THE PEASANTS
AUTUMN
THE
PEASANTS
A TALE OF
OUR OWN TIMES
IN
FOUR VOLUMES
AUTUMN
WINTER
SPRING[1]
SUMMER[2]
-----
Footnote 1:
_To be published April, 1925_
Footnote 2:
_To be published July, 1925_
THE PEASANTS
AUTUMN
FROM THE POLISH OF
LADISLAS REYMONT
[Illustration: Publisher’s Logo]
ALFRED · A · KNOPF
NEW YORK MCMXXV
PUBLISHED, JANUARY, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
SECOND PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1924.
THIRD PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1924.
FOURTH PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1924.
FIFTH PRINTING, DECEMBER, 1924.
SIXTH PRINTING, FEBRUARY, 1925.
SEVENTH PRINTING, MAY, 1925.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
_The Peasants_ has been translated from the original Polish by Michael
H. Dziewicki, Reader of English Literature at the University of Cracow.
I wish to make special acknowledgment to Dr. A. M. Nawench of Columbia
University for his invaluable assistance in seeing the work through the
press.
A. A. K.
THE PEASANTS
AUTUMN
CHAPTER I
“Praised be Jesus Christ!”
“World without end!—What, my good Agatha? And whither be you wandering
now?”
“Out into the world, please your Reverence, into the wide world!” she
answered, with a wave of her staff from east to west.
The priest mechanically turned his eyes in that direction, but closed
them to the blinding sun in the western sky. Then he said, in a lower
and somewhat hesitating tone:
“Have the Klembas turned you out? Or is it only a little bickering
between you?”
She drew herself up a little and, before answering, cast her eyes around
her upon the bare autumnal fields and the village roofs surrounded by
fruit-gardens.
“No, they have not turned me out: how could they? They are good folk and
my close kin. And as for bickering, there was none. I myself saw that I
had better leave; that’s all. ‘Better to leap into the deep than cumber
another man’s wagon.’... So I had to go; there was no work for me.
Winter is coming, but what of that? Are they to give me food and a
corner to sleep in while I do nothing to earn it? Besides, they have
just weaned their calf, and the goslings must be sheltered under their
roof at night, for it is getting cold. I have to make room. Why, beasts
are God’s creatures, too.... But they are kind folk; they keep me in
summer-time at least, and do not begrudge me a corner of their house and
a morsel of their food.... And in winter I go out into the wide world,
asking alms.... I need but little, and that little good people give me.
With the help of the Lord Jesus, I shall pull through till spring, and
put something by into the bargain. Surely, the sweet, good Jesus will
not forsake His poor.”
“No, that He will not,” the priest reassured her in earnest tones,
quietly pressing a small silver coin into her hand.
“Thanks, thanks, and God bless your Reverence!”
She bowed her shaking head as low as his knees, while big tears trickled
down her face, a face rugged and furrowed like newly-ploughed autumn
fields.
The priest felt confused.
“Go, and God speed you on your way,” he faltered, raising her up.
With trembling hands she crossed herself, took hold of her wallet and
her sharp-pointed staff, and started off along the broad and deeply
rutted road toward the forest, turning now and again to glance at the
village, the fields where potatoes were then being dug, and the smoke
from many a herdsman’s fire, wafted low over the stubble.
The priest, who had previously been seated upon a plough-wheel, now
returned to it, took a pinch of snuff, and opened his breviary; but his
eyes would stray now and then from the red print and glance over the
vast landscape slumbering in autumnal peace, or gaze into the pale blue
sky, or wander to his men leaning over the plough he was guiding.
“Hey, Valek! That furrow is crooked!” he cried out, sitting up, with his
eyes following every step of two sturdy grey plough-horses.
Once more he returned to his breviary, and his lips again moved, but his
eyes soon unconsciously wandered to the horses, or to a flock of crows
cautiously hopping, with outstretched beaks, in the newly-made furrow,
and taking wing when even the whip cracked or the horses wheeled round:
after which they would alight heavily in the wake of the plough, and
sharpen their beaks on the hard, sun-baked clods just turned up.
“Valek, just flick the right-hand mare a bit; she is lagging behind.”
He smiled to see her draw evenly after this correction and, when the
horses came to the roadside, jumped up to pat their necks—a caress to
which the animals responded by stretching their noses towards his face
and sniffing complacently.
“Het—a—ah!” Valek then sang out. Pulling the silver bright share out of
the furrow, he deftly lifted up the plough, swung the horses round, and
thrust the shining steel into the earth again. At a crack of the whip,
the horses set tugging till the cross-bar creaked again; and on they
went, ploughing away at the great strip of land which, stretching out at
right angles to the road, descended the slope, and, not unlike the woof
of some coarse hempen stuff, ran down as far as the low-lying hamlet
nestling amongst the red and yellow leaves of its orchards.
It was near the end of autumn, but the weather was still warm and rather
drowsy. The sun was still hot enough and, hanging in the south-west
above the woods, made the shrubs and the pear-trees, and even the hard,
dry clods, cast strong, cold shadows.
Ineffable sweetness and serenity reigned in the air, full of a golden
haze of sunlit dust over the fields lately harvested; while above in the
azure heaven, enormous white clouds floated here and there like great
wind-tormented snow-drifts.
Below, as far as the eye could see, lay the drab-hued fields, forming a
sort of huge basin with a dark-blue rim of forest, a basin across which,
like a silken skein glittering in the sunshine, a river coursed
sparkling and winding among the alders and willows on its banks. In the
midst of the hamlet, it spread out into a large oblong body of water,
and then ran northward through a rift in the hills. At the bottom of the
valley, skirting the lake, lay the village, with the sunlight playing on
the many autumnal hues of its fruit gardens. Thence, even up to the very
edge of the forest, ran the long bands of cultivated ground, stretches
of grey fields with thread-like pathways between them, whereon
pear-trees and blackthorns grew; the general ashen tint being in places
variegated by patches of gold-yellow lupines with fragrant flowers, or
by the dull silver of the dried-up bed of some torrent; or by quiet
sandy roads, with rows of tall poplars overshadowing them, reaching
upwards to the hills and woods.
The priest was suddenly roused from the contemplation of this scene. A
long, mournful lowing was heard at no great distance, making the crows
take wing and fly away obliquely to the potato-diggings, their dark
fluttering shadows following them over the partly sown fields. Shading
his eyes with his hand, he gazed in the direction of the sun and the
forest, and beheld a little girl coming towards him and leading a large
red cow by a rope. As she approached, she said: “Praised be Jesus
Christ!” and would have gone out of her way to kiss the priest’s hand,
but the cow jerked her away and fell a-lowing anew.
“Are you taking it to market?” the priest asked.
“No, only to the steer at the miller’s.—Be still, you pest! Are you
possessed?” she cried, out of breath, and striving to master the animal,
which, however, dragged her along till both disappeared in a cloud of
dust.
Presently there came along the sandy road, trudging heavily, a Jewish
ragpicker, who trundled a barrow so loaded down that he had to stop for
breath every now and then.
“What news, Moshek?” cried the priest.
“What news? Good news to those it may concern. Potatoes, God be praised!
are plentiful; there’s a good crop of rye, and cabbages will be
abundant. It’s all very well for such as have potatoes and rye and
cabbages.” He kissed the priest’s sleeve, adjusted the barrow-strap, and
went on more lightly, his way now leading down a gentle slope. In his
wake, along the middle of the road and in the haze of dust raised by his
dragging feet, came a blind beggar, led by a well-fed dog at the end of
a string. Then a lad carrying a bottle approached from the side of the
wood. The latter, catching sight of the holy man on the road, gave him a
wide berth and made for the village tavern by a short cut through the
fields.
A peasant from the next hamlet, on his way to the mill, and a Jewess
driving a flock of geese, then also passed by. Each praised God; the
priest exchanged some kind words and friendly looks with them, and they
went on their way.
By this time the sun was low. The priest got up and called to Valek:
“You will plough as far as the birches, then home. The poor beasts are
quite tired out.”
Going along the path between the fields, he said his Office under his
breath, looking round from time to time at the scene with fond,
glistening eyes. Working-women gleamed in red rows at the
potato-diggings, and the contents of their baskets rumbled into the
carts. Here and there, the ground was still being ploughed for sowing.
On the fallows a herd of brindled cows was feeding. The ashen-grey hue
of certain lands was beginning to take on a ruddy tint from the blades
of corn already sprouting there. On the close-cropped, tawny grass of
the meadows, the geese showed up like white snowflakes. A cow was heard
lowing afar. Fires had been lit, and long blue clouds of smoke trailed
over the cornfields. Elsewhere harrows were at work, a dim cloud of dust
rising in the wake of each and settling down at the foot of the hills.
From beneath it, coming as it were out of a cloud, a bareheaded,
barefooted peasant, with a cloth full of corn tied round his waist, was
pacing leisurely, taking handfuls of grain and scattering them all over
the earth with a solemn gesture, as one bestowing a blessing. On
reaching the end of the ploughed fields, he would turn and slowly ascend
the slope, his shock of tousled hair first appearing above the sky-line,
then his shoulders, and finally his whole body, still with the same
solemn gesture, the sower’s benediction, that shed forth upon the soil,
a holy thing as it were—the golden seed which fell in a semicircle round
him.
The priest’s pace became more and more leisurely: now he would stop to
take breath, now to look at his two grey horses, now to glance at a few
boys who were throwing stones into a large pear-tree. They came running
to him in a body, and, holding their hands behind them, all kissed the
sleeve of his soutane.
He stroked their flaxen heads, but added a word of warning: “Have a care
not to break the branches, or you will get no pears at all next year.”
“We were not throwing stones at the pears,” answered one boy, bolder
than the rest; “there’s a chough’s nest up in the tree.”
The priest passed on with a friendly smile and was presently among the
potato-diggers.
“God speed your work!”
“May God reward you!” they replied in a chorus, and all came up to kiss
their beloved pastor’s hands.
“Our Lord has given us plenty of potatoes this year, I think,” he said,
offering his open snuff-box to the men, who respectfully accepted;
refraining, however, from taking snuff in his presence.
“Aye, potatoes are as big as a cat’s head, and plenty to each plant.”
“Ah, then pigs will rise in price; you will all want to have some to
fatten.”
“They are dear enough as it is. There was a swine plague last summer,
and we have to buy them even in Prussia.”
“So there was, so there was. And whose potatoes are you digging here?”
“Why Boryna’s, of course.”
“I don’t see him with you, so I wasn’t sure.”
“Father is only at the forest with my goodman.”
“Oh, there you are, Hanka? How goes it?” he said, turning to a handsome
young woman who wore a red kerchief round her head. She came forward,
and, her hands being soiled, threw her apron over them as she took the
priest’s hand to kiss.
“Well, and how is your little boy whom I christened in harvest time?”
“God bless your Reverence, he is well and lively.”
“The Lord be with you all!”
“And with your Reverence!”
He walked away to the right, where the burying-ground, near a road
planted with poplars, lay on that side of the village. They gazed after
him in silence for some time, and it was only when his thin and slightly
bent figure had passed the low stone enclosure and entered the mortuary
chapel, overshadowed with the yellowish and reddish foliage of birches
and maples, that they found their tongues again.
“There is no better man in the whole world,” said one of the women.
“Yes, indeed,” chimed in Hanka, emptying her basketful on to a yellow
heap conspicuous on the freshly furrowed soil and dry stalks. “They
would have taken him away from us to town, but father went with the
Voyt[3] to entreat the Bishop, and so they did not get him. But dig
away, you, dig away: the day and the field are both drawing to a close.”
-----
Footnote 3:
_Voyt_—the headman of the community.—_Translator’s Note._
They set again to work in silence. Only the crunching sound of the hoes
in the hard ground, with now and then the sharp clink of steel upon
stone, was to be heard.
Less than a score of workers were there, most of them old women and
farm-labourers. At some distance were fixed two couples of crossed poles
from which, swathed in cloths, a couple of babies were swinging as in
hammocks, and wailing now and then.
“Well, and so the old woman has gone off a-wandering,” Yagustynka said
after some time.
“The old woman? Who?” asked Anna, straightening herself.
“Why, old Agatha.”
“What, a-begging?”
“Of course a-begging! No, not for the pleasure of the thing. She has
been working hard for her kinsfolk, serving them all summer long; and
now they let her go—to get some fresh air! Next spring she will return,
with baskets full of sugar and tea, and some money, besides. Oh, they
will be fond enough of her then, and cover her up snugly in bed, and
tell her that she must not work, but just rest up. Oh, yes! and they
will call her ‘Aunt,’ till they have got the last bit of money out of
her. But when autumn comes round again, there will again be no room for
her—not even in the passageway, not even in the pigsty. Oh, those
blood-sucking kinsfolk! Those inhuman beasts!”
Yagustynka put such passion into her outburst that her face turned livid
as she spoke.
An old farm-labourer—a wry-faced worn-out man—remarked: “Here you see
how true is the saying: ‘The wind is always blowing in the face of the
poor.’”
“Now, good people, please dig away,” interrupted Hanka hastily; she did
not like the turn the conversation was taking. But Yagustynka, who could
not hold her tongue, soon looked up and said:
“Those Pacheses,—they are getting on in years; the hair is thin upon
their heads.”
“And yet,” another woman put in, “they still remain unmarried men.”
“And there are so many girls growing old here, too, or forced to take
service elsewhere!”
“Yet, they have a score of acres and more, besides a meadow beyond the
mill.”
“Aye, but will their mothers let them marry, do you think, or let them
have anything if they do?”
“Yes, who would then milk the cows, or do the washing, or tend to the
farm and the pigs?”
“They have to keep house for their mother and for Yagna. Else how could
Yagna be the grand lady that she is? Quite a gentlewoman, always
dressing up, and washing herself, and peering into her glass, and for
ever braiding her hair!”
“And looking for someone to share her bed—any able-bodied young man will
do,” added Yagustynka with a malicious sneer.
“Joseph Bandech sent ‘proposers’[4] to her with a gift of vodka, but she
would not have him.”
-----
Footnote 4:
Two men go to the girl’s family, offering vodka in the young
man’s name; if the girl drinks to him, she is regarded as
affianced.—_Translator’s Note._
“A plague on her, the pampered minx!”
“And the old dame, too: always in church, and praying out of her
prayer-book, and going wherever there’s an indulgence!”[5]
-----
Footnote 5:
An annual local festival held in every parish, where those who come to
church may gain an indulgence.—_Translator’s Note._
“She’s a witch, all the same. Who was it that made Vavrek’s cows dry up,
pray? And, ah! when Yashek’s little boy stole plums from her orchard,
and she muttered evil words against him, did he not get the _koltun_[6]
at once, and shrivel up with crooked limbs?”
-----
Footnote 6:
_Koltun_—a diseased, matted condition of the hair.—_Translator’s
Note._
“Oh, how can God’s blessings descend upon a place where such creatures
dwell?”
“In former days,” Yagustynka observed, “when I was still tending
father’s cattle, they used to drive such people out of our midst....
Aye, and it does them no harm, for they are not without protectors.”
Then, lowering her voice, and casting a side-glance at Hanka then busily
digging in the foremost row, Yagustynka whispered to her neighbours:
“The first to defend her would be Hanka’s goodman; he follows Yagna
everywhere like a dog.”
“For God’s sake! Pray, hold your tongue. What awful things you are
telling us! Why, that’s an offence against God, a sin!” the gossips
whispered to her, as they went on digging with bowed shoulders.
“Is he, then, the only one? Why, all the lads are after her, like cats
after their kind.”
“Indeed, she is good-looking: plump as a well-fed heifer, with a face as
white as cream, and eyes even as the flax-flower. Strong, besides; many
a man no stronger.”
“For what does she do but eat and sleep? No wonder she is comely.”
A long silence ensued while they emptied their baskets on to the heap.
Afterwards the talk ran on other subjects, till Yuzka, Boryna’s
daughter, was seen coming at a run across the cornfields, from the
village, and they stopped. She came, panting and all out of breath,
shouting from a distance:
“Hanka, come home: there’s something wrong with the cow!”
“Mercy on us! which cow?”
“White-and-Red.”
Hanka heaved a sigh of relief. “Good God! how you frightened me! I
thought it was mine.”
“Vitek brought her in but now; the keeper had driven them out of the
wood. She ran too fast—she is so very fat,—and fell just outside the
byre. She neither eats nor drinks; only rolls about and bellows. Mercy
on us!”
“Is father home yet?”
“No, he is not. Oh, good Lord! Such a cow, too! She gave more than a
gallon at each milking. Oh, do come, quick!”
“Yes, yes, quick as thought—instantly!”
She at once took her child out of the cloth in which it hung
hammock-like, and came away so alarmed at the news that she forgot to
let down the apron with which she had tucked her dress up to the knees
for work. And, as she followed Yuzka, her white legs twinkled across the
fields.
The potato-diggers, working with their hoes between their feet, went on
more slowly, having no one to hurry or to chide them any more.
The sun, now quite in the West, glowing red as if heated by its rapid
course, hung like a huge crimson globe above the high, black woods.
Twilight was deepening and spreading over the landscape; filling
furrows, hiding in ditches, gathering under thickets, and slowly pouring
over the land; deadening, blotting out and wiping away all colours,
until the tree-tops and the church-roof and steeple alone glowed with
gorgeous hues. Many labourers were already plodding homewards.
Shouts and neighings, and bellowings and the rattling of carts, growing
ever louder and louder, filled the quiet evening air. But presently a
tinkling from the belfry announced the Angelus; and at the bell’s
sonorous vibrations, these noises were all hushed, and only whispered
prayers, like the faint sound of falling leaves, were audible.
And now the cattle, driven home with merry cries and songs in a confused
multitude, came along the roads stirring up such a volume of dust that
only now and then were their mighty, thickly-horned heads seen to emerge
from it.
Sheep, too, bleated here and there, and flocks of geese, flying off the
pasture lands, were lost in the Western glow, so that only their shrill,
creaking cries betrayed the fact that they were on the wing.
“A pity that White-and-Red was with calf.”
“It is a good thing that Boryna is not poor.”
“A pity, all the same, to lose so fine an animal.”
“Boryna has no wife, everything he has goes as through a sieve.”
“Because Hanka is no sort of housekeeper, you know.”
“Oh, but she is—for herself. They lodge with her father as if they were
farm-labourers; each of them is on the look-out for what can be got out
of him. As to Boryna’s property, let the dog watch over it!”
“Yuzka is a child, and knows nothing. What can she do?”
“Well, Boryna might as well give up his land to Antek, might he not?”
“Yes, indeed, and live on the portion they will allow him?” Yagustynka
returned hotly. “You are old, Vavrek, but a great fool for all that. Ho,
ho! Boryna is still hale: he may marry again. If he gave all he had to
his children, he would be an ass.”
“Hale he is, but over sixty.”
“Never fear, Vavrek; any girl would have him, if he only asked her.”
“He has buried two wives already.”
“May he bury a third, then, and, God help him! Never while he lives let
him give his children the least bit of ground;—no, not so much as a foot
of it. The carrion! They would give him a fine portion, they would!
Force him to work on the farm, or starve, or go far off to beg! Yes,
turn over what you have to your children; they will give you just
enough, to buy a rope to hang yourself or to tie a stone round your neck
with!”
“Well, it’s getting dark; time to go home.”
“Yes, it is time; the sun is going down.”
So they quickly shouldered their hoes and, taking their baskets and
dinner pails in hand, went off in single file along the path, old
Yagustynka always passionately holding forth against her own and
everybody else’s children.
A girl was going home in the same direction, but by another path,
driving a sow with its little ones and singing in a shrill voice:
“Oh, go not near the wagon,
Nor with its axle play,
Nor let a young man kiss thee,
Whatever he may say!”
“Listen to that idiot howling as if she was being skinned alive!”