Silence had arisen between them, disquieting, pregnant with hidden griefs, and heightened by the stifling sensation of misery. They would not look into each other’s eyes, nor talk; their words trailed off into plaints, their smiles faded and went out; in their looks flamed suppressed reproaches; in their pallid emaciated faces harsh feelings were to be read, and their minds burned with bitter resentment. Three weeks had passed since they had been turned from Boryna’s door: so many long days and nights, and they had every detail of the expulsion yet distinct in their memories. The injury was as fresh as ever, the stubborn sense of revolt as strong.
The fire was now burning merrily, and its warmth spread through the room, till the frost melted on the windowpanes, and the snow in the chinks outside the hut trickled down in water, while a little moisture oozed from the hard-beaten floor.
“Those Jews … are they coming?” she asked at length.
“They said they would.”
And again not one word more. Indeed, who should speak first? Should Hanka? … She, who durst not open her mouth, lest the gall that filled her heart should flow forth in spite of her!—Or Antek? What had he to say? That he was miserable? They both knew that. He never had been prone to make friends; and as to pouring out his heart, even to his own wife, he had no wish to do that! Besides, how could he speak, now that his soul was eaten up with hatred, and every memory made him writhe and clench his fists in such rage that he would willingly have vented it upon the whole village!
He now treasured no longer the sweet recollection of Yagna, any more than if he had never known her, than if he never had held in his arms the girl whom he now could tear in pieces.
And yet what he felt was not hatred. “Some women” (thus he thought of her) “are like stray dogs, always ready to follow anyone who offers a bigger morsel, or shakes a stick to be obeyed.” Even these thoughts were not very frequent: in presence of the avalanche of deadly wrongs done him by his father, he forgot hers. The old man was guilty of all: yes, it was his father—the villain, the tyrant, the thorn in his side that ever rankled deeper and more cruelly!—it was through him—through him!—that all had come to pass.
Every evil inflicted, every suffering that he had undergone in these days, was garnered up in his bosom, and formed a horrible rosary of pangs and tortures; but he incessantly told the beads in his mind, that his memory of them might be fresh.
Of his poverty he made little account. He was a stalwart fellow: needed but a roof over his head, and no more.
“Let my wife,” he thought, “see to the children.”—What stung him above all the rest was the utter injustice shown to him. This he felt, continually more inflamed, as the rubbed sting of a nettle. What! In but three weeks, all the hamlet had come to look upon him as though he were an unknown intruder. No one spoke to him, no one looked in at his door, nobody had even a word of kind greeting for him. He felt himself an outlaw.
Well, if they did not come, he was not the man to beg them. But neither would he hide in a corner—far less yield an inch of the way to any. If they cared to have a fight, why, then, let them have it! … But now, why was all this? Because he had fought his father?—Aha! was that unheard of in Lipka? Did not Joseph Vahnik fight his father every other day? Had not Staho Ploshka broken his father’s leg? And yet no one had a word of blame for either! No, it was only he they were shocked at. Of course: “Whom God favours, His saints favour too”; and Boryna was as a god in Lipka!
All that time, breathing only revenge and the thought of it, he had lived on in a fever of excitement. He did not take to work, lost thought of his poverty, forgot all about the morrow: broken down after the agony gone through, he merely crawled hither and thither—a self-tormentor everywhere. Now and again he would rise in the night, to go about and roam along the roads or crouch hidden in dark corners, dreaming of vengeance, and swearing that he would never forgive.
They took breakfast together without one word; and he sat with eyes of bewilderment, ruminating the past—thorny bitter provender, hard to chew!
By now the day was getting on, and the fire had gone out. A cold whitish light from the snows outside shone through the partly thawed panes: the chilly dismal glare lit up every nook and showed the room in all its wretched nakedness.
Heavens! By the side of such a hut,
