enough left even to go underground. And that's how it was there: a lot of work, and too few people to do it. First they took one man away from me, and afterwards a second, and after a week still more, so that I was left with one, and then quite alone for a few days. I was standing at the kneading trough and oven from sunrise to sunrise. When the inspector saw that I was without help, and the sweat was running off my forehead, he called out: 'Vodka! Let Maciej have as much as he wants!

Drink as much as you like,' he said. I didn't stint myself; but a single gla.s.s makes one bad enough, so half a bottle was saved every day. This was my own, and in this way I got nearly a rouble a day.[2]

"But whether by slaving like this, or what not, I don't know how it was: anyway I got ill. My feet and arms seemed paralyzed all at once; dark spots came on my body, and my teeth got all shaky, like keys in an organ. 'Take him off to the hospital,' they said. The doctor said it was scurvy. Whether or no, it was a fact I got worse and worse. At last one of the miners lying in the hospital, an old Brodiaga[3], said to me: 'Don't you pay any attention to them or to the doctor, for they'll cure you for the next world. Listen to good advice. Send someone to the taiga for toadstools, fill a bottle with them, and after it has been standing a certain time and has got strong, drink a winegla.s.s of it with vodka every day.' I did just as he told me, and after a week I was quite fit again.

"Afterwards I saw the Brodiaga coming along. I thought: 'He'll expect to be treated.' So I stood treat for him. He said: 'Well, what did you think of it?'

"'I think it was a good trick, but I don't want to do it a second time.'

"'You're right,' he said. 'Have you ever seen the cook draw the veins out of the meat when he's getting the inspector's cutlets ready?'

"'Oh yes! Rather!' I said.

"'Now, you see, if you stop here, they'll draw all the veins and all the strength out of you. You've saved a little money; go away from here, and don't look back.'

"I left the hospital, and went to get my 'time.' But it was a difficult business. 'Stop here,' they said to me, 'stop here, and we'll raise your wages.' And so on. But I didn't agree. 'Your money is good, but dear,' I answered. The inspector got very angry, and shouted, 'a.s.s!' And they counted it out to me: I had got a round sum of a thousand roubles, all but a hundred and fifty."

"Did you really drink that stuff, Maciej?"

"A-ah! It was the first medicine I ever took," he answered.

But the shoemaker, understanding my incredulity, set it aside by an excellent explanation:

"No fear! Even two bottles of toadstools wouldn't hurt a machine like that!"

Maciej disapproved of the expression.

"Am I a machine now? Why, you only see half of what I was!"

"Then, you were stouter formerly?"

"Oh yes! I tell you, I wasn't like this. What do I look like now? A greyhound grown thin! Is this an arm?" And he untwisted his s.h.i.+rt sleeve and showed us an arm of which a leg might have been jealous.

"Is this a leg?" Drawing his wide trousers tight, he looked piteously at his leg measuring over a yard round. "I usedn't to be like this,"

he ended with a sigh.

Nothing could have given me more satisfaction than these sighs. But a good beginning had been made, for Maciej, who certainly very rarely experienced the relief of unburdening himself, was so excited that he required no stronger incentive than that I should listen to him with unfeigned interest. It was enough to repeat, "What then? Just so!

Really!" oftener and more pressingly. Thus spurred on, each time Maciej's "Ha, ha!" became louder and his face redder, and when the samovar had boiled he declined to obey the shoemaker and would not pour out the tea.

"Can I never have a talk? When do I ever get a chance of speaking to anyone? You're in the shop; you know what to do and how to talk to people, but I don't. It's not only with those who come here; I can't do it even with our own people, I'm such a plain man. It's dull to be alone, and I'm losing flesh; but there's no one I can go to, for people get bored with me. The master here understands every word I say, and isn't surprised and doesn't laugh at anything. I can talk to him like one of my own family, and feel lighter at heart at once. Do pour out for yourself. I don't want that stupid tea."

Although shocked at this distinct subversion of the order of society, the shoemaker allowed himself to be mollified, and began to pour out tea. Maciej, freed from one of his most trying duties, became all the livelier.

We both settled ourselves on the sofa. Maciej was to tell me his past history from the beginning. He was as red as a peony, but, strange to say, he sat silent, and although I prompted him several times with, "Well, and what next, Maciej?" he did not speak. Yet his deep breathing showed that this silence did not mean speechlessness. On the contrary, it was thought slowly working and stirring him to expression.

Maciej sat upright, with his knees wide apart and both hands resting on them. He sat thus for some minutes, with eyes which seemed fixed on the far distance; he sat motionless as though he were already away in that distant scene which, possibly, was opening before him. Yet, when observed closely, his face was burning. I was on the point of putting a more urgent question to him, when Maciej, looking neither at me nor at the shoemaker, began as follows:

"You must have heard of a large river--it's swift and black--they call it Narew? Not far from that river there are three big villages, called Mocarze.

"I've seen many, many different villages, and I've looked at many different people. I've seen the big Tartar villages, and the Russian settlements, as large as towns, and the villages on the River Angara and behind Lake Baikal, and where the Poles are so well off;[4] but nowhere, nowhere have I seen villages like our Mocarze.

"There isn't a thing you can't find there. Everything's there. My G.o.d!" And Maciej stretched out his arms.

"And those meadows and fields and the hay timee! Oh! those young oak-woods, and the corn, too, like gold!

"Here everything is big, but somehow it's dreary. What can you see in the taiga? What's there to enjoy in the fields? It's like a grave all round you: a vulture crying above, a bear growling in the taiga, and that's all the pleasure you get! At home it's different.