Taras Bulba

Andrew could hardly move with his sacks in the dark and narrow subterranean passage, through which he closely followed the Tartar. “We shall soon see our way,” said the guide; “we are near the place where I left my lamp.” A ray of light soon stole over the dark earthen wall. They reached a small square, which seemed to have been a chapel; at least a narrow table, like an altar, stood against the wall, and over it hung a Latin image of the Madonna, the painting of which had faded away and could hardly be traced. A email silver lamp, which hung before it, threw over it an uncertain light. The Tartar bent down and took up from the floor a brass candlestick, on a high thin foot, with snuffers, a nail for trimming the wick, and an extinguisher hung round it on chains. Taking up the candlestick, she lighted the candle at the lamp. The light grew brighter and they proceeded, lighted at one time by a blaze of the candle, at others enshrouded in a coal-black shadow, like the figures to be seen in the paintings of Girardo della Nette. The robust, fine features of Andrew, beaming with health and youth, offered a strong contrast to the emaciated pallid face of his companion. The passage had grown wider, so that Andrew could now hold himself erect. He looked with curiosity at the earthen walls. As in those of Kieff,¹ there were excavations, and coffins stood in them from distance to distance; at some places, even human bones were to be met with, grown soft by the dampness of the air and mouldered into powder. Here, too, seemed to have lived holy men, who had sought a refuge from the tempests of the world, from pain and temptation. At times the dampness was very perceptible, and sometimes they even had their feet in water. Andrew was often obliged to stop to give rest to his companion, whose lassitude immediately returned. A little morsel of bread which she had swallowed only caused pain to her stomach, which had become unaccustomed to food, and she often remained motionless for some minutes. At last they saw before them a small iron door. “Thanks be to Heaven! we are there!” said the Tartar in a fainting voice; she tried to raise her hand to knock and had not the strength to do it. Andrew, in her stead, gave a heavy blow on the door; it resounded with a rumbling noise, which indicated that there was a wide empty space behind the door, the sound changing its tones as if met by high arches. At length the door was opened; they were admitted by a monk, who stood on a narrow staircase with the key and a light in his hand. Andrew involuntarily stopped at the sight of a Latin monk, whose garb aroused the most bitter feelings of hatred and contempt in the Cossacks, who behaved towards them with still greater cruelty than towards the Jews. The monk also drew back a step at seeing a Zaporoghian Cossack. But a word indistinctly muttered by the Tartar quieted his fear. He shut the door after them, lighted them up the staircase, and they found themselves under the dark vaulted roof of the cloister church.

At one of the altars, decked with tapers in high candlesticks, knelt a priest in the attitude of prayer; on either side of him, also kneeling, were two young choristers, clad in violet mantles, with white lace capes, holding censers in their hands. The priest was imploring a miracle from Heaven: he prayed that God would preserve the city, strengthen the failing courage, send down patience and resignation to the hearts of the timid and pusillanimous, to support them under the misery He had sent. Some women, like so many phantoms, were on their knees, reclining and even drooping their heads on the backs of the stools and of the dark wooden benches before them. Some men, leaning against the columns which sustained the side arches, mournfully knelt also. A window with coloured glass, which was over the altar, was now lighted by the pink hue of morning, and from it fell, down upon the floor, blue, yellow, and variegated circles of light, which suddenly brightened the darkness of the church. The whole of the altar in its distant niche, seem drowned in light; the smoke of the incense hung in the air like a cloud beaming with all the hues of the rainbow. Andrew was fain to look from the dark corner where he was standing, on this remarkable phenomenon produced by light. At this moment the sublime pealing of the organ suddenly filled the whole of the church; it grew deeper and deeper, increased by degrees into the heavy rollings of thunder, and then, all at once, turning into a heavenly melody, sent up, higher and higher beneath the vaulted roof, its warbling notes, which recalled the delicate voices of maidens; then once more it changed into the deep bellow of thunder, and then it was silent; but the rollings of the thunder long after tremulously vibrated along the aisles, and Andrew with open mouth stood marvelling at the sublime music.

And now he felt somebody pull the skirt of his coat. “It is time,” said the Tartar. They went across the church without any one paying attention to them, and came out on the square which was in front of it. The dawn had long ago spread its rosy tint over the sky; everything showed that the sun was about to rise. There was nobody in the square; in the middle of it remained some tables, which showed that, not longer than perhaps a week before, there had here been a market of victuals. As pavements were not used in those times, the ground was nothing but dried mud. The square was surrounded by small stone and clay houses, one story high, with walls, in which might be seen from top to bottom, the wooden piles and pillars, across which projected the wooden beams: houses such as used to be built then, may till now be seen in some towns of Lithuania and Poland. Almost all of them were covered by disproportionately high roofs, pierced all over with numbers of dormer windows. On one side, almost next to the church, rising above the other buildings, was an edifice quite distinct from the others, which seemed to be the town-hall of the city, or some other public establishment. It was two stories high, and above it rose a two-arched belvidere, where stood a sentry; a large sun-dial was fixed in the roof. The square seemed dead; but Andrew thought he heard a faint moaning. Looking on the other side, he saw a group of two or three men, who were lying quite motionless on the ground. He looked more attentively, to see if they were asleep or dead, and at the same time his foot stumbled against something which lay in his way. It was the corpse of a woman, who seemed to have been a Jewess. Her figure bespoke her to have been still young, though the macerated disfigured outlines of her face did not show it. Her head was covered with a red silk handkerchief; a double row of pearls or beads adorned the coverings of her ears;² two or three curling locks fell from under them on her shrivelled neck, on which the tightly drawn veins showed like sinews. Beside her lay a child, whose hand convulsively grasped her lank breast and twisted it with his fingers, in vain anger at finding there no milk. The child had ceased weeping and crying, and the slow heaving of its chest alone showed that it was not yet dead or, at least, that its last breath was yet to be drawn. Andrew and his companion turned into a street, and were suddenly stopped by a frantic man, who, seeing the precious burthen of Andrew, flew at him like a tiger and grasped him in his arms, shrieking aloud for bread; but his strength was not equal to his frenzy. Andrew shook off his grasp, and he fell on the ground. Moved by compassion, he threw him a loaf; the other darted like a mad dog upon it, gnawed and bit it, and, at the same moment and on the very spot, died in horrible convulsions from long disuse of taking food. Almost at every step they were shocked by the sight of hideous victims of hunger. It seemed that many could not endure their sufferings in their houses, and had run out into the streets, as if in hope to find something strengthening in the open air. At the doorway of a house sat an old woman, and one could not tell whether she were dead, asleep, or swooning; at least, she neither heard nor saw anything, but, with her head bent down over her chest, sat motionless on the same spot. From the roof of another house there was hanging from a rope a stretched and dried corpse. The miserable man had not been able to endure to the last the sufferings of hunger, and had chosen rather to quicken his end by voluntary suicide.

At seeing such horrifying evidences of the famine, Andrew could not refrain from asking the Tartar, “Had they, indeed, found nothing to lengthen their lives? When man comes to the last extremity, when nothing more remains, well, then he must feed upon what, till then, had appeared disgusting to him; he may even feed upon animals forbidden by the law—everything is then to be used for food.”

“All is eaten up,” answered the Tartar; “thou wilt not find a horse, a dog—no, not even a mouse left in the town. We never kept any provisions in town; everything was brought from the country.”

“How, then, dying such fearful deaths, can they think of defending the town?”

“May be the voevoda would have surrendered it; but yesterday the colonel who garrisons Boodjiang sent a hawk into the town with a note saying not to surrender, as he is coming with his regiment to relieve it, and is only waiting for another colonel that they may come together. Now, we are expecting them every minute—but here we have reached the house.”

Andrew had already noticed from a distance a house unlike the others, and which seemed to have been built by an Italian architect; it was two stories high and constructed of fine thin bricks. The windows of the lower story were encompassed in lofty granite projections; the whole of the upper story consisted of arches, which formed a gallery; between the arches were to be seen gratings with armorial bearings; the corners of the house were also adorned with coats of arms. An external wide staircase, built with painted bricks, came down to the very square. Beneath the staircase were sitting two sentries, who picturesquely and symmetrically held with one hand a halberd, and leaned their heads on the other, more like statues than living beings. They neither slept nor slumbered, but seemed to have lost all feeling; they did not even pay any attention to those who went upstairs. At the top of the staircase Andrew and the Tartar found a soldier, clad from head to foot in a rich dress, who held a prayer-book in his hand. He raised his heavy eyes on them; but the Tartar whispered a word to him and he dropped them again on the open pages of his prayer-book. They entered the first room, which was tolerably spacious and seemed to be the hall for the reception of petitioners, or, perhaps, simply the ante-room; it was crowded with soldiers, servants, huntsmen, cup-bearers, and other officials whose presence was necessary to denote the rank of a high nobleman, and who were sitting in different postures along the walls. There was the smell of a candle which had burned down in its socket, and, although the morning light had long since peeped in at the railed windows, two more candles were burning in enormous candelabras almost the size of a man.

Andrew was already in the act of going towards a wide oaken door, adorned with a coat of arms and much carved work, when the Tartar pulled him by the sleeve and showed him a small door in the lateral wall. This door admitted them into a passage through which they passed into a room, which Andrew began to examine with attention. The daylight, coming through a hole in the window-shutter, fell upon a crimson drapery, upon a gilded cornice, and upon the wall covered with pictures. The Tartar made a sign to him to remain here, and went into an adjoining room from which came a ray of candlelight. He heard a whisper and a subdued voice which made him shudder. Through the door which now opened he caught a glimpse of a finely-shaped female figure with long luxuriant hair, which fell upon an uplifted arm. The Tartar returned and bade him enter. He could not account for how he entered or how the door closed behind him.

Two candles burned in the room, a lamp was lighted before an image, under which stood a high-backed chair (like those used by Papists), with steps for kneeling during prayer. But this was not what his eyes were in search of. He turned to another side, and saw a woman who seemed to have been suddenly petrified whilst in some rapid motion. All her figure appeared to betoken that she had been throwing herself forward towards him and had then suddenly stopped. He, too, stopped astonished; he could not have expected to meet her such as she now was; she was no longer the girl he had formerly known. Nothing remained of what she was before; but still she was twice as beautiful and handsome as she had been then. Then, there was something unfinished, something to be completed in her; now, she was like a picture to which the painter had given the last stroke of his brush. Then, she was a pretty giddy girl; now, she was a beauty, a woman who had attained the utmost development of her loveliness. Every feeling of her being was now expressed in her uplifted eyes—not one particular feeling or another—but all her feelings at once. Tears had not yet dried in her eyes, but covered them with a glittering moisture which it made the heart ache to behold. Her bust, her neck, and her shoulders now filled those splendid limits which are the dowry of a perfect beauty; her hair, which formerly curled in light ringlets round her face, now formed a thick luxuriant plait, part of which remained plaited, while the remainder hung down the whole length of her arm and fell over her bosom in long, thin, beautifully waving locks. Every outline of her features seemed to have undergone a change. Andrew tried in vain to find some of those which were pressing on his recollection; not one was to be found. Notwithstanding the extreme pallor of her face, her beauty was not lessened by it; but, on the contrary, seemed to gain something intrepid, and unconquerably victorious from it. Andrew felt his heart overflow with the tremor of adoration, and stood motionless before her. She seemed also to be astonished at the appearance of the Cossack, who stood before her in all the beauty and vigour of youthful manhood; even motionless, as they were, his limbs betrayed the freedom and elasticity of their action; his eyes shone with firmness; his velvet eyebrows made a bold curve; his sunburnt cheeks were covered with the brightness of fiery youth, and his young black mustachios had the gloss of silk.

“No, I cannot, by any means, thank thee enough, generous knight,” said she, and her silvery voice seemed to waver. “God in Heaven alone can repay thee! Not I, a weak woman!”

She cast her eyes down, hiding them beneath beautiful, snowy, semicircular eyelids, fringed with long arrow-like eyelashes; she bent her lovely face, and a fine rosy hue spread over it. Andrew knew not what to answer; he wished to tell her at once all that he had in his heart, to tell it as warmly as he felt it—but he could not. Something stopped his lips; even his voice failed him; he felt that he could not answer her words —he who had been brought up in the college and in migratory warfare; and he cursed his being a Cossack!

At this moment the Tartar came into the room. She had already cut the loaf brought by Andrew into slices, which she brought on a golden dish and set before her mistress. The lovely girl looked at her, at the bread, and lifted her eyes on Andrew: and much did those eyes express! That affecting look, which betrayed her sufferings and the impossibility of telling all the feelings which filled her bosom, was more easily understood by Andrew than any speech. He felt his heart lightened at once; he seemed to have at once lost all confusion, the motions and feelings of his soul which had till then appeared held in subjection by some heavy hand, now seemed to be set free, and uncontrollable streams of words ready to flow forth. But the young beauty turned abruptly towards the Tartar, and hastily asked, “And my mother? hast thou taken it to her?”

“She is asleep.”

“And to my father?”

“I have; he said that he would come himself to thank the knight.”

She took a piece of bread and raised it to her lips. Andrew looked at her with inexpressible delight as she broke it with her white fingers and began eating; but suddenly he remembered the man, driven to frenzy by hunger, who died before his eyes from swallowing a morsel of bread. He turned pale, and seizing her hand, shrieked, “Enough! eat no more! Thou hast not eaten for so long a time, bread may bring death to thee!” She let her hand fall directly, put the bread upon the dish and, like an obedient child, looked into his eyes. And could any words describe -but no; neither chisel, nor brush, nor even the loftiest and most powerful language can express what may sometimes be seen in the eyes of a maiden, or the delightful sensation of him who looks into such eyes.

“Queen!” cried Andrew, overwhelmed by his feelings; “what dost thou want? what dost thou wish? order me to it! Set me the task—the most impossible that ever was in the world. I will fly to accomplish it! Tell me to do what no man can do—I will do it! I will perish myself! Yes, that I will! And to perish for thee—I swear by the holy cross—will be sweet to me. No—but I shall never be able to say it—I have three farms, half of my father’s horses are mine; all the dowry of my mother; all that she has kept hidden even from him—all is mine! None of our Cossacks has now such arms as I have; for the hilt alone of my sabre they will give me the best herd of horses and three thousand sheep. All this I will renounce: I will throw it away: I will burn it: drown it if thou sayest but a word; nay, if thou only movest thy fine dark eyebrow! I know that my speech is foolish, that it is out of time, out of place; that I, who was brought up in the college and in the Ssiecha, shall never be able to speak like kings, like princes and like the best man among the noble knights. I see that thou art another creature of God unlike us, and that far below thee are all other noble maidens!”

With increasing astonishment, all ears, but not understanding a single word, did the maiden listen to the frank hearty speech which, like a mirror, reflected the young powerful soul, every word of which, spoken in a voice bounding straight from the bottom of the heart, was invested with power. She bent her beautiful face forward, threw over her back the troublesome locks, opened her lips, and remained looking at him a long time, then was about to speak; but she suddenly stopped, and recollected that another path had to be followed by the knight; that behind him stood his father and his kin, like so many harsh avengers; that terrible were the Zaporoghians who were besieging the city, every inhabitant of which was doomed to a cruel death —then suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She took her silk-embroidered handkerchief, threw it over her face, and in an instant it was moistened all over; and she remained a long time sitting with her beautiful head thrown back, with her pretty underlip compressed, as if she had felt the bite of some venomous reptile; and she kept her handkerchief over her face, so that he should not behold her overwhelming grief.

“Say but one word to me!” said Andrew, and he took hold of her satin-like arm. The touch made fire run through his veins, and he pressed her hand which lay insensible in his.

But she was silent; did not withdraw her handkerchief from her face, and remained motionless.

“Why art thou so sorrowful? tell me, why art thou so sorrowful?”

She flung away her handkerchief, threw back the locks which fell over her eyes and gave way to a burst of plaintive words, uttering them in a low voice. Thus, rising on a beautiful evening, does the breeze run through the dense stems of the water-weeds, and soft plaintive tones quiver, thrill, and melt away in the air, and the passing traveller, in unaccountable sadness, pauses without noticing either the evening which is fading away, or the gay songs of the people returning from the fields and their harvest labours.

“Do not I, then, deserve everlasting pity? Is not the mother who brought me into the world, unhappy? Is not the lot which has fallen to me sad? Art thou not merciless, my cruel fate? All men hast thou brought to my feet, the greatest of our nobility, the wealthiest lords, counts and foreign barons, and the very flower of our knighthood! All these sought my hand, and as a great boon, would any one of them have received my love. I had but to wave my hand, and the choicest of them all, the handsomest in person and the best in lineage, would have been my husband! But for none of them hast thou warmed my heart, merciless fate! in spite of the most accomplished knights of my country, thou hast given it to a foreigner, to one of our foes! Why, most holy Mother of God, for what sins of mine, for what heavy crimes dost thou subject me to such relentless, to such unsparing persecutions? My life was passed amidst affluence and luxury; the costliest viands, the richest wines were my food and my drink; and for what? to what result has it brought me? Is it, that I must die the most cruel death which even the poorest beggar in the kingdom is spared? Alas! it is not enough for me to be doomed to this most horrible fate; to see, before my end, how my father and my mother will die in insupportable sufferings—they, for whose welfare I would readily give up twenty times my own life—all this is not enough, but I must previously to my death hear words and see love such as I have never heard or seen before; my heart must be torn to pieces by his speech: that my bitter fate may be still bitterer to me: that I may regret still more my young life: that death may appear to me still more frightful: and that I may before dying still utter more reproaches to thee, my cruel fate, and thee (forgive my sin) most holy Mother of God!”

As she ceased speaking, an expression of hopelessness, of the most utter despair, spread over her features; every outline of them betokened sadness, and the brow bent down in sorrow, the downcast cast eyes, the tears which had remained and dried on her glowing cheeks, all appeared to tell that no happiness was there!

“Such a thing was never heard of: it cannot be: it shall not be,” exclaimed Andrew, “that the loveliest and best of women should be doomed to so bitter a lot, when she was born to see all that is best in the world worship her like a goddess. No—thou shalt not die; it is not thy lot to die; I swear, by my birth and by all that I love in the world, thou shalt not die! And if it should happen, if nothing, neither strength, nor prayer, nor courage can avert the dreadful fate, we will die together, and I will die first; I will die beneath thine eyes, at thy dear feet, and only when dead will I part with thee!”

“Do not deceive me and thyself, knight!” answered she, slowly shaking her fine head; “I know, and to my greatest sorrow do I know but too well, that thou canst not love me; I know, what thy duty, what thy covenant is: thy father, thy comrades, thy country call thee—and we are thy foes!”

“And what to me, are father, comrades, country?” said Andrew, tossing his head, and drawing up his stature to his full height, straight as the black poplar growing on the banks of a river: “if so—not one of them will I know! not one! not one!” repeated he with that voice, and peculiar motion of the hand, with which the mighty dauntless Cossack expresses his decision about something unheard of, and impossible for any one but himself. “Who has told me that Ukraine is my country? Who gave it to me for my country? Our native country is that for which our soul longs, which is dear to us above all other tilings! My native country—thou art it! This is my country! And I will carry this country in my heart as long as I live, and I shall see who of all the Cossacks will ever tear it thence! And all that I have, will I sell, resign, destroy, for this, my native country!”

At first she remained stupified and motionless, and, like a fine statue, gazed into his eyes; then, on a sudden, bursting into tears, she flung herself on his neck, caught him in her snow-white delicate arms, and sobbed aloud; all this she did with that marvellous womanly impetuosity, of which none is capable but inconsiderate generous woman, created for magnanimous impulses of the heart. At this moment, confused shouts, together with the sound of trumpets and kettle-drums were heard in the street. But Andrew heard them not, he only felt how her pretty lips diffused over his face the aromatic warmth of their breath, how her tears flowed in streams over his cheeks, and how, falling down from her head, her fragrant hair wrapped him in its dark and glossy silk.

At the same moment the Tartar ran into the room with the joyful exclamation, “Rescued! rescued!” cried she, beside herself with joy: “our own have come into the town; they have brought with them, bread, millet, flour, and Zaporoghian prisoners!” But neither of the two understood who “our own” were who had come into the town, what they had brought, or what they had to do with the Zaporoghians. Full of feelings not to be enjoyed on earth, Andrew impressed a kiss on her fragrant lips; they returned the kiss, and in that mutual, melting embrace each of them felt all that man can feel but once in his lifetime.

Then lost was the Cossack for ever! lost to all Cossack knighthood! Never again will he see the Ssiecha: the farms of his father: the church of God. Ukraine will never again see the bravest of her children who went forth for its defence. Old Tarass will tear from his head a lock of his grey hair, and curse the day and the hour when such a son was born to bring shame upon him!