lifting his dexter and middle fingers with the other fingers closed.
Both cast a glance at the corpse, which slept in its coffin with
gracefully disposed locks, and wax and rouge in the deepest of the
wrinkles. Thereupon they sat themselves on a bench in the window nook
outside the hanging broad-cloth, and Blomberg began whispering his
narrative.
* * * * *
I was lying unconscious in the marshy wilderness at Poltava. I had
stumped along on my wooden leg and got a blow from a horse’s hoof, and
when I came to, it was night. I felt a cold, strange hand fumble under
my coat and pull at the buttons. An abomination before the Lord are the
devices of the wicked, I thought; but gentle words are pure. Without
becoming frightened, I seized the corpse-plunderer very silently by the
breast, and by his stammered words of terror I perceived that he was one
of the Zaporogeans who had made an alliance with the Swedes and
followed the army. As surgeon I had tended many of these men, as well as
captured Poles and Muscovites, and could make myself tolerably
understood in their various languages.
“Many devices are in the heart of man,” said I meekly; “but the counsel
of the Lord, that shall abide. No evil can befall the righteous, but the
ungodly shall be filled with misfortunes.”
“Forgive me, pious sir,” whispered the Zaporogean. “The Swedish czar has
left us poor Zaporogeans to our fate, and the Muscovite czar, whom we
faithlessly deserted, is coming to maim and slay us. I only wanted to
get me a Swedish coat so that in a moment of need I could give myself
out as one of you. Do not be angry, godly sir!”
To see if he had any knife, I searched out flint and steel while he was
speaking and made a fire with dry thistles and twigs which lay at my
feet. I noted then that I had before me a little frightened old man with
a sly face and two empty hands. He raised himself as vehemently as a
hungry animal that has found its prey and bent in the light over a
Swedish ensign who lay dead in the grass. Thinking that a dead man might
willingly grant a helpless ally his coat, I did nothing to hinder the
Zaporogean; but as he drew the coat from the fallen one, a letter
slipped from the pocket. I saw by the address that Falkenburg was the
name of the boy who had bled to death. He lay now as fairly and
peacefully stretched out as if he had slept in the meadow by the house
where he was born. The letter was from his sister, and I had only time
to spell out the words which from that hour became my favorite maxim: To
tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. At that
moment the Zaporogean put out my light.
“With your wise consent, sir,” he whispered, “do not draw the
corpse-plunderers hither.”
I paid little attention to his talk, but repeated time after time: “To
tell the truth is in the long run less dangerous than to lie. That is a
big saying my old fellow, and you shall see that I get along further
with it than you do with your disguise.”
“We may try it,” answered the Zaporogean, “but we must promise this,
that the one of us who survives the other shall offer a prayer for the
other’s soul.”
“That is agreed,” I said, and gave him my hand, for it seemed as if
through misfortune I had found in this shaggy-bearded barbarian a friend
and a brother.
He helped me up and at daybreak we fell into the long line of stragglers
and wounded that silently tottered into Poltava to give themselves up
as prisoners. They willingly tried to conceal the Zaporogean among the
rest. His big boots with their flaps reached up to his hips and his
coat-tails hung down to his spurs. As soon as a Cossack looked at him,
he turned to one of us and cried with raised voice the only Swedish
words he had come to learn in the campaign: “I Shwede, Devil-damn!”
My Zaporogean and I with eight of my comrades were assigned quarters in
the upper story of a big stone house. As we two had come up there first,
we picked out for ourselves a little separate cubby-hole with a window
on an alley. There was nothing else there than a little straw to lie on,
but I had in my coat a tin flute, which I had from a fallen Kalmuck at
Starodub, and on which I had taught myself to play a few pretty psalms.
With that I shortened the time, and soon we noticed that, as often as I
played, a young woman came to the window on the other side of the alley.
Possibly for that reason I played more than I should have otherwise
cared to and I know not rightly whether she was fairer and more seemly
than all other women, or whether long sojourn among men had made my eye
less accustomed, but I had great joy in beholding her. However, I never
looked at her when she turned her face toward our window, because I have
always been bashful before women-folk and have never rightly understood
how to conduct myself in that which pertains to them. Never, too, have I
sought fellowship with men who go with their heads full of wenches and
do nothing but hanker after gallant intrigues. “Let everyone keep his
vessel in holiness,” Paul saith, “and not in the lust of desire as do
the heathen, which know not God; also let no one in this matter dishonor
and wrong his brother, because the Lord is a powerful avenger in all
such things.”
I recognized, however, that a man should at all times bear himself
courteously and fittingly, and as one arm of my coat was in tatters, I
always turned that side inward when I played.
She usually sat with arms crossed above the window-sill, and her hands
were round and white, though large. She had a scarlet-colored bodice
with silver buttons and many chains. An old witch who often stood
beneath her window with a wheel-barrow and sold bread covered with jam
called her Feodosova.
When it grew dusk, she lighted a lamp, and since neither she nor we had
any shutters, we could follow her with our glance when she blew on the
fire, but I found it more proper that we should turn away and I
therefore set myself with my Zaporogean on the straw in the corner.
Besides the prayer-book, I had a few torn-out leaves of Müller’s
“Sermons,” and I read and translated many passages for my Zaporogean.
But when I noticed that he did not listen, I gave it over for more
worldly objects and asked him of our neighbor on the other side of the
alley. He said that she was not unmarried, because maidens in that
country always wore a long plait tied with ribbons and a little red tuft
of silk. More likely she was a widow because her hair hung loose as a
token of sorrow.
When it became wholly dark and we lay down on the straw, I discovered
that the Zaporogean had stolen my silver snuff-spoon, but after I had
taken it back and reproached him for his fault, we slept beside each
other as friends.
I was almost bashful, when it was morning again, at feeling myself
happier than for a long time, but as soon as I had held prayers with the
Zaporogean and had washed and arranged myself sufficiently, I went to
the window and played one of my most beautiful psalms.
Feodosova was already sitting in the sunlight. To show her how different
the Swedes were from her fellow-countrymen I instructed my Zaporogean to
clean our room, and after a couple of hours the white-washed walls were
shining white and free from cobwebs. All this helped me to drive away my
thoughts, but as soon as I set myself again at rest, my torments of
conscience awakened, that I could be happy in such misery. In the hall
outside, my comrades sat on floor and benches, sighing heavily and
whispering about their dear ones at home. In due turn two of us every
day were allowed to go out into the open air to the ramparts, but when I
laid myself on my straw in the evening, I was ashamed to pray God that
the lot next morning should fall upon me. I knew very well within myself
that, if I longed for an hour’s freedom, it was only to invent an errand
to the house opposite. And yet I felt that, if the lot really fell upon
me without my prayer, I should still never venture to go up there.
When I came to the window in the morning, Feodosova lay sleeping in her
clothes on the floor with a cushion under her neck. It was still early
and cool, and I did not have the heart to set the tin flute to my mouth.
But as I stood there and waited, she may have apprehended in her sleep
that I was gazing at her, for she looked up and laughed and stretched
her arms out, and all that so suddenly that I did not manage to draw
back unnoticed. My brow became hot, I laid aside my flute, and behaved
myself in every way so clumsily and unskilfully that I never was so
displeased with myself. I pulled and straightened my belt, took my flute
again from the window, inspected it, and pretended I was blowing dust
out of it. When finally the Russian subaltern who had charge over us
unfortunates informed my Zaporogean that he was one of the two who were
to go out into the city that day, I drew the Zaporogean aside into a
corner and enjoined him with many words to pick a bunch of yellow
stellaria such as I had seen around the burned houses by the ramparts.
At a suitable opportunity we should then give them to Feodosova I said.
She appeared to be a good and worthy woman, who perchance in return
might give us poor fellows some fruit or nuts, I said. The miserable
bite of bread that the czar allowed us daily did not even quiet our
worst hunger, I said.
He was afraid to show himself out in the sunlight, but neither did he
dare to arouse mistrust by staying in, and therefore he obeyed and went.
Scarcely was he out of the door, though, when I began to regret that I
had not held him back, because now in solitude my embarrassment grew
much greater. I sat down on the bed in the corner, where I was
invisible, and stayed there obstinately.
Still the time was long, for thoughts were many. After a while I heard
the Zaporogean’s voice. Without reflecting, I went to the window and saw
him standing by Feodosova with a great, splendid bouquet of stellaria,
which reminded one of irises. First she didn’t want to take them but
answered that they were impure, since they had been given by a heathen.
He pretended that he understood nothing and that he only knew a few
words of her speech but with winkings and gestures and nods he made it
intelligible that I had sent the flowers, and then at last she took
them.
Beside myself with bashfulness, I went back into the corner, and when
the Zaporogean returned, I seized him behind the shoulders, shook him,
and stood him against the wall.
But scarcely had I let go my grasp when he with his thoughtless vivacity
stood at the window again, made signs with his hands and threw kisses on
all five of his fingers. Then I came forward, pushed him aside, and
bowed. Feodosova sat picking the flowers apart, pulling off the leaves
and letting them fall one by one to the ground. Vehemence helped me so
that I took courage and began to speak, while I was still considering
how it would be most polite to begin a conversation.
“The lady will not take amiss my comrade’s pranks and unseemly
gestures,” I stammered.
She plucked still more eagerly at the flowers and answered after a time,
“My husband, when he was alive, often used to say that from heel to head
such well-made soldiers as the Swedes were not to be found. He had seen
Swedish prisoners undressed and whipped by women and had seen that the
women at the last were so moved because of their beauty, that they stuck
the rods under their arms and sobbed themselves, instead of those they
tormented. Therefore have I become very curious these days.... And the
love songs which you play sound so wonderful!”
Her speech pleased me not altogether, and I found it little seemly to
answer in the same spirit by praising her figure and white arms. Instead
I took my flute and played my favorite psalm: “E’en from the bottom of
my heart I call Thee in my need.”
After that we conversed of many things, and though my store of words was
small, we soon understood each other so well that never did any day seem
to me shorter.
At mid-day, after she had clattered about with jugs and plates and swung
a palm-leaf fan over the embers in the fire-place, she lifted down from
the ceiling a landing-net with which formerly her husband had caught
small fish in the river. Into the net she put a pan with steaming
cabbage and a wooden flask with kvass, and the net was so long that she
could hand us the meal across the street. When I drank to her, she
nodded and smiled and said that she did not regard it as wrong to feel
pity for captured heathens. Toward evening she moved her spinning-wheel
to the window, and we kept on conversing when it was dusk. I no longer
felt it as a sin to be happy in the midst of the sorrow that surrounded
us, because my intent was innocent and pure. Just as I had seen the
stellaria shining over heaps of ashes among the burned and desolate
houses by the ramparts as a song of praise to God’s goodness, so seemed
to me now the joy of my heart.
When it became night and I had held prayer with my Zaporogean and yet
once more reproached him that he had stolen my snuff-spoon, the
garrulous man began to talk to me in an undertone and say: “I see
clearly, little father, that you are in love with Feodosova, and in
truth she is a good and pure woman whom you may take to wife. That you
never would enter upon any love-dealing of another sort I have
understood from the first.”
“Such stuff!” answered I, “such stuff!”
“Truth is in the long run less dangerous than lying, you used to say.”
When he struck me with my own maxim-staff, I became confounded, and he
proceeded.
“The czar has promised good employment and wages to everyone of you
Swedes who will become his subject and be converted to the true faith.”
“You are out of your wits. But if I could get off and take her home with
me on horseback, I would do it.”
Next morning, when I had played my psalm, I learned that today it was my
turn to go out under the open heavens.
I became warm and restless. I combed and fixed myself up even more
carefully than at other times, and changed to the Zaporogean’s ensign
coat so as not to wear my torn one. Meanwhile I deliberated with myself.
Should I go up to her? What should I say then? Perhaps, though, that
would be the only time in my life when I could get to speak with her,
and how should I not repent thereafter even to my gray old age, if out
of awkwardness I had missed that one chance! My heart beat more
violently than at any affair with the enemy, when I stood with my
bandages among the bullets and the fallen. I stuck the flute into my
pocket and went out.
When I came down on the street she sat at the window without seeing me.
I would not go to her without first asking leave, and I did not know
rightly how I should conduct myself. Pondering, I took a couple of steps
forward.
Then she heard me and looked out.
I lifted my hand to my hat, but with a long ringing burst of laughter
she sprang up and cried, “Haha! Look, look, he has a wooden leg!”
I stood with my hand raised, and stared and stared, and I had neither
thought nor feeling. It was as if my heart had swelled out and filled
all my breast, so that it was near to bursting. I believe I stammered
something. I only remember that I did not know whither I should turn,
that I heard her still laughing, that everything in the world was
indifferent to me, that freedom would have frightened me as much as my
captivity and my wretchedness, that of a sudden I had become a broken
man.
I remember vaguely a long and steep lane without stone pavement, where I
was accosted by other Swedish prisoners. Perhaps, even, I answered them,
asked after their health, and took some puffs out of the tobacco pipes
they lent me.
I believe I disturbed myself over the fact that it was so long till
night, so that I had to return the same way and pass her window in
brightest daylight. By every means I prolonged the time, speaking now to
one man, now to another, but shortly the Russian dragoons came and
ordered me to turn about to my place.
As I went up the lane, I persuaded myself that I should not betray
myself, but should salute in a quite friendly manner before the window.
Was it her fault that so many of the Swedish soldiers of whom she had
had such fine dreams were now pitiful cripples on wooden legs?
“Hurry up there!” thundered the dragoons, and I hastened my steps so
that the thumping of my wooden leg echoed between the walls of the
houses.
“Dear Heavenly Father,” I muttered, “faithfully have I served my earthly
master. Is this the reward Thou givest me, that Thou makest of me in my
youth a defenseless captive, at whom women laugh? Yes, this is Thy
recompense, and Thou wilt abase me into yet deeper humiliation, that
thereby I may at length become worthy of the crown of blessedness.”
When I came under the window and carried my hand to my hat, I saw that
Feodosova was away. That gave me no longer any relief. I stumbled up to
my prison and at every step heard the thumping of my wooden leg.
“I have talked with Feodosova,” whispered the Zaporogean.
I gave him no reply. My happiness, my flower, that had grown up over the
heaps of ashes, lay consumed; and if it had again shone out, I myself,
in alarm, would have trampled it to death with my wooden leg. What
signified to me the Zaporogean’s whisperings?
“Ah!” he went on, “when you were gone, I reproached Feodosova and said
to her that you were fonder of her than she realized, and that, if you
were not a stranger and a heathen, you would ask her to be your wife.”
In silence I clenched my hands and bit my lips together to lock up my
vexation and embarrassment, and I thanked God that he abased me every
moment more deeply in shame and ridicule before men.
I opened the door to the outer hall and began to talk to the other
prisoners:
“As wild asses in the desert we go painfully to seek our food. On a
field that we do not own we must go as husbandmen, and harvest in the
vineyard of the ungodly. We lie naked the whole night from lack of
garments, and are without covering against the cold. We are overwhelmed
by the deluge from the mountains, and from lack of shelter we embrace
the cliffs. But we beg Thee not for mitigation Almighty God. We pray
only: Lead us, be nigh unto us! Behold, Thou hast turned away Thy
countenance from our people and stuck thorns in our shoes, that we may
become Thy servants and Thy children. In the mould of the battle-field
our brothers sleep, and a fairer song of victory than that of the
conquerors by the sword Thou dost offer to Thy chosen ones.”
“Yea, Lord lead us, be nigh unto us!” echoed all the prisoners
murmuringly.
Then out of the darkest corner rose a lonely, trembling voice, which
cried: “Oh, that I were as in former months, as in the days when God
protected me, when His lamp shone upon my head, when with His light I
went into the darkness! As I was in my autumn days, when God’s
friendship was over my tent, while yet the Almighty was with me, and my
children were about me! Thus my heart cries out with Job, but I hear it
no longer and I stammer forth no longer: Take away my trials! With the
ear I have heard tell of Thee, O God, but now hath mine eye beheld
Thee.”
“Quiet, quiet!” whispered the Zaporogean, taking hold of me, and his
hands were cold and trembling. “It can be no one else than the czar who
is coming below in the lane.”
The lane had become filled with people, with beggars and boys and old
women and soldiers. In the middle of the throng the czar, tall and lean,
walked very calmly, without a guard. A swarm of hopping and shrieking
dwarfs were his only retinue. Now and then, turning, he embraced and
kissed the smallest dwarf on the forehead in a fatherly way. Here and
there he stood still before a house and was offered a glass of brandy,
which he jestingly emptied at a single gulp. It could be nobody but the
czar, because one saw directly that he alone ruled over both people and
city. He came so close under my window that I could have touched his
green cloth cap and the half-torn brass buttons on his brown coat. On
the skirt he had a great silver button with an artificial stone and on
his legs rough woolen stockings. His brown eyes gleamed and flashed, and
the small black mustaches stood straight up from his shining lips.
When he caught sight of Feodosova, he became as if smitten with
madness. When she came down on the street and knelt with a cup, he
pinched her ear, then took her under the chin and lifted up her head so
that he could look her in the eyes.
“Tell me, child,” he inquired, “where is there a comfortable room where
I can eat? May there be one at your house?”
The czar had seldom with him on his excursions any master of ceremonies
or other courtier. He took along neither bed nor bed-clothes nor cooking
utensils; no, not even a cooking or eating vessel; but everything had to
be provided in a turn of the hand wherever it occurred to him to take
lodging. It was for this reason that there was now running and clatter
at all the gates and stairs. From this direction came a man with a pan,
from that another with an earthen platter, from yonder a third with a
ladle and drinking utensils. Up in Feodosova’s room the floor was strewn
deeply with straw. The czar helped with the work like a common servant,
and the chief direction was carried on by a hunchbacked dwarf, who was
called the Patriarch. The dwarf every once in a while put his thumb to
his nose and blew it in the air straight in front of the czar’s face, or
invented rascal tricks of which I cannot relate before a lady of
quality.
Once when the czar turned with crossed arms to the window, he noticed me
and the Zaporogean, and nodded like a comrade. The Zaporogean threw
himself prostrate on the floor and stammered his “I Schwede.
Devil-damn!” But I pushed him aside with my foot and told him once for
all to be silent and get up, because no Swede conducted himself in that
fashion. To cover him as much as possible, I stepped in front of him and
took my position there.
“Dat is nit übel,” said the czar, but at once fell back into his mother
speech and asked who I was.
“Blomberg, surgeon with the Uppland regiment,” I answered.
The czar scanned me with a narrowing gaze that was so penetrating I have
never seen a more all-discerning look.
“Your regiment exists no longer,” he said, “and here you see
Rehnskiöld’s sword.” He lifted the sword with its scabbard from his belt
and threw it on the table so that the plates hopped. “But for certain
you are a rogue, for you wear a captain’s or ensign’s uniform.”
I answered, “‘That is a hard saying,’ saith John the Evangelist. The
coat I borrowed, after my own fell in rags, and if that be ill done, I
will yet hope for grace, because this is my maxim: To tell the truth is
in the long run less dangerous than to lie.”
“Good. If that is your motto, you shall take your servant with you and
come over here so that we may prove it.”
The Zaporogean trembled and tottered as he followed behind me, but as
soon as we entered, the czar pointed me to a chair among the others at
the table as if I had been his equal and said: “Sit, Wooden-Leg!”
He had Feodosova on his knee, without the least consideration of what
could be said about it, and round them stamped and whistled the dwarfs
and a crowd of Boyars who now began to collect. A dwarf who was called
Judas, because he carried a likeness of that arch-villain on the chain
around his neck seized a handful of shrimps from the nearest plate and
threw them to the ceiling, so that they fell in a rain over dishes and
people. When in that way he had made the others turn toward him, he
pointed at the czar with many grimaces and called cold-bloodedly to him:
“You amuse yourself, you Peter Alexievitch. Even outside of the city I
have heard tell of the pretty Feodosova of Poltava, I have; but you
always scrape together the best things for yourself, you little father.”
“That you do,” chimed in the other dwarfs in a ring around the czar.
“You are an arch-thief, you Peter Alexievitch.”
Sometimes the czar laughed or answered, sometimes he did not hear them,
but sat serious and meditative, and his eyes moved meanwhile like two
green-glinting insects in the sunlight.
I called to mind how I had once seen the most blessed Charles the
Eleventh converse with Rudbeck, and how it then came over me that
Rudbeck, for all his bowings, amounted to far more than the king. Here
it was the other way about. Although the czar himself went around and
did the waiting and let himself be treated worse than a knave, I saw
only him--and Feodosova. I read his thoughts in the smallest things. I
recognized him in the forcibly curtailed caftans and shaven chins at the
city gate.