Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

As often happens in the very last moments of life and at other crucial points in human experience, she felt and foresaw in an instant a multitude of thoughts and feelings, while not yet grasping her misfortune or believing in it. Her first feeling was one long familiar to her – the feeling of wounded pride at the sight of her hero-husband, humiliated before these coarse, bestial men who now had him in their power. ‘How dare they hold him, the very best of men, in their power!’ Her second feeling, which swept over her almost at the same time as the first, was an awareness of the disaster which was now complete. And this consciousness of disaster revived in her the memory of the chief disaster of her life, the death of her children. And now once again the question came to her: what for? why had her children been taken away? The question ‘Why have my children been taken away?’ called forth a further question: Why was her beloved, the best of men, her husband, now in torment, now being destroyed? What for? And then she remembered that a shameful punishment awaited him, and that she, she alone, was to blame.

‘What is your relation to this man? Is this man your husband?’ repeated the chief of police.

‘What for, what for?!’ she screamed out, and bursting into hysterical laughter she collapsed on to the box, which had been removed from the tarantass and was standing on the ground nearby. Her whole body shaking with sobs and with tears streaming down her face, Ludwika went up to her.

‘Panienka,¹¹ my dearest Panienka! Jak Boga kokham,¹² nothing will happen to you, nothing will happen!’ she said, distractedly running her hands over her mistress.

Migurski was handcuffed and led out of the inn yard. Seeing what was happening, Albina ran after him.

‘Forgive me, forgive me!’ she cried. ‘It is all my fault, I alone am to blame!’

‘They’ll sort out who is to blame in court. And I’ve no doubt the case will involve you,’ said the chief of police, pushing her out of the way.

They led Migurski down to the river crossing and Albina, not knowing herself why she was doing so, followed him and refused to listen to Ludwika’s advice.

All this time the Cossack Danilo Lifanov was standing leaning against a wheel of the tarantass and glaring angrily now at the chief of police, now at Albina, and now at his own feet.

When Migurski had been led away Trezorka, now left alone, wagged his tail and began to fawn on him. The Cossack had grown used to the dog during the journey. Suddenly he pulled himself upright, tore his cap from his head and hurled it with all his strength on to the ground, pushed Trezorka away from him with his foot, and went into the eating-house. Once inside he ordered vodka and drank solidly for a day and a night, drinking away all the money he had on him and everything he had with him, and only on the next night, when he woke up in a ditch, was he able to stop thinking about the question which had been tormenting him: why had he done it, informing the authorities about the little Polish woman’s husband in the box?

Migurski was tried and sentenced to run the gauntlet of a thousand rods. His relatives and Wanda, who had connections in St Petersburg, managed after much trouble to obtain a mitigation of the punishment, and instead he was sent into permanent exile in Siberia. Albina travelled after him.

And Tsar Nicholas Pavlovich rejoiced that he had crushed the hydra of revolution not only in Poland, but throughout Europe, and took pride in the fact that he had not betrayed the ordinances of the Russian autocracy, but for the good of the Russian people had kept Poland in Russia’s power. And men wearing decorations and gilt uniforms lauded him for this to such an extent, that when he came to die he sincerely believed that he was a great man and that his life had been a great blessing for humanity in general and for Russians in particular, those Russians to whose corruption and stupefaction he had unwittingly directed all his powers.

¹ The Rzecz Pospolita, instituted in 1569 by King Sigismund II Augustus, last of the Jagellon dynasty.

² Representative assembly, Diet.

³ Polish aristocracy.

⁴ Literally: ‘to hold the sweetmeat high’ – i.e. to put him through his paces first.

⁵ Victory to the Poles, destruction to the Muscovites! Hurrah!

⁶ A Polish man’s hat with a square base and a tassel on top.

⁷ Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy great mercy.

⁸ As I love my mother.

⁹ Couriers or special messengers.

¹⁰ A settlement inhabited by descendants of the Streltsy (archers), a state security force established by Ivan the Terrible and disbanded by Peter the Great (1708).

¹¹ Diminutive of ‘pani’ (mistress).

¹² As I love God.

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