The nights following the revolution on the island were passed by the
town in great anxiety. Dogs barked, house doors creaked, and the
citizens kept emerging into the streets, knocking on the fences with
sticks, and letting every one know how valiant they were. The town
knew that a band of shivering and hungry folk was roaming through the
streets, cold and wet, in the raw darkness of the rainy night, and
realising full well that only harsh feelings could exist in the hearts
of these people toward it, the town put itself on guard and answered
these sentiments with threats. And, as if on purpose, the nights now
fell upon the earth in the midst of torrents of cold rain, and passed
away leaving low-flying clouds hanging close above the ground. And the
wind bellowed in the heart of the evil weather, shaking the tree-tops,
thundering against the walls, and chanting to me in my bed of the
dozens of human creatures deprived of warmth, with no roof over their
heads.
But at last spring triumphed over winter’s rage; the sun dried the wet
earth, and in the meantime the homeless wanderers had slipped away,
whither, heaven knows. The nightly barking of the dogs diminished,
the townsfolk stopped knocking on the fences, and life assumed once
more its monotonous and sleepy aspect. The hot sun rose in the sky,
scorched the dusty streets, and drove the lively sons of Israel into
the shelter of their little booths; the “commissionaires” lounged
lazily in the sun, sharply eyeing the passers-by and the Jewish
“geschäft”; the scratching of official pens was heard through the open
windows of the Government buildings; the town ladies wandered up and
down the bazaars in the mornings with baskets on their arms, and in the
evenings came out walking majestically, leaning upon the arms of their
spouses, stirring up the street dust with the full trains of their
dresses. The old men and women from the castle decorously made the
round of their patrons without disturbing the universal harmony. The
townsfolk gladly recognised their right to existence, and considered it
absolutely proper that some people should receive alms every Saturday,
while the denizens of the castle accepted this charity with the utmost
respectability.
Only the unfortunate exiles now found no protection in the town.
It is true they no longer roamed the streets at night, and people
said they had taken refuge somewhere on the hill near the dissenting
chapel, but how they had managed to find a dwelling place there no
one could exactly say. All saw, however, the most impossible and
suspicious-looking figures in the world climb down every morning from
the cliffs on which the chapel stood and disappear again at twilight
in the same direction. These people disturbed the quiet, sleepy life
of the town by their appearance, standing out like sombre stains
against the grey background of village life. The citizens looked at
them askance with feelings of hostility and alarm, while they, on the
other hand, watched the village with furtively attentive eyes that sent
cold chills running down the back of many a townsman. These persons did
not resemble in any way the aristocratic mendicants from the castle;
the town did not recognise them and they did not ask for recognition.
Their relations with the community were purely war-like in character;
they preferred cursing a townsman to flattering him; they preferred
taking things themselves to asking for them. Nevertheless, as often
happens among a sombre mass of unfortunates, there were those among
them who, for brains and talent, would have been an honour to the more
select society of the castle, but who had been discontented there,
and preferred the more democratic life of the dissenting chapel. A
few of these poor creatures were distinguished by characteristics of
profoundest tragedy.
I remember vividly to this day how merrily the street would hum as
the melancholy, stooping figure of the old “Professor” walked along
it. He was a gentle being, oppressed by a clouded intelligence, and
he wore an old frieze overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat trimmed with
a faded cockade. His learned title he had appropriated, it seemed,
because of a vague tradition that he had once, somehow, somewhere,
been a tutor. It would be hard to imagine a creature more mild and
harmless. He could generally be seen wandering about the streets with
dim eyes and head sunk forward on his breast. The ingenious townsfolk
knew two peculiarities of his which they made use of to procure a
cruel enjoyment for themselves. The Professor was always muttering
something to himself and no one could ever make out what he was
saying. His words would trickle after one another with the troubled
murmur of a little brooklet, while he fixed his vague eyes upon his
listener’s face as if he were trying to convey to that man’s mind the
elusive meaning of his long discourses. He could be wound up like
a clock, and to do this it was only necessary for one of the lanky
commissionaires dozing on the sidewalk to call the old man to him and
ask him some question. The Professor would shake his head, pensively
fix his faded eyes upon the face of his interlocutor, and begin to
murmur something sorrowful without an end. Thereupon his questioner
could calmly walk away or go to sleep, and when he woke he would still
be certain to see over him that dark, melancholy figure, murmuring his
unintelligible phrases. But, naturally, this situation was not, in
itself, particularly interesting. It was the second of the Professor’s
characteristics that enabled the louts of the street-corners to procure
their most striking effects. The unhappy man could never hear sharp
or pointed instruments mentioned without emotion. And so, at the very
height of his unintelligible eloquence, his listener would suddenly
jump up and scream in a harsh voice: “Knives, scissors, needles, pins!”
Then the poor old man, interrupted in the midst of his reverie, would
throw up his arms with the gesture of a wounded bird, and stare about
him in terror with his hands clutching at his breast. Ah, how many
sufferings are incomprehensible to lanky commissionaires because the
sufferers cannot express their pain by means of a lusty blow! But the
poor Professor would only look about him in deep distress, and his
inexpressible suffering could be divined from his voice as he turned
his clouded eyes upon his tormentor and cried, convulsively tearing at
his breast:
“A hook--a hook in my heart!”
He was probably trying to say that his heart had been rent by the
townsman’s exclamation, but naturally it was his very circumstance
that had served to dispel somewhat the tedium of the street loafer. So
the poor Professor would hurry away, his head bowed even lower than
before, as if he feared a blow, and loud peals of laughter would pursue
him as the pert townsfolk ran out into the street, filling the air with
screams like the blows of a lash and shouting:
“Knives, scissors, needles, pins!”
In justice to the exiles from the castle, it must be said that
they always stood loyally by one another, and if two or three of
Turkevich’s tatterdemalions, or, more especially, if the retired
grenadier Zausailov descended upon the Professor’s pursuers at such a
time a cruel punishment always overtook a large number of that crowd.
Zausailov, who was the possessor of a huge frame, a purplish blue nose,
and fiercely protruding eyes, had long since declared war on every
living being, and recognised neither treaties nor neutrality. Each
time that he met the Professor with the rabble in pursuit his angry
shouts would fill the air then and long after, as he swept through the
streets like Tamerlane, destroying everything that stood in the way of
his redoubtable progress. Thus he practised “pogroms” on the Jews on a
large scale long before they had begun to break out elsewhere. He would
torture every Jew that fell a prisoner into his hands and wreak insults
on the Hebrew ladies until at last the expedition of the bold grenadier
would come to an end in the gaol, where he was invariably domiciled
after his bloody bouts with the populace in which both sides always
manifested no small amount of valour.
The other individual the sight of whose misfortunes and downfall was
a source of great amusement to the people, was Lavrovski, a retired
and absolutely drink-sodden Civil Servant. The inhabitants of the town
could easily remember the time when Lavrovski was never spoken of as
anything but “My Lord the Secretary”; when he went about in a uniform
with brass buttons, his neck swathed in handkerchiefs of the most
marvellous hues. It is likely that this circumstance lent an additional
piquancy to the contemplation of his present state. The change in
Lavrovski’s life had come swiftly; it had sufficed for a certain
brilliant officer of dragoons to come to Kniazh Gorodok and live there
for two weeks. In that time he succeeded in winning and carrying off
a golden-haired lady, the rich inn-keeper’s daughter. The inhabitants
of the town never heard of the beautiful Anna again, for she had sunk
forever beneath their horizon. And so Lavrovski was left with all
his bright-hued handkerchiefs, but without the hope that had once
embellished the life of the little official. It was long since he had
ceased to be a Civil Servant. Somewhere, in some remote village, there
lived a family whose hope and mainstay he had once been, but he had
lost all care for anything now. In his rare sober moments he would walk
swiftly through the streets with downcast eyes, looking at no one,
as if he were overcome with shame at the fact of his own existence.
Ragged, dirty, with long, unkempt hair, he was always a prominent
figure in a crowd, and attracted universal attention to himself, but he
seemed never to notice any one, or to hear anything. Only occasionally
would he cast a wild look of bewilderment about him, as much as to say:
“What do these strangers want of me? What have I done to them, and why
do they follow me so persistently with their mockery?” If, during one
of these flashes of consciousness, his ear caught the name of the lady
with the golden hair a tempestuous fury would rise in his heart, his
eyes would shine in his pale face with dark fire, and he would throw
himself upon the crowd of his tormentors, which would then quickly
disperse. These flashes of anger, rare as they were, strangely provoked
the interest of the loafers who found that time hung heavily on their
hands, and it is no wonder, then, that when Lavrovski walked down the
street with downcast eyes, the rabble that followed him should try to
rouse him from his apathy, and at last begin to throw mud and stones at
him.
When Lavrovski was drunk he would obstinately seek out dark
fence-corners and swampy meadows and other such extraordinary places,
and there he would sit, his long legs stretched out in front of him,
his poor grey head sunk on his breast. Solitude and vodka awoke in him
a flow of expansiveness and a desire to pour forth the sorrow of his
heavy heart, so he would embark upon endless stories of his ruined
youth, addressing himself now to the grey posts of the ancient fence,
now to the birch trees indulgently whispering something over his head,
now to the magpies that came hopping up to his gloomy figure with
feminine curiosity.
If any of us little boys succeeded in tracking him to such a place
we would silently surround him and listen with beating hearts to his
long and terrible stories. Our hair would stand on end as we gazed
with horror at that pale creature accusing himself of every crime
under the sun. According to Lavrovski’s own account he had killed his
father, driven his mother into the grave, and brought disgrace on his
brothers and sisters. We had no reason for not believing these fearful
confessions, and were only surprised that Lavrovski seemed to have had
several fathers; he had thrust a sword into the heart of one, another
he had killed with slow poison, a third he had dragged down with him
into some abyss or other. So we would listen, overwhelmed with sympathy
and horror, until Lavrovski’s tongue became more and more entangled
and at last ceased to be able to pronounce articulate sounds; merciful
sleep would then put an end to the outpouring of his confessions.
The grown people laughed at us and told us that these stories were all
moonshine, and that Lavrovski’s parents had died a natural death from
sickness or starvation. But our tender, childish hearts heard the cries
of genuine affliction in his groans, and, taking the allegories of the
unhappy man literally, we came nearer than our elders to understanding
the tragic wrecking of his life.
When Lavrovski’s head had sunk lower than ever and snores, broken by
nervous sobs, came from his throat, we would lean our little heads
over the poor man. We would peer into his face and watch the shadows
of his misdeeds flitting across it even in his sleep; we would see his
brows contract convulsively and his lips tighten in a piteous, almost
childishly plaintive grimace.
“I’ll kill you!” he once shrieked suddenly, conscious of a vague
uneasiness caused by our presence, and at this we scattered like a
flock of startled birds.
It sometimes happened that rain fell on him sleeping thus, dust covered
him, and several times in the autumn he was literally buried in snow.
If he did not die an untimely death, he without doubt owed this to the
care which other unfortunates like himself took of his pitiful person.
Especially did he owe his life to the jolly Turkevich, who would search
him out, pull him up, set him on his feet, and take him away with him.
Turkevich belonged to the class of people, who, as he himself expressed
it, do not spit in their own porridge, and while the Professor and
Lavrovski were passive sufferers, he presented the appearance of
a person who was happy and fortunate in many ways. To begin with,
he had suddenly announced that he was a general without asking the
assent of any one, and demanded that the townsfolk should call him by
that honourable title. As no one dared to question his right to it,
Turkevich very soon became imbued with a belief in his own greatness.
He always stalked along very majestically, knitting his brows severely,
and displaying a perfect readiness to break any one’s jaw, which last
act he evidently considered the special prerogative of a general. If
his care free brain was ever visited for a moment by doubts on the
score of his title, he would catch the first man he saw on the street
and sternly ask him:
“Who am I, eh?”
“General Turkevich!” the man would answer meekly, feeling himself in
an awkward position, whereupon Turkevich would slowly release him and
proudly twirl his whiskers.
“Ex-actly!”
And as he had, beside all this, a very special way of twirling his
beetling moustache and an inexhaustible fund of quaint sayings and
witticisms, it was not surprising that he was constantly surrounded by
a crowd of lively listeners. Even the doors of the best restaurants,
where the landholders of the country assembled to play billiards,
were open to him. To tell the truth, however, it not infrequently
happened that General Turkevich would come flying out of them with
the alacrity of a man who is being shoved rather unceremoniously
from behind. But these incidents, which he explained by the lack of
respect the landholders had for wit, had no effect upon Turkevich’s
general frame of mind. A state of happy self-confidence and continual
intoxication--that was his normal condition.
In this last circumstance lay the second key to his felicity; one
glass of vodka was enough to keep him fuddled for a day. This fact
people explained by the immense quantity which Turkevich had already
drunk, and which was said to have converted his blood into a solution
of vodka. All that was necessary now was for the General to bring this
solution to a proper strength, for it to ripple and rush through his
veins, painting the world for him with rainbow tints.
If, on the other hand, for one reason or another, the General could not
procure a glass of vodka for a day or two, he would suffer the most
excruciating torture. First he would fall into a fit of melancholy and
low spirits. All knew that at these times the terrible General was more
helpless than a child, and many hastened to wreak vengeance upon him
then for insults received. They would beat him and spit upon him and
cover him with mud, while he would not even try to run away from the
disgrace, but would bellow at the top of his lungs while the tears
streamed in torrents down his long, drooping moustache. The poor wretch
would turn to every one, imploring them to kill him; saying that,
anyhow, he was doomed to die a dog’s death in a fence corner. At that
every one would stand aside, for there was something in the voice and
face of the General at those times which sent even his most determined
enemies away as fast as their legs could carry them. They could not
bear to see the face, to hear the voice of a man who, for an instant,
was conscious of the appalling tragedy of his lot.
Then another change would come over the General and he would grow
terrible to look at. His eyes would flash feverishly, his cheeks would
cave in, his short hair would bristle on his head, he would go off into
a kind of frenzy, and, rising to his feet, would stalk triumphantly
through the streets, beating his breast and announcing to every one in
a loud voice:
“I am going! Like Jeremiah, I am going to denounce the ungodly!”
This was always the signal for an interesting scene.
It may safely be said that Turkevich played the part of a famous
person in our little town, so it was small wonder that the sedatest
and busiest of our townsmen should drop their work and mingle with the
rabble at the heels of the new prophet, or that at least they should
watch his progress from afar. He usually went first to the Secretary of
the County Court, and before his house he would hold something like a
session of court, choosing suitable members of the crowd to take the
parts of the plaintiff and the defendant. He himself would make the
pleas and reply to them, mimicking very skilfully the voice and manner
of a prisoner.
As he was always able to give a contemporary flavour to his
performances by alluding to some fact well known to all, and as he
was extremely well versed in the procedures of a court room, it was
not surprising that the Secretary’s cook should come flying out of
the house in a twinkling, touch Turkevich on the arm, and hastily
disappear, repulsing as she went the attentions of Turkevich’s
followers. Turkevich would laugh sardonically on receiving this gift,
and, waving the money triumphantly, would retire to the nearest tavern.
Having slightly slaked his thirst there, he would continue to lead his
audience from house to house of those whom he “denounced,” varying his
programme to suit each particular case. As he always received money for
each performance, his fierce tone would gradually become more mild, his
moustache would begin to curl once more, and the denunciatory drama
gradually became a merry vaudeville that generally ended in front of
the house where Kotz, the Captain of Police, lived. Kotz was the most
kindly of all the city officials and had only two little weaknesses:
he dyed his grey hair black and had a partiality for fat cooks. In
everything else he showed an implicit confidence in the will of God and
the “gratitude” of the townsfolk. Having arrived in front of the Police
Captain’s house, Turkevich would wink gaily at his companions, throw up
his cap, and announce in stentorian tones that not the Police Captain
lived here, but Turkevich’s own father and benefactor.
Then he would fix his eyes on the windows and await results. The
consequence was always one of two things: either the fat, red-cheeked
Matriona would come running out of the front door with a present from
Turkevich’s “father and benefactor,” or the door would remain closed,
and Turkevich would catch sight at a window of an angry old face in a
frame of coal-black hair, while Matriona would creep through back ways
to the police station. There the cobbler Mikita, who made a very good
living out of these very affairs with Turkevich, was always sitting. On
seeing Matriona he would immediately throw down his boot-last and rise
from his seat.
Meanwhile Turkevich, seeing that no good results followed his
dithyrambs, would, little by little, cautiously have recourse to
satire. He would usually begin by remarking what a pity it was that his
benefactor thought it necessary to dye his honourable grey hair with
shoe blacking. Next, grieved by the absolute lack of attention which
his eloquence received, he would raise his voice and begin to assail
his benefactor as a melancholy example of a man living illegally with
Matriona. By the time he reached this delicate subject, the General had
always lost all hope of reconciliation with his “benefactor,” and would
therefore arm himself with all the genuine eloquence of indignation. It
was a pity that an unexpected interruption almost always came at this
point in his speech. Kotz’s angry yellow face would appear thrust out
of one of the windows of his house, and Mikita, who had crept up with
marvellous dexterity, would seize Turkevich from behind. No member of
his audience ever tried to warn the orator of his approaching danger,
for Mikita’s artistic methods always called forth universal admiration.
Cut off in the midst of a word, the General would suddenly whirl
through the air and find himself upside down on Mikita’s back. A few
seconds more, and the sturdy cobbler would be quietly making his way
to the gaol, bending slightly beneath his burden, and followed by the
deafening shouts of the populace. Another minute, and the black door of
the police station would gape like a pair of forbidding jaws and the
General would disappear into the darkness, helplessly kicking his feet.
The thankless mob would cry, “Hurrah for Mikita!” and gradually melt
away.
Beside these individuals who were conspicuous among the ranks of the
vagabonds, a dark crew of pitiful, ragged creatures had taken refuge
near the chapel, and these never failed to create intense excitement by
their appearance at the bazaars. The merchants would hastily seek to
protect their goods with their hands, as a hen covers her brood when
a hawk appears in the sky above her. There was a rumour afloat that
these poor wretches had formed a fraternal organisation and that now,
since they had been deprived of their last resources by their expulsion
from the castle, they occupied themselves with petty thieving in the
town and its environs. Such rumours were chiefly founded on the fact
that a man cannot live without bread, and as all the suspicious persons
had in some way or other abandoned the normal way of obtaining it, and
had been cut off from the benefits of local charity, it was naturally
concluded that they must either steal or die. As they did not die,
the very fact of their remaining alive was evidence of their guilty
practices.
If this was true, it was no less apparent that the organiser and leader
of the band could be no other than Tiburtsi Drab, the most remarkable
of all the queer characters that had lost their home in the castle.
Drab’s origin was shrouded in the most mystifying uncertainty. Those
who were gifted with a vivid imagination credited him with having an
aristocratic name which he had brought to shame; he was therefore
obliged to conceal himself, at the same time taking part, it was said,
in the exploits of the notorious Karmeliuk. But, in the first place,
he was not old enough for this, and, in the second place, Tiburtsi’s
appearance did not present one single aristocratic feature. He was
tall, and his heavily stooping shoulders seemed to tell of great
burdens borne by the unfortunate man. His large features were coarsely
expressive. His short, reddish hair bristled stiffly all over his head;
his receding forehead, his slightly projecting lower jaw, and the rapid
play of his facial muscles lent something apish to his face, but the
eyes that sparkled under his beetling brows were determined and dark,
and there shone in them, beside cunning, a keen perspicacity, energy,
and an uncommon intelligence. While his features were changing under
the kaleidoscopic play of his expressions, his eyes would retain their
same fixed, unvarying look, and for this reason the buffoonery of the
strange man filled me with unreasoning dread.
Tiburtsi’s hands were callous and rough, and he stamped his great feet
like a peasant. Therefore the consensus of opinion among the townsfolk
was that he was not of aristocratic birth, and the most they would
concede was that he might have been the servant of a great family.
But here another difficulty presented itself: how, then, explain the
phenomenal learning that every one unanimously admitted he possessed?
It was impossible not to acknowledge this obvious fact, for there
was not a tavern in the whole town where Tiburtsi had not stood on a
barrel and spouted whole speeches from Cicero and Xenophon for the
benefit of the Little Russians collected there on market days. These
Little Russians would gape and nudge one another with their elbows,
while Tiburtsi, towering above them in his rags, would thunder forth
Catilinus or paint the exploits of Cæsar and the craft of Mithridates.
Little Russians are, by nature, endowed with a glowing fancy, and
these were able to read their own meaning into Tiburtsi’s fiery if
unintelligible speeches. When the orator beat his breast and turned
to them with flashing eyes, exclaiming: “Patres Conscripti!” they too
would knit their brows and say to one another:
“Aha, the son of a gun, he does bark!”
Later, when Tiburtsi would raise his eyes to the ceiling and begin
declaiming endless verses of Latin poetry, his whiskered audience
would follow every word he uttered with timid and pitying sympathy.
They felt as if the soul of their orator were soaring somewhere in an
unknown region where people did not talk like Christians, and by his
despairing gestures they concluded that it was there meeting with the
most sorrowful adventures. But this sympathetic tension reached its
height whenever Tiburtsi rolled up his eyes so that only the whites
were visible and wrung his audience’s heart with endless recitations
from Virgil and from Homer. Such hollow, sepulchral tones would then
shake his voice that those who sat farthest away and were most under
the influence of the Jewish “gorelka”[G] would hang their heads until
their long top-knots dangled before them, and begin to sob:
“Oh, oh, little mother, how sad it is!” while the tears would flow from
their eyes and trickle piteously down their long whiskers.
This learning of the queer fellow’s made it necessary to invent a new
hypothesis about him which should tally more closely with the obvious
facts. It was at last agreed that Tiburtsi had once been the house-boy
of a count who had sent him to a Jesuit school with his own son,
desiring that he should clean the young gentleman’s boots. It appeared,
however, that the young count had received most of the blows of the
holy fathers’ three-tailed “disciplinarian,” while the servant had
appropriated the learning intended for the head of his master.
As a result of the mystery which surrounded Tiburtsi, he was credited
among other things with having an intimate knowledge of witchcraft. If
a “witch-ball”[H] suddenly appeared in the billowy fields that closed
like a sea about the last hovels of the town, no one could pull it up
with less danger to himself and to the reapers than Tiburtsi. If an
owl settled in the evening on some one’s roof and, with loud cries,
summoned death to the house, Tiburtsi would be sent for and would drive
the ill-omened bird away by reciting quotations from Livy.
No one could even conjecture how Tiburtsi happened to have children,
and yet the fact was obvious; there were even two facts, a boy of
seven, unusually well-grown and intelligent for his age, and a little
girl of three. Tiburtsi had led, or rather carried, the boy with him
during the early days of his appearance over our horizon. As for
the little girl, he had seemed to vanish for several months into an
absolutely unknown place in order to procure her.
The boy, whose name was Valek, was tall and thin and dark. He might
sometimes be seen sauntering gloomily about the town with his hands in
his pockets, casting sidelong glances about him without having anything
in particular to do, and was the cause of many a palpitating heart to
the bakers.
The little girl was only seen once or twice, borne aloft in Tiburtsi’s
arms. She then disappeared and no one knew whither she had gone.
People spoke of certain subterranean passages on the hill near the
dissenting chapel, and such places were not uncommon in that part of
Russia, over which the Tartars had so often swept with fire and sword,
where Polish licence had run high, and where the fierce heroes of the
old Ukraine had held their bloody tribunals. So every one believed
in the existence of these caves, especially as it was clear that
the band of poor unfortunates must be living somewhere. They always
disappeared toward evening in precisely the direction of the chapel.
Thither the Professor hobbled with his drowsy gait; thither strode
Tiburtsi, swiftly and resolutely; thither staggered Turkevich, leading
the fierce and helpless Lavrovski; thither went a crowd of other
suspicious creatures, and vanished into the darkness of night. There
was no man brave enough to follow them up the slippery clay landslides
that clothed the hillside. The hill, which was honeycombed with graves,
enjoyed an evil reputation. Blue flames might be seen burning in the
old cemetery in the dusk of autumn nights, and the screech owls hooted
so shrilly and loudly in the chapel that even the blacksmith’s fearless
heart would quail when the cries of the accursed birds came to his ears.