King Stakh's Wild Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page B

the walls the wind kept howling. She shrugged her shoulders and said quietly:
    “A terrible land, terrible trees, terrible nights.”
    And again I saw that same expression on her face that I did not understand.
    “Tell me, they are large cities – Vilnia and Miensk?”
    “Rather large, but Moscow and Petersburg are larger.”
    “And there, too, the nights bring no comfort to people?”
    “Not at all. Lights burn in the windows, people laugh in the streets, on skating rings, under shining street lamps.”
    She became thoughtful.
    “That might be so over there. But here not a single light in the dark. Surrounding this old park by two miles on every side, lonely huts are asleep, sleeping without any lights. In this house there are about fifty rooms, many halls and passages with dark corners. It was built so long ago... And it is a cold house, for our ancestors forbade laying stoves, they allowed only fireplaces in order to be unlike their common neighbours. The fireplaces burn day and night, but even so there is dampness in the corners and cold everywhere. And in these fifty rooms there are only three people. The housekeeper sleeps on the ground floor and the watchman also. And in one of the wings behind the alleys and the park lives the cook and the washerwoman. They live well. And in the second annex to this house, with its separate entrance, lives my manager, Ihnat Bierman – Hatsevich. Whatever we need this manager for, I do not know, but such is the order of things. And in this house, on the entire first floor with its thirty rooms, I am the only one. And it is so uncomfortable here that I’d like to get into some corner, wrap myself up in my blanket as a child does, and sit there. Now for some reason or other it feels good and so quiet here as it has not been for two years, since the time my father died. And it is all the same to me now whether there are lights beyond these windows or not. You know, it is very good when there are people beside yourself...”
    She led me to my room. Her room was only two doors away, and when I had already opened the door, she said:
    “If old legends and traditions interest you, look for them in the library, in the bookcase for manuscripts. A volume of legends about our family must be there. And some other papers as well.”
    And then she added: “Thank you, Mr. Belaretsky.”
    I don’t know what she thanked me for, and I confess of not thinking about it much when I entered a small room without any door bolts, and put my candle on the table.
    There was a bed there as wide as the Koydanov Battlefield. Over the bed was an old canopy. On the floor a threadbare carpet that had properties of a wonderful piece of work. The bed, evidently, was made up with the help of a special stick, as they used to do two hundred years ago, and what a big stick it was. The stick stood near the bed. Besides the bed there were a chest of drawers, a high writing desk and a table. Nothing else.
    I undressed, lay down under a warm blanket, having put out the candle. And immediately beyond the window the black silhouettes of the trees appeared on a blue background, and sounds were heard, sounds evoking dreams.
    For some reason or other a feeling of abandonment overcame me to such a degree that I stretched out, drew my hands over my head and, almost beginning to laugh, so happy did I feel, I fell asleep, as if I had fallen into some kind of a dark abyss over a precipice. It seemed to me I was dreaming that someone was making short and careful steps along the hall, but I paid no attention to that, and as I slept in my dream I was glad that I was asleep.
    This was my first night and the only peaceful one in the house of the Yanovskys at Marsh Firs.
    The abandoned park, wild and blackened by age and moisture, was disturbed for many acres around, filled with the noise of an autumn rain.

CHAPTER TWO
    The following day was a usual grey day, one of those that often occur in Belarus in autumn. In the morning I did