[Zbyszek]

III

But the awakening came.
One day after the boat had brought water and a stock of provisions, Skawinski, coming down an hour later from the tower, saw that besides the ordinary load there was another packet. On the outer cover of the packet there were United States postage stamps, and the address, ⌠Skawinski Esq.,■ written clearly on the rough canvas and saw books. He took one in his hand, looked, and laid it down again. Then his hands began trembling violently. He shaded his eyes, as though he could not trust them; he though he was dreaming; the book was Polish. What could this mean ? Who could have sent the book to him ? At the moment he had forgotten that quite at the beginning of his career in the lighthouse he had read one day in a Herald, borrowed from the consul, of the foundation of a Polish Society in New York, and that he had immediately sent the society half of his monthly salary, for which as a matter of fact he had no use in the tower. The society had sent him the books as a token of gratitude. They had come in a natural way, but at the first moment the old man could not grasp this idea. Polish books in Aspinwall, in his tower, in his solitude, were to his mind something extraordinary, like a breath of old days; a sort of miracle. Then it seemed to him as to those sailors in the night, that something had called him by his name in a voice greatly loved, but wellnigh forgotten. He sat for a minute with closed eyes, and he was almost certain that when he opened them the dream would vanish. No! The packet on which the afternoon rays of the sun were shining lay distinctly before him cut open and on it the open book. When the old man once more stretched out his hand for it he heard in the stillness the beating of his own heart. He looked. It was poetry. The title was written on the cover in large letters, and below was the name of the author. The name was not a stranger to Skawinski. He knew that it belonged to a great poet whose works he had even read after the year ▓30 in Paris1. Later, when he was fighting in Algeria and Spain, he heard from compatriots or the ever increasing fame of the great prophet-poet, but at that time he was not familiar with a gun that he never took a book in his hand. In the year ▓49 he went to America, and in the adventurous life he led he scarcely ever came across any Pole, and never a Polish book. So it was with all the greatest haste and with the more wildly palpitating heart that he turned the title-page. Then it seemed to him that something sacred was beginning to take place on his lonely rock. It was indeed a moment of great peace and stillness. The clocks of Aspinwall had struck five o▓clock in the afternoon. Not a single cloud cast a shadow over the bright sky, only a few gulls floated in its blue depths. The ocean was rocked to sleep. The quiet waves near the shore scarcely so much as rippled, as they melted gently away on the sands. The white houses of Aspinwall and the lovely groups of palms smiled in the distance. There was indeed something sacred, and quet and solemn. Suddenly in the midst of that peace of Nature the trembling voice of the old man rang out; he was reading aloud to make what he read easier for him to understand:
O Lithuania my country, thou
Art like good health ; I never knew till now
How precious, till I lost thee. Now I see
The beauty whole because I yearn for thee.

Skawinski▓s voice failed. The letters began to swim before his eyes. Something snapped in his breast, and ran like a wave from his heart higher and higher, stifling his voice, clutching his throat...A moment later he mastered himself, and read on:

O Holy maid, who Czestochowa▓s shrine
Dost guard and on the Pointed gateway shine
And watchest Nowogrodek▓s* pinnacle !

As thou didst heal me by a miracle
(For they my weeping mother sought thy power,
I raised my dying eyes, and in that hour
My strength returned and to Thy shrine I trod
For life restored to offer thanks to God),
So by a miracle Thou ▒lt bring us home...



(* The town in Lithuania where Mickiewicz lived when a boy).

The rising wave burst the barrier of the will. The old man uttered a loud cry, and flung himself on the ground; his milk-white hair mingled with the sand of the seashore. Forty years had passed since he had seen the country, and God knows how many since he heard his native language; yet here at this actual moment that language had come to him of its own accord; it had crossed the ocean, and found the lonely recluse in the other hemisphere; that language so beloved, so dear, so beautiful! In the sobbing which shook him there was no grief but only a suddenly awakened, infinite love, beside which all else was naught. That passionate weeping was simply his entreaty for forgiveness from the loved, distant country, because he had grown so old, lived so intimately with a solitary rock, and forgotten so much, that even the homesickness of his soul had begun to wear away. And now he had ⌠returned by a miracle■; and his heart was torn within him. The moments passed one after the other. He still lay there. Few gulls flew over the lighthouse, crying intermittently, as if uneasy about their old friend. It was near the hour when he used to feed them with the remains of his provisions, so a few of them flew down to him from the top of the lighthouse. Then more of them kept coming, and began gently pecking him, and fluttering over his head. Having wept his fill, he now felt full of piece and radiant joy; his eyes shone is if they were inspired. Unconsciously he gave away the whole of his provisions to the birds, who swooped upon them screeching; and he himself took up the book again. The sun had by now passed over the gardens
And the virgin forest of Panama and was slowly sinking beyond the isthmus, towards the other ocean, but the Atlantic was still all glowing. The sky was quite light, so he read on:

Till then carry my yearning soul
Unto those wooden hills, those meadows green.

Twilight had blotted out the letters on the white page; a twilight as short as the twinkling of an eye. The old man leant his head on the rock and closed his eyes. And the, ⌠She who guards bright Czenstochowa■ took the herself his soul and bore it ⌠ to those fields painted with any coloured grains.■ Long red and golden trails were still burning in the sky, and on those shafts of light he fled to the beloved land. The pine woods roared in his ears, his native rivers gurgled. He saw it all is it used to be. It all asked him:■ Do you remember?■ Did he remember! Besides, he saw;-wide fields, green unploughed strips dividing them, meadows, woods and hamlets. By now it was night. At that hour his lantern was used to shine over the darkness of the sea; but he was now in his native village. His old head was bowed on his breast, and he was dreaming. Scenes passed one another before his eyes swiftly and a trifle confused. He did not see the house where he had been born because war had wiped it out; he did not see his father or mother, because they had died when he was a child; but he saw the village as though he had left it yesterday; the row of cottages with faint lights in their windows, the dikes, the mill, the two ponds lying over against each other, and ringing all night with choirs of frogs. Once, in that village of his, he was on sentry duty at night. That past now suddenly rose before him in a series of visions. He is again a lancer on guard. The tavern is looking out from the distance with streaming eyes, and ringing and singing and roaring in the stillness of the night with the stamping of feet, with the voices of the fiddles and double √ basses. ⌠U √ ha! U √ ha!■ The lancers are dancing till their ironshod heels send out sparks, while he is bored out there alone on his horse. The hours drug on slowly. At last the lights go out. Now as for as the eye can see is mist, impenetrable mist. It must be the damp rising from the meadows, and folding the whole world in a gray √ white cloud. You would think it was the ocean: but it is the meadows that are there. Wait a little, and you will hear the corncrake calling in the darkness and bitterns booming in the reeds. The night is calm and cool, a real Polish night. In the distance the pine forest murmurs without wind √ like the waves of the sea. Soon the dawn will whiten the east; yes, the cocks are crowing already behind the hedges. Each takes up the other▓s voice, one after the other from cottage to cottage; suddenly the cranes, too, cry from high up in the sky. A feeling of life and health sweeps over the lancer. The were saying something over yonder about to-morrow▓s battle. Ha ! He▓ll be going too like the others with a shout and fluttering of flags. His young blood plays like a trumpet, although the night breeze has chilled it. But now it is dawn, dawn ! The night is waning. The forests, the tickets, the row of cottages, the mill, the poplars, steal out of the shadows. The well-sticks creak like the tin flag on the tower. That dear country, beautiful in the rosy light of dawn ! Oh, beloved, beloved land !
Hush! The watchful sentry hears footsteps approaching. They must be coming to relieve the guard.
Suddenly a voice rang out over Skawinski▓s head.
⌠Hi, old chap! Get up. What▓s the matter with you?■
The old man opened his eyes, and gazed bewildered at the man standing before him. Remnants of the visions of his dreams struggled in his brain with reality. Finally, the visions grew faint and vanished. Johns, the harbour watchman, was standing in front of him.
⌠What▓s all this? Johns asked. ⌠Are you sick?■
⌠No.■
⌠You didn▓t light the lantern. You are going to be dismissed from the service. A boat from San Geromo has been wrecked on a sand-reef. Luckily no one was drowned. If they had been you▓d have been tried for it. Get into the boat with me. You▓ll hear the rest in the Consulate.■
The old man turned pale. Indeed, he had not lit the lantern that night.
A few days later Skawinski might have been seen on the deck of a vessel going from Aspinwall to New York. The poor old man had lost his post. New ways of a wanderer▓s existence had opened again before him. Again the wind had blown the leaf away to cast it forth by land and sea, to make sport of it at its will. During those few days the old man had grown very shrunken and bent: only his eyes shone. But in his breast he carried into the new roads of his life his book, which from time to time his hand grasped as though fearful lest that too should be taken from him.

[ this story was published as a part of ⌠Tales from Henryk Sienkiewicz, Everyman▓s Library, London-New York, 1931. I copied it at the National Library in Warsaw]


THE END


[typed by Zbigniew & Andrzej ]

Post Script

Maybe you recall another short story written by Ernest Hemingway ,entitled ⌠Old Man and the Sea■. I find the similar unbending faith in basic human values and the similar wonderful ability to say so much writing so little. Please, tell me whether a story written more than hundred years ago can still move us, people of the turn of the third millenium. For me, Skawinski▓s devotion to a specific idea can be easily meant much more general. "Poland" can easily be replaced by "Ukraine", "Lithuania" or "Russia". It can be just one of any affectionate loves we dream of for years and experience sometimes, without even noticing how much we win every single day. It is just like our father▓s and mother▓s love. Only when we are thousands miles away, we gradually understand what it really meant.
We are really fortunate to have planes and mobile phones which give us the chance of satisfying our longings.
(Please, look for possible typing mistakes and let me know as soon as possible).



[Edited by Zbyszek on 1st October 2002 at 15:14]