Makar's Dream, and Other Stories

by Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko

Nevertheless, there came a day when dissension broke out among the company roosting under the roof of those hoary ruins. Then it was that old Yanush, who had once been one of the Count’s smaller “officials,” prepared a sort of gubernatorial manifesto for himself and seized the reins of power. He set himself to reorganise things, and for several days such a hubbub ensued and such cries arose on the island that it seemed at times as if the Turks had torn themselves from their prison underground in order to avenge themselves upon their Polish tyrants. This Yanush sorted out the inhabitants of the ruins, dividing the sheep from the goats. The sheep, who remained in the castle as before, helped him to expel the unhappy goats, who were stubborn and put up a desperate but ineffectual resistance. When, at last, with the silent but no less effective coöperation of the policeman, order was once more restored on the island it appeared that the change effected had been distinctly aristocratic in character. Yanush had allowed only “good Christians,” that is, Roman Catholics, to remain in the castle, and, besides this, most of them were either former servants or descendants of servants of the Count’s family. They were all either old men in long, tattered cloaks with huge red noses, or hideous, scolding hags who still clung, in the last stages of destitution, to their caps and mantles. They formed a homogeneous, closely united, aristocratic circle that had established, as it were, a monopoly in the trade of beggary. On week-days these old dames and gaffers would go with prayers on their lips from house to house of the more prosperous townspeople, carrying gossip, complaining of their hard lot, and pouring forth tears and supplications; but on Sundays they would appear as the most honoured members of those long lines that, in Western Russia, extend from the doors of Roman Catholic churches. There they would proudly accept offerings in the name of the “Lord Jesus” and the “Lady Mother of God.”

Attracted by the uproar and shouts that came to us from the island during the revolution, I betook myself thither with a few of my companions, and, hiding behind the thick trunks of the poplars, we watched Yanush at the head of an army of red-nosed dotards and unsightly shrews drive out the last inhabitants of the castle that were liable to expulsion. Evening fell. Drops of rain were already falling from a cloud that was hanging over the high summits of the poplars. A few unhappy wretches, wrapping their impossibly tattered rags about them, still lingered about the island, piteous, confused, and scared, and, like toads that have been poked out of their holes by boys, tried to crawl back unnoticed into some cranny of the castle wall. But Yanush and the beldames drove them away with curses and cries, threatening them with sticks and pitchforks, while the silent policeman stood by, also grasping a stout oaken cudgel, and preserving an armed neutrality, although he plainly favoured the conquering party. So this unhappy riffraff disappeared grumbling over the bridge, leaving the island forever, until one by one they were swallowed up in the rainy darkness of the rapidly falling night.

After that memorable evening both Yanush and the old castle, which had both, until then, impressed me with their vague grandeur, lost all their attraction in my eyes. Before that night I had liked to cross over to the island and to contemplate the grey castle walls and mossy roof, even from afar. When the motley figures of its inmates crawled out into the brightness of morning, yawning, coughing, and crossing themselves in the sunlight, I had looked upon them with a sort of reverence, as upon creatures clothed in the same mystery that surrounded the whole castle. “They sleep there at night,” thought I; “they hear everything that happens when the moon looks in at the broken windows and the wind howls through the great halls.” I had loved to listen to Yanush, when, with all the loquacity of seventy years, he had taken his seat beneath a poplar tree and told me tales of the glorious past of the dying building. Images of this past would rise before my childish imagination, and there would be wafted into my heart a solemn melancholy and a vague sympathy for the life lived here of old inside these dismal walls. Romantic shades of an antiquity unknown to me would flit across my young soul as the light shadows of clouds flit across a bright field on a windy day.

But after that evening the castle and its bard appeared to me in a new light. Meeting me the following day near the island, Yanush called me to him and assured me with satisfaction that “the son of such honoured parents as mine” could now boldly visit the island, as he would find an absolutely orderly population upon it. He even led me by the hand up to the very castle, but I snatched my hand out of his almost in tears, and ran away as fast as my legs could carry me; the castle had become odious to me. The windows of the upper story had been boarded up, while the lower floor was ruled over by the “mantles and caps.” The old women crawled out, looking so unattractive, fawning upon me so mawkishly, and at the same time scolding one another so loudly that I honestly wondered how the old Count who was wont to discipline his Turks on stormy nights could stand having these old crones so near him. But chiefly I could not forget the cold ruthlessness with which the triumphant inhabitants of the castle had driven away their unfortunate fellow-inmates, and my heart contracted at the remembrance of the poor creatures left without a roof over their heads.

However this may be, the old castle taught me for the first time the great fact that, from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. That which was sublime in the castle was all overgrown with convolvulus and ivy, and that which was ridiculous was revolting to me, and wounded my childish susceptibility too keenly for me to feel the irony of the contrast; this was still inaccessible to me.

II

QUEER CHARACTERS

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.