雙語·居里夫人的故事 第四章　整整一年的假期

Chapter IV　A Whole Year's Holiday

MANYA was sixteen. Gold medal day had come and Manya's gold medal was the third in the family. It was June and very hot. Manya, like all the prize winners, was dressed in black with a bunch of tea roses in her belt. The crowd pressed around her congratulating her and shaking hands. When it was all over, she left the High School for good, her fingers pressed tight on her proud father's arm.

He had promised her a whole year's holiday. That was a gift indeed, a year's holiday! Manya hadn't an idea why she should have it, but her father thought that as she had been working very hard and as she had done her work in less time than other girls, it was only fair that she should take that delightful way of waiting for her age-fellows to catch her up. So Manya the industrious became a lazybones and entered into the full fun of the thing.

“My dear little Devil,” she wrote to Kazia, “I don't believe algebra and geometry exist. Anyway I have completely forgotten them. I don't even do my embroidery. I don't do anything. I get up at ten, or sometimes at six—in the morning, be it spoken—I read nothing or only tales. I am the stupidest of the stupid and I laugh all alone at my complete inanity. A crowd of us wander through the woods or play battledore and shuttlecock, at which I am a booby, or puss-in-the-corner or follow-my-leader or any such intellectual game. Wild strawberries are everywhere and for a penny-farthing we can buy enough for a meal—that's a soup-plate full, piled high and overflowing. Alas! Alas! they are almost over and my appetite is limitless so that I am quite scared at my greed. We swing… we swing right up into the sky. We bathe, we catch shrimps by torchlight. By-the-bye, we have met an actor. He sang to us and recited to us and gathered us so many gooseberries that in return we plaited him a crown of wild poppies and white pinks and blue cornflowers and threw it at him as he left for Warsaw. They say he put it on and then, when the train came in, packed it in his suitcase and took it all the way to the city.”

Manya was to spend her year in the country, She loved every bit of it. She was to watch all the seasons go round and to discover at every turn fresh beauties in the land of Poland. Her uncle, Xavier, lived on the plains of Zwola. There she looked over level land to the furthest, furthest horizon of which one could dream, green land streaked with the brown colours of ploughed earth. Her uncle had many horses in stable and there she learned to ride. What she wore didn't matter to her. She borrowed trousers from her cousin which were too big for her, turned them up, belted them into gathers and was ready. Left hand on reins and holding the big horse's mane, left foot in the stirrup and right hand on the saddle, she stood for the first adventure as she had seen her uncle and cousins stand. But what a long way it was up! She would never get there however much she hopped or however still the good old horse stood.

“Good to try!” said her uncle, “scramble!” But her cousins did not leave her untaught. They showed her how to stand with her back to the horse's head before she sprang, how to help herself with a convenient mound and, finally, how to get just the right spring that could land her into the saddle of the tallest horse. It became her delight to go long expeditions on horseback over the spreading fields. Soon she could rise in the saddle at the trot or sit tight at the gallop. She explored new villages and met strange country folk and knew more and more of the Polish plain.

But an even greater pleasure was in store for her: she went to stay with another uncle, whose name is quite unpronounceable to English ears, Uncle Zdzislaw, who lived among the Carpathian Mountains. For the first time she saw snowy heights, dazzling in their whiteness and dark pine forests like rivers of ink making the snow more white… She longed to get closer up; to make her way through the trees, perhaps to the edge of the snow itself. She went for long walks up winding mountain paths which sometimes ended unexpectedly in a precipice, so that she had to retrace her steps. Sometimes the path ended at a hut and Manya and her cousins would go in and ask to see the owner's work; for all the mountaineers of that district were wood carvers and their simplest piece of furniture was a work of art. The peasants loved to show the things that they had made and when the children had admired the chairs and table and cuckoo clock and the coloured wooden bowls against the wall, they delved into cupboards and brought out little carved men or drinking cups or toys or even pictures carved in wood.

Once, in her wanderings, Manya came to a little mountain lake, a patch of water lying in the hills as blue as massed speedwell, and men called it “The sea's eye.” It was so lovely lying among the snow peaks that Manya thought it the gem of the whole country.

Within doors, life was quite riotously merry. Her uncle loved gaiety; so did his beautiful wife and as to his three daughters, they laughed all day and Manya with them. Guests arrived in plenty. Uncle and aunt would probably have been out shooting and have plenty of game to offer them. If they hadn't, there was nothing to do but slay a barn door chicken of which there were hundreds running about the yard. Then the girls flew to the kitchen and hastily baked the cakes. All was ready for the feast. For clothes, they hastily turned out cupboards and sewed together gay fancy dresses for charades, or if it was winter, for a “Kulig”—a winter fête.

Manya's first Kulig was a tremendous experience. The night was dark, but lit by the strange northern snow-light. Manya and her three cousins, wrapped in thick rugs, masked and dressed as Cracovian peasants, took their places in two sledges. Their outriders were boys in rustic costumes who lit the darkness with fantastic torches. Through the dark forest, they caught glimpses of other torches approaching. The cold night was suddenly filled with music, for the musicians were coming up, bringing four little Jews, who for two whole nights and two whole days Were to wring heart-stirring airs from their violins. They would play waltzes and mazurkas and all the world would catch up the refrains and sing them in chorus, making the night tuneful and noisy.

As the Jews played, other sledges joined them out of the darkness, three, five, ten sledges. In spite of hair-raising bends and glassy slopes those little musicians never missed a note as they led the fantastic troop under the frosty stats.

At the first lone farmhouse the sledges stopped with jingling bells and harness and all the company, laughing, shouting, and knocking loudly on the door, awakened the inmates, who were only pretending to be asleep. In a few moments the musicians were hoisted on to a table and the ball began in a room lit by torches.

Presently supper was brought and then, at a signal, suddenly the whole house was empty—empty of casks, of inhabitants, of horses, of sledges, of everything. A larger procession, with all the sledges of the new homestead, was wending its way through the forest to another farm.

A sledge with fresh horses, trying to pass another, went out of the beaten road, failed to get back and overturned in the snowdrift. The procession halted, torches waving in the wind, and gathered into a semicircle while willing hands brushed the snow from the occupants and righted their sledge. Again the bells rang out a wild peal of jingling speed in the night. But what had become of the musicians? Nobody knew. The leading sledge went faster and faster, hoping to catch them up; but it was soon apparent that they were not on that road; they had not gone on! A halt was called, a fork in the road was remembered. There was nothing for it but to go back and look for the little Jews along the other road. Everyone was worried. How would the dance go at the other farms if the musicians could not be found? But presently someone caught the joyful cry of violins above the sound of bells and the procession was complete again and growing in length as they stopped to dance at yet another farmhouse, and yet another and another.

The sun rose… the sun went down… the sun rose. The fiddlers had scarcely any time to eat or sleep. On the second night the vast train of sledges stopped with snorting horses and jingling bells before the biggest homestead for the real ball.

The little fiddlers played louder. The guests took their places for the famous figure dances. The chief boy, handsome and elegant, in his embroidered white costume advanced to lead out the best dancer of all the company. It was Manya Sklodovska, in the dress of a mountain maiden with a velvet jacket, puffed linen sleeves and a star-like crown decked with long, brightly coloured streamers.

They danced through the night. They danced a mazurka at eight in the morning. Manya said that never in her life had she enjoyed herself so much and her aunt said that if she enjoyed Kuligs so much, she should have one to celebrate her wedding.

But the joys of holidays were not over. An old pupil of Madame Sklodovska's, who had become Countess of Fleury, invited Hela and Manya to stay with her. The house stood on a tongue of land between two rivers. Manya had a lovely view from her room across the meeting waters and there she learned to row. “We do anything,” she wrote home, “that comes into our heads. We sleep all night and sometimes in the day. We dance. We are mad. In fact only a lunatic asylum would suit us!”

They varied their sleeping and dancing with riding and mushroom gathering and practical jokes. Once Manya asked the Countess's brother to go to town on a message. The unsuspecting young man went. The town was far. He came home in the dark and went to his room where all the young people of the house had slung his bed,his table, his chairs, his trunks, his clothes from the beams of the roof. His possessions had become entirely aerial and slapped him in the face as he moved among them.

On another day, lunch had been prepared for distinguished guests and the children were not invited. They ate the whole lunch before lunch and placed, by the empty table, a scarecrow representing a most satisfied and well-fed count! The culprits? Where were they? Vanished into thin air!

On the anniversary of the Count and Countess's wedding day, the gay company sent them, by two of their number, a huge crown made of vegetables. It weighed a hundred pounds and was presented to the happy couple as they sat on a decorated throne. Then the youngest member recited a poem which had been written by Manya for the occasion and ended thus:

For Louis' blessed day

A picnic be our pay!

For every girl invite a boy

In your example let us joy

And follow to the altar soon.

Grant us, grant us now this boon!

The Count and Countess did their best with a ball instead of a picnic. Manya and Hela wanted to be especially ravishing that night. They were poor and their ball dresses well worn. They counted their money. They turned the dresses over and over. They ripped off the faded tulle and found the linings quite good. A little blue tarlatan would do, they decided, instead of the tulle, and a ribbon here, a ribbon there would create new dresses. Thin purses and a skilful needle would do wonders. Flowers would do the rest and there would be money enough for two new pairs of shoes. When the shopping was done and the needlework was done and the garden had done its share, the mirror said: “You'll do.”

And Manya danced her new shoes through and fêted the morning by throwing them away.