The History of Sigismund, Prince of Poland. Oscar Mandel
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“What you’ve just recited, are you pretending it’s in Hecataeus?”
“Where else, damn you? Do I have it from Layla?”
She had stopped singing and plucking her lute and was listening. Klotalski turned sharply to her. “Get out of here,” he shouted, “go back to work!”
“Don’t bark at Layla,” Sigismund cried out, “and listen closely to what the Greek has to say.”
Sigismund stood up from the bench, and leaning on the table with his two hands, his head close to that of Klotalski, he continued from memory: “‘No unjust taxes are extorted here from the people, the farmers own their land and eat when they are hungry, our artisans are honored and well paid, our kings are elected by the entire population, and those are the reasons we sing and dance; and I myself, king that I am, on the day our good Scythians name my successor, I shall mount my horse and become again the simple scout I was before they chose me for the throne.’ ”
During this speech, Klotalski had remained at first as though stunned; then he grew red with rage; his cheeks seemed to swell. At the last word, he struck the table with his fist so hard the bottles, glasses, and dishes danced, and he too stood up, nose to nose with Sigismund. “Damn God and Christ if you’re not lying!” he yelled, though at the same time he crossed himself because of his blasphemy.
Sigismund’s voice rose as high as the baron’s. “Nobody dares accuse me of lying,” he cried, and he would have tried to throttle Klotalski had not the Master of Peasant Discipline come running from the other table (followed by the soldiers) and struck Sigismund in the back with his whip.
Looking around, Sigismund saw that he must yield. He sat down again and brought his voice down to a growl. “Long live Hecataeus,” he brought out. “He will be my tutor when I become king. No more chains! As for you,” he said, turning around to face the Master, “I will have you cut into small pieces.”
The Master smirked and went back to the other table.
The altercation between the older and the younger man had not been the first one in their lives, far from it. But both calmed down as quickly as they flared up.
“Show me the book.”
Sigismund and his chain dragged back to the cave, whence he returned with the offending work.
“Open it where I placed the bone from the chicken I shared with Father Radim.”
Klotalski skimmed the famous fourteenth book. He shook his head. “This translation was made by a traitor. It is false. Don’t ever forget that a king is a king and a peasant is a peasant. The Holy Ghost was not elected by kings, and peasants will never elect kings. Enough.”
Sigismund’s voice became soft. “Klotalski.”
“Yes, my boy.”
“You must be somebody in the capital. A governor. A minister. Perhaps you are my father.”
“Alas, I have never been married,” said the tutor naively. “It’s one of my lifelong regrets.”
“So...who am I? Tell me this at any rate: do you know who I am?”
Telling the truth is commendable. Obeying the king is more so. Klotalski had to lie once more. His voice was now as soft as Sigismund’s. “I swear to you that I don’t know. And I’m not somebody, my lad. I’m only a minor provincial nobleman. I was chosen to guard and nurture you because they knew, up there in the capital, that I was covered in debts. Because of you, I’ve been able to repair my roof. So there you have your tyrant’s portrait.”
Part of this speech was no lie. Thanks to the king’s great obligation to the baron, the rain no longer penetrated Klotalski’s ancient castle. It penetrated, at any rate, much less.
An immense sadness took hold of Sigismund. “Birds, wolves, butterflies, fish, the river itself are free. Why am I, a being made in the likeness of God, highest in creation, why am I held by a chain? What have I done? What is my crime, other than that of having been born? But that’s a crime I share with all of you, and yet you are free!” And he gestured toward the other table, though he spoke too softly to be heard by the soldiers.
Tears came to Klotalski’s eyes. “Need I remind you, my poor child, that at the moment of your birth, a voice coming from Heaven, and countless prodigies on Earth, declared that, whoever you might be—the king’s son, a peasant’s baby, the offspring of a Jewish peddler, what do I know?—you were destined to inflict the most frightful calamities on Poland? I tremble when I remember that the king’s astrologers foretold, looking at the firmament, that you would make our monarch himself crawl at your feet. A clamor rose that you must instantly be killed. But Christian charity prevailed. The child was brought to these mountains. And that is all.”
“That is all,” repeated Sigismund softy, his cheeks in his two hands, weeping.
How often had he not heard this story! But he didn’t believe it. He, son of a peasant, a peddler! He who felt capable of defeating Alexander!
He dried his tears, but his voice continued soft—the voice that moved Klotalski more than what he heard when the young man bawled and menaced. “You were afraid to beget a monster, yet in chaining me to that cave you created that very monster. For that is what I am. Resentment and hatred fill my soul; they frighten me. The voice the king heard, Klotalski, was not divine. It was the voice of Hell. It tempted the king and he succumbed to it. Had that child been treated with love from the day of his birth, his virtues as a man would have driven the Devil to despair.”
I believe that Klotalski was about to reply that a good Christian has no business troubling himself with theological speculations, when, suddenly, the shrill blast of a trumpet put an end to the conversation. Neither man could guess that, from that moment, everything was going to change for Sigismund, everything was about to end, and was about to begin.
Let me go, ruffians, beasts, take your hands off me, leave me to going on my way!”
Such were the outcries of Agafya, a young woman I haven’t the time to describe to you just now because of the hubbub of her arrival. In unison with her, two of the king’s soldiers, who were holding her in their clutches, were yelling, “Shut your mouth, woman, you’re standing before the chief!” While behind them, another soldier was leading by its bridle a large horse, the kind one imagines more readily hauling a barge along a canal than prancing in the Viennese ring of the Habsburg. The poor horse was adding to the confusion by neighing his distress with all the might of his humble lungs. The young woman, on her side, who is more easily imagined at the tiller of that same barge, pipe beween her lips, than sipping a chocolate at a Habsburg afternoon, kept screaming, struggling, and babbling in broken Polish. Sigismund and all the others looked properly amazed, as did Layla, who came running, a kitchen towel in her hand.
In a few seconds, Klotalski took hold of himself. “Silence, woman, peace,” he shouted, “and you, soldiers, give me a full report.”
“My lord,” said one of the men, “this here prisoner was comin’ down the mountain like somebody what wishes to see us. We pulled her off her nag—specially Kristof here who is the strongest, because the woman’s a fighter, no joke! and so we brung her to you, and here’s the knife that was tucked in her belt.”
While the soldier was telling his story, Agafya twisted and wriggled and yelled, while now and then turning around to blow a reassuring kiss toward her horse. But how can I describe all this aloud, one event after the other, when five or six things were happening at the same time? I would draw a picture if I knew how!
I may as well interrupt this turmoil to tell you that