Yanko the Musician and Other Stories E-Book

Henryk Sienkiewicz

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This is a collection of five short stories: “Yanko the Musician” (1878), “The Light-House Keeper of Aspinwall” (1881), “From the Diary of a Tutor in Poznan” (1880), “Comedy Errors: A Sketch of American Life” (1878) and “Bartek the Victor” (1882).

Leseprobe

Henryk Sienkiewicz

YANKO THE MUSICIAN AND OTHER STORIES

Translated by Jeremiah Curtin

Copyright

First published in 1879

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

YANKO THE MUSICIAN

It came into the world frail, weak. The gossips, who had gathered around the plank bed of the sick woman, shook their heads over mother and child. The wife of Simon the blacksmith, who was the wisest among them, began to console the sick woman.

“Let me,” said she, “light a blessed candle above you. Nothing will come of you, my gossip; you must prepare for the other world now and send for the priest to absolve you from your sins.”

“Yes!” said another, “but the boy must be christened this minute: he cannot wait for the priest. It is well even to stop him from becoming a vampire.”

So saying, she lighted the blessed candle, and taking the child sprinkled him with water till his eyes blinked; and then she said:

“I baptize thee in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I give thee Yan as name; and now, Christian soul, go to the place whence thou camest. Amen!” But the Christian soul had no wish whatever to go to the place whence it came and leave its lean little body. It began to kick with the legs of that body as far as it was able, and to cry, though so weakly and pitifully that, as the gossips said, “One would think’t is a kitten; ‘t is not a kitten — what is it?”

They sent for the priest; he came, he did his duty, he went his way — the sick woman grew better. In a week she went out to her work. The little boy barely “puled,” still, he pulled on till in the fourth year the cuckoo brought him sickness in spring; but, he recovered, and with some kind of health reached the tenth year of his life.

He was always lean and sunburnt, with bloated stomach and sunken cheeks; he had a forelock of hemp color almost white and falling over clear, staring eyes, which looked at the world as if gazing into some immense distance. In winter he used to sit behind the stove and cry silently from cold, and from hunger too, at times when his mother had nothing to put into the stove or the pot. During summer he went around in a shirt, with a strip of cloth for a belt, and a straw hat, from beneath the torn brim of which he looked with head peering upward like a bird. His mother, a poor lodger, living from day to day, like a sparrow under a stranger’s roof, loved him perhaps in her own way; but she flogged him often enough and called him “giddy-head” generally. In the eighth year of his life he went to herd cattle, or, when there was nothing to eat in the cottage, to the pine woods for mushrooms. It was through the compassion of God that a wolf did not eat him.

He was a very dull little fellow, and, like village children, when spoken to put his finger in his mouth. People did not even promise that he would grow up, and still less that his mother could expect any good from him, for he was a poor hand at work. It is unknown whence such a creature could have come; but he was eager for one thing, music. He listened to it everywhere, and when he had grown up a little he thought of nothing else. He would go to the woods for the cattle, or with a two-handled basket for berries, but would come home without berries and say, stammering:

“Mamma, something was playing in the woods. Oi!”

And the mother would say, “I’ll play for thee, never fear!”

And in fact she made music for him, sometimes with the poker. The boy screamed and promised that he would not do it again, and still he was thinking, “Something is playing out there in the woods.” What was it — did he know? Pines, beeches, golden orioles, all were playing — the whole forest was playing, and that was the end of it!

The echo, too! In the field the artemisia played for him; in the garden near, the sparrows twittered till the cherry-trees were trembling. In the evening he heard all the voices that were in the village and thought to himself that surely the whole village was playing. When they sent him to work to spread manure, even then the wind played on the fork-tines.

The overseer caught him once standing with disheveled forelock and listening to the wind on the wooden tines; he looked at the little fellow, unbuckled his own leather belt, and gave him a good keepsake. But what use in that? People called the boy “Yanko the musician.” In the springtime he ran away from the house to make whistles near the river. In the night, when the frogs were croaking, the land-rail calling in the meadows, the bittern screaming in the dew, the cocks crowing behind the wicker fences, he could not sleep — he did nothing but listen; and God alone knows what he heard in that playing. His mother could not take him to church, for as soon as the organ began to roar or the choir sang in sweet voices, the child’s eyes were covered with mist, and were as if not looking forth out of this world.

The village policeman who walked through the place at night and counted stars in the sky to keep from sleeping, or conversed in a low voice with the dogs, saw more than once the white shirt of Yanko stealing along in the dark toward the public house. But the boy was not going to the public house, only to a spot near it. There he would cower at the wall and listen. The people were dancing the obertas; at times some young fellow would cry, “U-ha!” The stamping of boots was heard; then the querying voices of girls, “What?” The fiddles sang in low tones, “We will eat, we will drink, we shall be merry,” and the bass viol accompanied in a deep voice, with importance, “As God gave! As God gave!” The windows were gleaming with life, and every beam in the house seemed to tremble, singing and playing also; but Yanko was listening.

How much would he give to have such a fiddle playing thinly, “We will eat, we will drink and be merry”! Such singing bits of wood! But from what place could he get them — where were they made? If someone would just let him hold such a thing in his hand even once! How could that be? He was only free to listen, and then to listen only till the voice of the watchman was heard behind him in the darkness:

“Wilt thou go home, little devil?”

Then he fled away home in his bare feet, but in the darkness behind him ran the voice of the fiddle, “We will eat, we will drink, we shall be merry,” and the deep voice of the bass, “As God gave! As God gave! As God gave!”

Whenever he could hear a fiddle at a harvest-home or some wedding, it was a great holiday for him. After that he went behind the stove and said nothing for whole days, looking like a cat in the dark with gleaming eyes. Then he made himself a fiddle out of a shingle and some horsehair, but it would not play beautifully like that one in the public house — it sounded low, very low, just like mice of some kind, or gnats. He played on it however from morning till evening; though for doing that he got so many cuffs that at last he looked like a pinched, unripe apple. But such was his nature. The poor child became thinner and thinner, only he had always a big stomach; his forelock grew thicker and thicker, and his eyes opened more and more widely, though filled oftener with tears; but his cheeks and his breast fell in more and more.

He was not like other children at all; he was rather like that shingle fiddle of his, which hardly made a noise. Besides, he was suffering from hunger before harvest, for he lived mainly on raw carrots, and the wish to have a fiddle. But that wish did not turn out well for Yanko.

At the mansion the lackey had a fiddle and he played on it sometimes at twilight to please the waiting-maid. Yanko crept up at times among the burdocks as far as the open door of the pantry to gaze at the fiddle. It hung on the wall opposite the door; the boy would send his whole soul out through his eyes to it, for it seemed to him that that was some unattainable object, which he was unworthy to touch, that that was some kind of dearest love of his. Still he wanted it. He would like to have it in his hand at least one time, to look at it nearby. The poor little fellow’s heart quivered with happiness at the thought.

A certain night there was no one in the pantry. Their lordships had been in foreign countries for some time, the house was empty, the lackey was at the other side with the waiting-maid. Yanko, lurking in the burdocks, had been looking for a long time through the broad door at the object of all his desires. The moon in the sky was full and shone in with sloping rays through the pantry window, which it reflected in the form of a great quadrangle on the opposite wall. The quadrangle approached the fiddle gradually and at last illuminated every bit of the instrument. At that time it seemed in the dark depth as if a silver light shone from the fiddle — especially the plump bends in it were lighted so strongly that Yanko could barely look at them. In that light everything was perfectly visible — the sides with incisions, the strings, and the bent handle. The pegs in it gleamed like fireflies, and at its side hung the bow which seemed a rod of silver.

Ah, all was beautiful and almost enchanted; and Yanko looked more and more greedily. He was crouched in the burdocks, with his elbows pressed on his lean knees; with open eyes he looked and looked. Now terror held him to the spot, now a certain unconquerable desire pushed him forward. Was that some enchantment, or what? But the fiddle in the bright light seemed sometimes to approach, as it were to float toward the boy. At times it grew darker, to shine up again still more. Enchantment, clearly enchantment! Then the breeze blew; the trees rustled quietly, there was a noise in the burdocks, and Yanko heard, as it were, distinctly:

“Go, Yanko, there is no one in the pantry; go, Yanko!”

The night was clear, bright. In the garden a nightingale began to sing and whistled with a low voice, then louder, “Go! go in! take it.” An honest wood-owl turned in flight around the child’s head, and cried, “Yanko, no! no!” The owl flew away, but the nightingale and the burdocks muttered more distinctly, “There is no one inside!” The fiddle shone again.

The poor little bent figure pushed forward slowly and carefully; meanwhile the nightingale was whistling in a very low voice, “Go! go in! take it!”

The white shirt appeared nearer and nearer to the pantry. The dark burdocks covered it no longer. On the threshold of the pantry was to be heard quick breathing from the weak breast of the child. A moment more the white shirt has vanished; there is only one naked foot outside the threshold. In vain, O wood-owl, dost thou fly once again and cry, “No! no!” Yanko is in the pantry.

The great frogs began to croak in the garden pond, as if frightened, but afterward grew silent. The nightingale ceased to sing, the burdocks to rustle. Meanwhile Yanko crept along silently and carefully, but all at once fear seized him. In the burdocks he felt at home, like a wild beast in a thicket; but now he was like a wild beast in a trap. His movements became hurried, his breath short and whistling; at the same time, darkness seized hold of him. A quiet summer lightning flashed between east and west, and lighted up once more the interior of the pantry, and Yanko on all fours with his head turned upward. But the lightning was quenched, a small cloud hid the moon, and nothing was to be seen or heard.

After a while a sound came out from the darkness, very low and complaining, as if someone had touched strings unguardedly, and on a sudden some rough, drowsy voice, coming out of the corner of the pantry, asked angrily:

“Who is there?”

Yanko held his breath in his breast, but the rude voice inquires again:

“Who is there?”

A match became visible on the wall; there was a light, and then — Oh, my God! curses, blows, the wailing of a child, and crying “Oh, for God’s sake!” — the barking of dogs, moving of lights behind the window, a noise through the whole building!

The next day Yanko stood before the tribunal of the village mayor.

Was he to be tried as a criminal? Of course! The mayor and councilmen looked at him as he stood before them with his finger in his mouth, with staring and terrified eyes, small, poor, starved, beaten, not knowing where he was or what they wanted of him. How judge such a poor little misery, who was ten years of age, and barely able to stand on his legs? Send him to prison — how help it? Still it was necessary to have some small mercy on children. Let the policeman take him and give him a flogging, so that he won’t steal a second time, and that’s the whole business.

It was indeed!

They called Stah, who was the village police.

“Take him and give him something for a keepsake.”

Stah nodded his dull beastlike head, thrust Yanko under his arm as he would a cat, and took him out to the barn. The child, whether he failed to understand what the question was, or whether he was frightened—’t is enough that he uttered not a syllable; he merely stared like a bird. Did he know what they were doing with him? Only when Stah took the handful to the stable, stretched it on the ground, and raising the shirt from it struck a full blow, only then did Yanko scream, “Mamma!” and as long as Stah flogged him he cried, “Mamma! mamma!” but always lower and weaker, until after a certain blow the child called mamma no longer.

The poor broken fiddle!

Ai, stupid, angry Stah, who beats children that way? Besides, this one is small and weak, hardly living.

The mother came, took the little boy, but she had to carry him home. The next day Yanko did not rise from the bed, and the third day, in the evening, he died quietly on the plank cot under hemp matting.

The swallows were twittering in the cherry-tree which grew at the cottage; the rays of the sun entered in through the window pane and colored with the brightness of gold the disheveled hair of the little boy and his face in which not one drop of blood remained. That ray was as it were a road upon which the soul of the boy was to go away. It was well that it went by a broad shining road in the moment of death, for during life it went on a thorny one, truly. Meanwhile the emaciated breast moved with another breath, and the face of the child was as if absorbed in listening to the sounds of the village which came in through the open window. It was evening, so the girls coming back from hay-making were singing, “Oi, on the green field!” and from the stream came the playing of pipes. Yanko listened for the last time to the sounds of the village. On the matting lay the shingle fiddle at his side.

All at once the face of the dying boy lighted up, and from his whitening lips came out the whisper “Mamma!”

“What, my son?” answered the mother, whom tears were choking.

“Mamma, will the Lord God give me a real fiddle in heaven?”

“He will, my son, He will give thee one,” answered the mother; but she could speak no longer, for suddenly in her hard breast burst the gathering sorrow, and groaning only, “O Jesus! O Jesus!” she fell with her face on a box and began to wail as if she had lost her reason, or as a man wails who sees that he cannot wrest the beloved one from death.

In fact, she did not wrest him; for when she raised herself again she looked at the child. The eyes of the little musician were open, it is true, but fixed; his face was very dignified, gloomy, and rigid. The ray of the sun had gone also.

Peace to thee, Yanko.

On the second day the master and mistress of the mansion returned to their residence from Italy, with their daughter and the cavalier who was paying court to her The cavalier said:

“Quel beau pays que l’Italie!”

“And what a people of artists! On est heureux de chercher là-has des talents et de les protéger,” added the young lady.

The birches were murmuring above Yanko.

THE LIGHT-HOUSE KEEPER OF ASPINWALL

Chapter 1

On a time it happened that the light-house keeper in Aspinwall, not far from Panama, disappeared without a trace. Since he disappeared during a storm, it was supposed that the ill-fated man went to the very edge of the small, rocky island on which the light-house stood, and was swept out by a wave. This supposition seemed the more likely as his boat was not found next day in its rocky niche. The place of light-house keeper had become vacant. It was necessary to fill this place at the earliest moment possible, since the light-house had no small significance for the local movement as well as for vessels going from New York to Panama. Mosquito Bay abounds in sandbars and banks. Among these navigation, even in the daytime, is difficult; but at night, especially with the fogs which are so frequent on those waters warmed by the sun of the tropics, it is nearly impossible. The only guide at that time for the numerous vessels is the light-house.

The task of finding a new keeper fell to the United States consul living in Panama, and this task was no small one: first, because it was absolutely necessary to find the man within twelve hours; second, the man must be unusually conscientious — it was not possible, of course, to take the first comer at random; finally, there was an utter lack of candidates. Life on a tower is uncommonly difficult, and by no means enticing to people of the South, who love idleness and the freedom of a vagrant life. That light-house keeper is almost a prisoner. He cannot leave his rocky island except on Sundays. A boat from Aspinwall brings him provisions and water once a day, and returns immediately; on the whole island, one acre in area, there is no inhabitant. The keeper lives in the light-house; he keeps it in order. During the day he gives signals by displaying flags of various colors to indicate changes of the barometer; in the evening he lights the lantern. This would be no great labor were it not that to reach the lantern at the summit of the tower he must pass over more than four hundred steep and very high steps; sometimes he must make this journey repeatedly during the day. In general, it is the life of a monk, and indeed more than that — the life of a hermit. It was not wonderful, therefore, that Mr. Isaac Falconbridge was in no small anxiety as to where he should find a permanent successor to the recent keeper; and it is easy to understand his joy when a successor announced himself most unexpectedly on that very day. He was a man already old, seventy years or more, but fresh, erect, with the movements and bearing of a soldier. His hair was perfectly white, his face as dark as that of a Creole; but, judging from his blue eyes, he did not belong to a people of the South. His face was somewhat downcast and sad, but honest. At the first glance he pleased Falconbridge. It remained only to examine him. Therefore the following conversation began:

“Where are you from?”

“I am a Pole.”

“Where have you worked up to this time?”

“In one place and another.”

“A light-house keeper should like to stay in one place.”

“I need rest.”

“Have you served? Have you testimonials of honorable government service?”

The old man drew from his bosom a piece of faded silk resembling a strip of an old flag, unwound it, and said: