Makar's Dream, and Other Stories

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

I

The forest was murmuring.

There was always a murmuring in this forest, long-drawn, monotonous, like the undertones of a distant bell, like a faint song without words, like vague memories of the past. There was always a murmuring in the forest because it was a dense wood of ancient pines, untouched as yet by the axe and saw of the timber merchant. The tall, century-old trees with their mighty red-brown trunks stood in frowning ranks, proudly thrusting their green, interwoven tops aloft. The air under them was still and sweet with resin; bright ferns pierced the carpet of needles with which the ground was clothed, and superbly displayed their motionless, fringed foliage. Tall, green grass-blades had shot upward in the moist places, and there, too, white clover-heads drooped heavily, as if overcome with gentle languor. And always overhead, without a pause and without an end, droned the voice of the forest, the low sighing of the ancient pines.

But now these sighs had grown deeper and louder. I was riding along a woodland path, and although the sky was invisible, I knew, under the darkly frowning trees, that a storm was gathering overhead. The hour was late. A few last rays of sunlight were still filtering in here and there between the tree-trunks, but misty shadows had already begun to gather in the thickets. A thunder-storm was brewing for the night. I was forced to abandon all idea of continuing the chase that day, and could only think of reaching a night’s lodging before the storm broke. My horse struck his hoof against a bare root, snorted, and pricked his ears, harkening to the muffled impacts of the forest echo. Then of his own accord he turned his steps into the well-known path that led to the hut of the forest guard.

A dog barked. White plastered walls gleamed among the thinning tree-trunks, a blue wisp of smoke appeared, curling upward under the overshadowing branches, and a lop-sided cottage with a dilapidated roof stood before me, sheltering under a wall of ruddy tree-trunks. It seemed to have sunk down upon the ground, while the proud graceful pines nodded their heads, high, high above it. In the centre of the clearing stood two oak trees, huddling close to one another.

Here lived the foresters Zakhar and Maksim, the invariable companions of my hunting expeditions. But now they were evidently away from home, for no one came out of the house at the barking of the great collie. Only their old grandfather with his bald head and his grey whiskers was sitting on a bench outside the door, braiding shoes of bast. The old man’s beard swept almost to his belt; his eyes were vague as if he were trying in vain to remember something.

“Good evening, daddy! Is any one at home?”

“Eh, hey,” mumbled the old man, shaking his head; “neither Zakhar nor Maksim is here and Motria has gone into the wood for the cow. The cow has run away; perhaps the bears have eaten her. And so there is no one in the cottage.”

“Well, well, never mind. I’ll sit here with you and wait.”

“Yes, sit down and wait!” the old man nodded, and watched me with dim, watery eyes as I tied my horse to the branch of one of the oaks. The old man was failing fast. He was nearly blind and his hands trembled.

“And who are you, lad?” he asked, as I sat down on the bench.

I was accustomed to hearing this question at every visit.

“Eh, hey; now I know, now I know,” said the old man, resuming his work on the shoe. “My old head is like a sieve; nothing stays in it now. I remember people who died a long time ago, oh, I remember them well! But I forget new people. I have lived in this world a long time.”

“Have you lived in this forest long, daddy?”

“Eh, hey; a long time! When the Frenchmen came into the Tsar’s country I was here.”

“You have seen much in your day. You must have many stories to tell.”

The old man looked at me with surprise.

“And what would I have seen, lad? I have seen the forest. The forest murmurs night and day, winter and summer. One hundred years have I lived in this forest like that tree there without heeding the passage of time. And now I must go to my grave, and sometimes I can’t tell, myself, whether I have lived in this world or not. Eh, hey; yes, yes. Perhaps, after all, I have not lived at all.”

A corner of the dark cloud moved out over the clearing from behind the close-growing tree-tops, and the pines that stood about the clearing rocked in the first gusts of wind. The murmur of the forest swelled into a great resonant chord. The old man raised his head and listened.

“A storm is coming,” he said after a pause. “I know. Oi, oi! A storm will howl to-night, and will break the pines and tear them up by the roots. The Master of the forest will come out.”

“How do you know that, daddy?”

“Eh, hey; I know it! I know what the trees are saying. Trees know what fear is as well as we do. There’s the aspen, a worthless tree that’s always getting broken to pieces. It trembles even when there is no wind. The pines in the forest sing and play, but if the wind rises ever so little they raise their voices and groan. This is nothing yet. There, listen to that! Although my eyes see badly, my ears can hear: that was an oak tree rustling. The oaks have been touched in the clearing. The storm is coming.”

And, as a matter of fact, the pair of low, gnarled oak trees that stood in the centre of the clearing, protected by the high wall of the forest, now waved their strong branches and gave forth a muffled rustling easily distinguishable from the clear, resonant notes of the pines.

“Eh, hey; do you hear that, lad?” asked the old man with a childishly cunning smile. “When the oak trees mutter like that, it means that the Master is coming out at night to break them. But no, he won’t break them! The oak is a strong tree, too strong even for the Master. Yes indeed!”

“What Master, daddy? You say yourself it is the storm that breaks them.”

The old man nodded his head with a crafty look.

“Eh, hey; I know that! They tell me there are some people in the world these days who don’t believe in anything. Yes indeed! But I have seen him as plainly as I see you now, and better, because my eyes are old now, and they were young then. Oi, oi! How well I could see when I was young!”

“When did you see him, daddy? Tell me, do!”

“It was an evening just like this. The pines began to groan in the forest. First they sang and then they groaned: oh-ah-o-oh-a-h! And then they stopped, and then they began again louder and more pitifully than ever. Eh, hey; they groaned because they knew that the Master would throw down many of them that night! And then the oak trees began to talk. And toward evening things grew worse until he came whirling along with the night. He ran through the forest laughing and crying, dancing and spinning, and always swooping down on those oak trees and trying to tear them up by the roots. And once in the Autumn I looked out of the window, and he didn’t like that. He came rushing up to the window and, bang-bang, he broke it with a pine knot. He nearly hit my face, bad luck to him! But I’m no fool. I jumped back. Eh, hey; lad, that’s the sort of a quarrelsome fellow he is!”

“But what does he look like?”

“He looks exactly like an old willow tree in a marsh. Just exactly! His hair is like dry mistletoe on a tree, and his beard too; but his nose is like a big fat pine knot and his mouth is as twisted as if it were all overgrown with lichen. Bah, how ugly he is! God pity any Christian that looks like him! Yes indeed! I saw him once quite close, in a swamp. If you’ll come here in the winter you can see him for yourself. You must go in that direction, up that hill—it is covered with woods—and climb to the very top of the highest tree. He can sometimes be seen from there racing along over the tree-tops, carrying a white staff in his hand, and whirling, whirling until he whirls down the hill into the valley. Then he runs away and disappears into the forest. Eh, hey! And wherever he steps he leaves a foot-print of white snow. If you don’t believe an old man come and see for yourself.”

The old man babbled on; the excited, anxious voices of the forest and the impending storm seemed to have set his old blood racing. The aged gaffer laughed and blinked his faded eyes.

But suddenly a shadow flitted across his high, wrinkled forehead. He nudged me with his elbow and said with a mysterious look:

“Let me tell you something, lad. Of course the Master of the forest is a worthless, good-for-nothing creature, that is true. It disgusts a Christian to see an ugly face like his, but let me tell you the truth about him: he never does any one any harm. He plays jokes on people, of course, but as for hurting them, he never would do that!”

“But you said yourself, daddy, that he tried to hit you with a pine knot.”

“Eh, hey; he tried to! But he was angry then because I was looking at him through the window; yes indeed! But if you don’t go poking your nose into his affairs he’ll never play you a dirty trick. That’s what he’s like. Worse things have been done by men than by him in this forest. Eh, hey; they have indeed!”

The old man’s head dropped forward on to his breast and he sat silent for several minutes. Then he looked at me, and a ray of awakening memory seemed to gleam through the film that fogged his eyes.

“I’ll tell you an old story of our forest, lad. It happened here in this very place, a long, long time ago. Almost always I remember it as in a dream. But when the forest begins to talk more loudly, I remember it well. Shall I tell it to you?”

“Yes, do, daddy! Tell me!”

“Very well, I’ll tell you; eh, hey! Listen!”