A Terrible Vengeance

II

There was a soft light all over the earth: the moon had come up from behind the mountain. It covered the steep bank of the Dnieper as with a costly damask muslin, white as snow, and the shadows drew back further into the pine forest.

A boat, hollowed out of an oak tree, was floating in the Dnieper. Two young Cossacks were sitting in the bow; their black Cossack caps were cocked on one side; and the drops flew in all directions from their oars as sparks fly from a flint.

Why were the Cossacks not singing? Why were they not telling of the Polish priests who go about the Ukraine forcing the Cossack people to turn Catholic, or of the two days’ fight with the Tartars at the Salt Lake? How could they sing, how could they tell of gallant deeds? Their lord, Danilo, was deep in thought, and the sleeve of his crimson coat hung out of the boat and was dipped in the water; their mistress, Katerina, was softly rocking her child and keeping her eyes fixed upon it, while her beautiful gown was made wet by the spray which fell like fine gray dust.

Sweet it is to look from mid-Dnieper at the lofty mountains, at the broad meadows, at the green forests! Those mountains are not mountains; they end in peaks below, as above, and both under and above them lie the high heavens. Those forests on the hills are not forests: they are the hair that covers the shaggy head of the wood demon. Down below he washes his beard in the water, and under his beard and over his head lie the high heavens. Those meadows are not meadows: they are a green girdle encircling the round sky; and above and below the moon hovers over them.

Lord Danilo looks not about him; he looks at his young wife. “Why are you so deep in sadness, my young wife, my golden Katerina?”

“I am not deep in sadness, Danilo! I am full of dread at the strange tales of the sorcerer. They say when he was born he was terrible to look at… and not one of the children would play with him. Listen, Danilo, what dreadful things they say: he thought all were mocking him. If he met a man in the dark he thought that he opened his mouth and grinned at him; and next day they found that man dead. I marveled and was frightened hearing those tales,” said Katerina, taking out a kerchief and wiping the face of the sleeping child. The kerchief had been embroidered by her with leaves and fruits in red silk.

Lord Danilo said not a word, but looked into the darkness where far away beyond the forest there was the dark ridge of an earthen wall and beyond the wall rose an old castle. Three lines furrowed his brow; his left hand stroked his gallant mustaches.

“It is not that he is a sorcerer that is cause for fear,” he said, “but that he is here for some evil. What whim has brought him here? I have heard it said that the Poles mean to build a fort to cut off our way to the Dnieper Cossacks. That may be true…. I will scatter that devil’s nest if any rumor reaches me that he harbors our foes there. I will burn the old sorcerer so that even the crows will find nothing to peck at. And I think he lacks not store of gold and wealth of all kinds. It’s there the devil lives! If he has gold… We shall soon row by the crosses—that’s the graveyard! There lie his evil forefathers. I am told they were all ready to sell themselves to Satan for a brass coin—soul and threadbare coat and all. If truly he has gold, there is no time to lose: there is not always booty to be won in war….”

“I know what you are planning: my heart tells me no good will come from your meeting him. But you are breathing so hard, you are looking so fierce, your brows are knitted so angrily above your eyes…”

“Hold your tongue, woman!” said Danilo wrathfully. “If one has dealings with you, one will turn into a woman, oneself. You, give me a light for my pipe!” Here he turned to one of the rowers who, knocking some hot ash from his pipe, began putting it into his master’s. “She would scare me with the sorcerer!” Danilo went on. “A Cossack, thank God, fears neither devil nor Catholic priest. What should we come to if we listened to women? No good, should we, boys? The best wife for us is a pipe and a sharp sword!”

Katerina sat silent, looking down into the slumbering river; and the wind ruffled the water into eddies and all the Dnieper shimmered with silver like a wolf’s skin in the night.

The boat turned and hugged the wooded bank. A graveyard came into sight; tumbledown crosses stood huddled together. No guelder rose grows among them, no grass is green there; only the moon warms them from the heavenly heights.

“Do you hear the shouts? Someone is calling for our help!” said Danilo, turning to his oarsmen.

“We hear shouts, and they are coming from that bank,” the two young men cried together, pointing to the graveyard.

But all was still again. The boat turned, following the curve of the projecting bank. All at once the rowers dropped their oars and stared before them without moving. Danilo stopped too: a chill of horror surged through the Cossack’s veins.

A cross on one of the graves tottered and a withered corpse rose slowly up out of the earth. Its beard reached to its waist; the nails on its fingers were longer than the fingers themselves. It slowly raised its hands upward. Its face was all twisted and distorted. One could see it was suffering terrible torments. “I am stifling, stifling!” it moaned in a strange, inhuman voice. Its voice seemed to scrape on the heart like a knife, and suddenly it disappeared under the earth. Another cross tottered and again a dead body came forth, more frightening and taller than the one before; it was all hairy, with a beard to its knees and even longer claws. Still more terribly it shouted: “I am stifling!” and vanished into the earth. A third cross tottered, a third corpse appeared. It seemed like a skeleton rising from the earth; its beard reached to its heels; the nails on its fingers pierced the ground. Terribly it raised its hands toward the sky as though it would seize the moon, and shrieked as though someone were sawing its yellow bones….

The child asleep on Katerina’s lap screamed and woke up; the lady screamed too; the oarsmen let their caps fall in the river; even their master shuddered.

Suddenly it all vanished as though it had never been; but it was a long time before the rowers took up their oars again. Burulbash looked anxiously at his young wife who, panic-stricken, was rocking the screaming child in her arms; he pressed her to his heart and kissed her on the forehead.

“Fear not, Katerina! Look, there is nothing!” he said, pointing around. “It is the sorcerer who frightens people so that they will not break into his foul lair. He only scares women! Let me hold my son!”

With those words Danilo lifted up his son and kissed him. “Why, Ivan, you are not afraid of sorcerers, are you? Say: ‘No, Daddy, I’m a Cossack!’ Stop crying! soon we shall be home! Then Mother will give you your porridge, put you to bed in your cradle, and sing:

Lullaby, my little son,
Lullaby to sleep!
Play about and grow a man!
To the glory of the Cossacks
And destruction of our foes.

Listen, Katerina! It seems that your father will not live at peace with us. He was sullen, gloomy, as though angry, when he came…. If he doesn’t like it, why come? He would not drink to Cossack freedom! He has never fondled the child! At first I would have trusted him with all that lay in my heart, but I could not do it; the words stuck in my throat. No, he has not a Cossack heart! When Cossack hearts meet, they almost leap out of the breast to greet each other! Well, my friends, is the bank near? I will give you new caps. You, Stetsko, I will give one made of velvet and gold. I took it from a Tartar with his head; I got all his gear, too; I let nothing go but his soul. Well, here is land! Here, we are home, Ivan, but still you cry! Take him, Katerina…!”

They all got out. A thatched roof came into sight behind the mountain: it was Danilo’s ancestral home. Beyond it was another mountain, and then the open plain, and there you might travel a hundred miles and not see a single Cossack.