Iermola. Józef Ignacy Kraszewski

by his fellow-citizens. The frequent communications which he has with the dwors, the efforts he makes to possess himself of the secrets of his trade, the consciousness of being a necessary man,--a sort of axle in the social mechanism which surrounds him,--contributes to arouse in him feelings which, even if absurd, are manifested in other spheres and under other skies than those of our Polesia.

      In this country vast green forests form the frame and horizon of each landscape. As we pass along we come to an occasional clearing; there a pond glitters, or a slow, deep river runs; there damp marshes stagnate eternally, and meadows grow green, half buried under rushes. Farther on rise the roofs of huts blackened by the everlasting smoke. The Horyn, like a rich silver girdle, surrounds this sleeping country with its sparkling waters, which enrich and fertilize it; almost all the small towns of this region are grouped along the river shore.

      In other countries the name of town is not given to such miserable, straggling villages; but in Polesia any assemblage of houses among which may be found an inn, a Catholic chapel, a cerkiew (Russian church), a market-place, and above all two or three Jews, is called a town.

      The number of Israelites dwelling in a small town constitutes its wealth; the more of them, the richer it is considered. In each of these little capitals one encounters a Boruch, a Zelman, an Abram, or a Majorko, who trades in everything; who furnishes to each person whatever he desires, from a coat of lamb-skin to a gold watch; who buys wheat and grists of corn, keeps an inn, sells rum, tobacco, pipes, and sugar, and is acquainted with the whole history and condition of all the gentlemen in the neighbourhood, numbers of whose notes and receipts he has in his portfolio. The great storehouse situated on the market-place supplies the general needs of the poor villagers, who find there pots, girdles, bonnets, iron, salt, tar, etc.; besides, there are two or three little shops containing stuffs and haberdashery and a few groceries, and that is all. The entire little town is nourished, clothed, and subsists by means of the activity of the Jews who are its soul. The cultivation of the soil, it is true, which is carried on by the inhabitants of the towns, according to the ancient Slavic custom, also furnishes other supplies.

      A few poor gentlemen, one or two functionaries poorer still, the curate, the Russian priest, and the employees of the dwor compose almost all the population. During the week the town seems deserted; only the Jewish children run about the streets playing at quoits and skittles. The chickens, goats, and cows wander peaceably through the market-place. But on Sunday it is almost impossible to pass on the square, there are so many riding horses, so many wagons laden with wood and fodder, and so brisk is the trade going on in all sorts of produce. And when once a year the day of the town holiday comes, then there are all sorts of noises, and a crowd, and a fair. Then the pedlers arrive with their little wagons, and display their bundles of merchandise upon the square. The Jew hatter hangs from long poles planted along the wall the bonnets and hats of his own manufacture; the Gypsy horse-doctor appears; hand-organs abound; and the crowd increases every moment. All the land-holders of the neighbouring parishes also come with their wives; the stewards and managers, the poor gentry who own only one field, the villagers who wish to get rid of any surplus commodity or useless provision, such as leather, wool, cloth, or linen,--all are there.

      It is a pleasure to see, and a delight to hear, the noise and commotion with which business is carried on. On the square every few moments some of the men conclude a bargain and go off to the inn to confirm the agreement by emptying a pint mug; the old women venders of onions, garlic, tobacco, girdles, and red ribbons pick up as many big coppers as they want. The day after the fair, and even for many succeeding days, unless a good rain storm washes out the numberless traces, one would divine at first glance what had taken place. Possibly the pools of the blood of slaughtered goats and sheep which are drying and blackening on the ground might even suggest that some dark crime had been enacted.

      But with the exception of this one day of bustle and gayety, the whole country reposes during the entire year in that state of sweet torpor and melancholy silence which is the normal condition of its daily life. Man always absorbs, more or less voluntarily, the external influences to which he is exposed. We are, in the scale of universal order, like the caterpillar who clothes himself with a green robe while living on the leaves of a tree, and with gorgeous attire when his food is the heart of its purple fruit.

      In a country fast asleep, like Polesia, where the murmur of the venerable trees lulls the thin grass and the rushes on the marshes, where peace and torpor is inhaled with the heavy air,--damp, and filled with resinous vapours,--the inhabitants, with their growth, feel the blood flow more and more slowly in their veins; thoughts arise more and more slowly in their minds, and man, thus quieted and softened, desires only repose, trembles at the idea of a sterner and more active destiny, and clings like a mushroom to the soft, damp earth.

      The peasants at about forty years of age have long beards like old men; the nobles at that age cease to wear coats, wrap themselves in dressing-gowns, allow their mustaches to grow at will, and to the end of their lives, if they have wives and children, never again go out of their houses. As for the old bachelors of the same age, they begin then to consider that the sole result of marriage is inconvenience and useless subjection.

      There is but little visiting, although generally there is much cordiality between the land-holders; but in summer it is too warm, in winter it is too cold; in the autumn the mud and wind are disagreeable, and in the spring there are the gnats. If ever one of them determines to overcome his laziness, it is only on the occasion of a feast at the house of an esteemed neighbour or in case of inevitable necessity. As, however, it is not possible to live without some news, and some intellectual intercourse, the Jew who owns the inn of the town undertakes to retail the one and furnish the other. He comes at the slightest call, or naturally in virtue of his ordinary occupations; he stops at the door and begins at once to give an account of what he has heard during the week, either in his excursions through the neighbourhood or from the peasants who come to the mill or to the blacksmith's shop. Generally the amount of his information consists in being able to tell who has sown, who has harvested, who has sold, who has gone on a journey, how much money the one has received and why the other has departed. But this scanty supply of news feeds the curiosity of the noble for a time, amuses him or wearies him, makes him gloomy, irritates him, and sometimes even suffices to drag him out of his house.

      Let us not therefore seek in this country any modern innovations, any enterprise or invention of the day; they would be greeted here only by incredulity, distrust, and dislike. Everything is done in an old-fashioned way; and if one should seek for the living tradition, perfect and entire, of the life of past times, he will find it nowhere in such perfection as here. The noble has the same respect for old customs as the peasant; and if outwardly he laughs at them, in the bottom of his heart he renders them homage, because with his blood and his milk, with his eyes and his ears, he has absorbed them from his infancy.

      Thus it happens that in places where once rose a castle, and where now a new dwor stands in its place, the site of the new edifice retains the old name, and the peasants who haul wood for the proprietor still say that they are taking it to the castle. The spot once occupied by an ancient cerkiew is perhaps now a potato field, but the gardens of the proprietor are none the less called the monastery. At the cross-roads in the forest, where the foot-paths meet, a grave dug ages ago has disappeared under the grass so that no trace of it remains; the wooden cross has fallen and rotted in the sod, and may be traced in the thick green grass which alone marks the spot where the soil has been enriched by the decayed body. Still, not a peasant passes that way without throwing, according to Pagan custom, a stone or a broken branch upon the spot. Everything that has lived in this country lives there still. The legend of the founding of a colony whose limits were traced by a pair of black bulls whose privilege it was to preserve the future city from infection and diseases common to cattle; the story of the prince who drowned himself in a pond; the narrative of the Tartar invasion; the sad fate of the two brothers in love with the same young girl, on whose account they killed each other in single combat, and who afterward, in despair, hung herself on their tomb,--all these survive.

      The same songs have been sung for a thousand years; the same customs continue to prevail; and all are faithful to them as to an engagement sacredly entered into with their ancestors.