JESS: Journal of Estonian Short Stories (Issue 1 / Autumn 2014)

JESS Journal of Estonian Short Stories Issue 1 / August 2014

Villane Raamat MTĂœ Tartu, 2014

JESS: Journal of Estonian Short Stories Print version ISSN 2346-6456 Digital version ISSN 2346-6464 Published by Villane Raamat MTĂœ Printed at the Estonian Printing Museum

JESS Editorial ∙ Edited by James Baxenfield and Tiina Aleman Iannotti Illustrations Jaan Škerin Cover “Amethyst” by Fatima Susanna Dominguez Ortiz

Contents

Foreword

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An Estonian Folktale “The Northern Frog”

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Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake “The Wolves”

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Sir Stephen George Tallents “The Silver Cup”

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Agnieszka Kunz “The Story of Oliver and Scarymouse”

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Tina Rowe [untitled]

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Foreword

In this first issue of JESS, Villane Raamat presents you, the reader, with a selection of stories that span a number of centuries, accompanied by original artwork by Jaan Škerin and a cover image designed by Fatima Sussana Dominguez Ortiz.

By chance the stories have been arranged in alphabetical order by author, assuming that the origin of the folktale “The Northern Frog” has been lost to the ages; coming down to us through oral tradition. If the name of an author to the tale was to be given it could only be attributed to that amazingly prolific author ‘Anony-

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mous’, and again, buy chance, the placement of stories would still be alphabetical.

Consciously, the stories have been arranged in a loose chronological order, based upon when they appeared and the amount of time the author (where present) spent time in Estonia. Again by chance, this chronological arrangement presents not only a linear progression through time but also in content. For the most part, the contributors to this volume, past and present, are foreign to Estonia. Their stories, whether based-up their experiences or inspired by them, offer an insight into the changing face of Estonia over time.

JESS

JESS Journal of Estonian Short Stories

The Northern Frog An Estonian Folktale

Once upon a time, as old people relate, there existed a horrible monster which came from the north. It exterminated men and animals from large districts, and if nobody had been able to arrest its progress, it might gradually have swept all living things from the earth.

It had a body like an ox and legs like a frog; that is to say, two short ones in front, and two long ones behind.

Its tail was ten fathoms long. It moved like a frog, but cleared two miles at every bound. Fortunately it used to remain on the spot where it had once alighted for several years, and did not advance farther till it had eaten the whole neighbourhood bare. Its body was entirely encased in scales harder than stone or bronze, so that nothing could injure it. Its two large eyes shone like the brightest tapers both by day and night, and

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whoever had the misfortune to meet their glare became as one bewitched, and was forced to throw himself into the jaws of the monster. So it happened that men and animals offered themselves to be devoured, without any necessity for it to move from its place. The neighbouring kings offered magnificent rewards to any one who could destroy the monster by magic or otherwise, and many people had tried their fortune, but their efforts were all futile. On one occasion, a large wood in which the monster was skulking was set on fire.

The wood was destroyed, but the noxious animal was not harmed in the slightest degree. However, it was reported among old people that nobody could overcome the monster except with the help of King Solomon's Seal, on which a secret inscription was engraved, from which it could be discovered how the monster might be destroyed. But nobody could tell where the seal was now concealed, nor where to find a sorcerer who could read the inscription.

At length a young man whose head and heart were in the right place determined to set out in search of the seal-ring, trusting in his good fortune. He started in the direction of the East, where it is supposed that the wisdom of the ancients is to be sought for. After some years he met with a celebrated magician of the East, and asked him for advice. The sorcerer answered, “Men have but little wisdom, and here it can avail you nothing, but God's birds will be your best guides under heaven, if you will learn their language. I can help you with it if you will stay with me for a few days.�

The young man thankfully accepted this friendly offer, and replied, “I am unable at present to make you

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any return for your kindness, but if I should succeed in my enterprise, I will richly reward you for your trouble.” Then the sorcerer prepared a powerful charm, by boiling nine kinds of magic herbs which he had gathered secretly by moonlight. He made the young man drink a spoonful every day, and it had the effect of making the language of birds intelligible to him. When he departed, the sorcerer said, “If you should have the good luck to find and get possession of Solomon's Seal, come back to me, that I may read you the inscription on the ring, for there is no one else now living who can do so.”

On the very next day the young man found the world quite transformed. He no longer went anywhere alone, but found company everywhere, for he now understood the language of birds, and thus many secrets were revealed to him which human wisdom would have been unable to discover. Nevertheless, some time passed before he could learn anything about the ring. At length one evening, when he was exhausted with heat and fatigue, he lay down under a tree in a wood to eat his supper, when he heard two strange birds with bright coloured plumage talking about him in the branches.

One of them said, “I know the silly wanderer under the tree, who has already wandered about so much without finding a trace of what he wants. He is searching for the lost ring of King Solomon.” The other bird replied, “I think he must seek the help of the Hell-Maiden, who would certainly be able to help him to find it. Even if she herself does not possess the ring, she must know well enough who owns it now.” The first bird returned, “It may be as you say, but where can he find the HellMaiden, who has no fixed abode, and is here to-day and

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there to-morrow? He might as well try to fetter the wind.” “I can't say exactly where she is at present,” said the other bird, “but in three days' time she will come to the spring to wash her face, as is her custom every month on the night of the full moon, so that the bloom of youth never disappears from her cheeks, and her face never wrinkles with age.” The first bird responded, “Well, the spring is not far off; shall we amuse ourselves by watching her proceedings?” “Willingly,” said the other.

The young man resolved at once to follow the birds and visit the spring; but two difficulties troubled him. In the first place, he feared he might be asleep when the birds set out; and secondly, he had no wings, with which he could follow close behind them. He was too weary to lie awake all night, for he could not keep his eyes open, but his anxiety prevented him from sleeping quietly, and he often woke up for fear of missing the departure of the birds. Consequently he was very glad when he looked up in the tree at sunrise, and saw the bright-coloured birds sitting motionless with their heads under their wings. He swallowed his breakfast, and then waited for the birds to wake up. But they did not seem disposed to go anywhere that morning; but fluttered about as if to amuse themselves, in search of food, and flew from one tree-top to another till evening, when they returned to roost at their old quarters. On the second day it was just the same. However, on the third morning one bird said to the other, “We must go to the spring to-day, to see the Hell-Maiden washing her face.” They waited till noon, and then flew away direct towards the south. The young man's heart beat with fear lest he should lose sight of his guides. But the birds did not fly farther than he could

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see, and perched on the summit of a tree. The young man ran after them till he was all in a sweat and quite out of breath. After resting three times, the birds reached a small open glade, and perched on a high tree at its edge. When the young man arrived, he perceived a spring in the midst of the opening, and sat down under the tree on which the birds were perched. Then he pricked up his ears, and listened to the talk of the feathered creatures.

“The sun has not set,” said one bird, “and we must wait till the moon rises and the maiden comes to the well. We will see whether she notices the young man under the tree.” The other bird replied, “Nothing escapes her eyes which concerns a young man. Will this one be clever enough to escape falling into her net?”

“We will see what passes between them,” returned the first bird.

Evening came, and the full moon had already risen high above the wood, when the young man heard a slight rustling, and in a few moments a maiden emerged from the trees, and sped across the grass to the spring so lightly that her feet hardly seemed to touch the ground.

The young man perceived in an instant that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, and he could not take his eyes from her.

She went straight to the well, without taking any heed of him, raised her eyes to the moon, and then fell on her knees and washed her face nine times in the spring. Every time she looked up at the moon, and cried out, “Fair and round-cheeked, as now thou art, may my beauty likewise endure imperishably.” Then she walked nine times round the spring, and each time she sang –

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“Let the maiden's face not wrinkle, Nor her red cheeks lose their beauty; Though the moon should wane and dwindle, May my beauty grow for ever, And my joy bloom on for ever!”

Then she dried her face with her long hair, and was about to depart, when her eyes suddenly fell upon the young man who was sitting under the tree, and she turned towards him immediately. The young man rose up to await her approach. The fair maiden drew nearer, and said to him, “You have exposed yourself to severe punishment for spying on the private affairs of a maiden in the moonlight, but as you are a stranger, and came here by accident, I will forgive you. But you must inform me truly who you are, and how you came here, where no mortal has ever before set foot.”

The youth answered with much politeness, “Forgive me, fair lady, for having offended you without my knowledge or intention. When I arrived here, after long wanderings, I found this nice place under the tree, and prepared to camp here for the night. Your arrival interrupted me, and I remained sitting here, thinking that I should not disturb you if I looked on quietly.”

The maiden answered in the most friendly manner, “Come to our house to-night. It is better to rest on cushions than on the cold moss.”

The young man hesitated for a moment, uncertain whether he ought to accept her friendly invitation or to decline it. One of the birds in the tree remarked to the other, “He would be a fool if he did not accept her

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offer.” Perhaps the maiden did not know the language of birds, for she added, “Fear nothing, my friend. I have not invited you with any ill intention, but wish you well with all my heart.” The birds responded, “Go where you are asked, but beware of giving any blood, lest you should sell your soul.”

Then the youth went with her. Not far from the spring they arrived at a beautiful garden, in which stood a magnificent mansion, which shone in the moonlight as if the roof and walls were made of gold and silver.

When the youth entered, he passed through very splendid apartments, each grander than the last; hundreds of tapers were burning in gold chandeliers, and everywhere diffused a light like that of day. At length they reached a room where an elegant supper was laid out, and two chairs stood at the table, one of silver and the other of gold. The maiden sat down on the golden chair, and invited the youth to take the other.

White-robed damsels served up and removed the dishes, but they spoke no word, and trod as softly as if on cats' feet. After supper the youth remained alone with the royal maiden, and they kept up a lively conversation, till a woman in red garments appeared to remind them that it was bedtime.

Then the maiden showed the young man to another room, where stood a silken bed with cushions of down, after which she retired. He thought he must have gone to heaven with his living body, for he never expected to find such luxuries on earth. But he could never afterwards tell whether it was the delusion of dreams or whether he actually heard voices round his bed crying out words which chilled his heart – “Give no blood!”

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Next morning the maiden asked him whether he would not like to stay here, where the whole week was one long holiday. And as the youth did not answer immediately, she added, “I am young and fair, as you see yourself, and I am under no one's authority, and can do what I like. Until now, it never entered my head to marry, but from the moment when I saw you, other thoughts came suddenly into my mind, for you please me. If we should both be of one mind, let us wed without delay. I possess endless wealth and goods, as you may easily convince yourself at every step, and thus I can live in royal state day by day. Whatever your heart desires, that can I provide for you.”

The cajoleries of the fair maid might well have turned the youth's head, but by good fortune he remembered that the birds had called her the HellMaiden, and had warned him to give her no blood, and that he had received the same warning at night, though whether sleeping or waking he knew not. He therefore replied, “Dear lady, do not be angry with me if I tell you candidly that marriage should not be rushed upon at racehorse speed, but requires longer consideration. Pray therefore allow me a few days for reflection, until we are better acquainted.” "Why not?” answered the fair maid. “I am quite content that you should think on the matter for a few weeks, and set your mind at rest.”

Lest the youth might feel dull, the maiden led him from one part of the magnificent house to another, and showed him all the rich storehouses and treasurechambers, thinking that it might soften his heart. All these treasures were the result of magic, for the maiden could have built such a palace with all its contents on

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any day and at any place with the aid of Solomon's Seal.

But everything was unsubstantial, for it was woven of wind, and dissolved again into the wind, without leaving a trace behind. But the youth was not aware of this, and looked upon all the glamour as reality.

One day the maiden led him into a secret chamber, where a gold casket stood on a silver table. This she showed him, and then said, “Here is the most precious of all my possessions, the like of which is not to be found in the whole world. It is a costly golden ring. If you will marry me, I will give it you for a keepsake, and it will make you the happiest of all mankind. But in order that the bond of our love should last for ever, you must give me three drops of blood from the little finger of your left hand in exchange for the ring.�

The youth turned cold when he heard her ask for blood, for he remembered that his soul was at stake. But he was crafty enough not to let her notice his emotion, and not to refuse her, but asked carelessly what were the properties of the ring.

The maiden answered, “No one living has been able to fathom the whole power of this ring, and no one can completely explain the secret signs engraved upon it.

But, even with the imperfect knowledge of its properties which I possess, I can perform many wonders which no other creature can accomplish. If I put the ring on the little finger of my left hand, I can rise in the air like a bird and fly whithersoever I will. If I place the ring on the ring-finger of my left hand, I become invisible to all eyes, while I myself can see everything that passes around me. If I put the ring on the middle finger of my left hand, I become invulnerable to all weapons, and

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neither water nor fire can hurt me. If I place it on the index finger of my left hand, I can create all things which I desire with its aid; I can build houses in a moment, or produce other objects. As long as I wear it on the thumb of my left hand, my hand remains strong enough to break down rocks and walls. Moreover, the ring bears other secret inscriptions which, as I said before, no one has yet been able to explain; but it may readily be supposed that they contain many important secrets. In ancient times, the ring belonged to King Solomon, the wisest of kings, and in whose reign lived the wisest of men. At the present day it is unknown whether the ring was formed by divine power or by human hands; but it is supposed that an angel presented the ring to the wise king.”

When the youth heard the fair one speak in this way, he determined immediately to endeavour to possess himself of the ring by craft, and therefore pretended that he could not believe what he had heard. He hoped by this means to induce the maiden to take the ring out of the casket to show him, when he might have an opportunity of possessing himself of the talisman. But he did not venture to ask her plainly to show him the ring. He flattered and cajoled her, but the only thought in his mind was to get possession of the ring. Presently the maiden took the key of the casket from her bosom as if to unlock it; but she changed her mind, and replaced it, saying, “There's plenty of time for that afterwards.”

A few days later, their conversation reverted to the magic ring, and the youth said, “In my opinion, the things which you tell me of the power of your ring are quite incredible.”

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Then the maiden opened the casket and took out the ring, which shone through her fingers like the brightest sun-ray. Then she placed it in jest on the middle finger of her left hand, and told the youth to take a knife and stab her with it wherever he liked, for it would not hurt her. The youth protested against the proposed experiment; but, as she insisted, he was obliged to humour her. At first he began in play, and then in earnest to try to strike the maiden with the knife; but it seemed as if there was an invisible wall of iron between them. The blade would not pierce it, and the maiden stood before him unhurt and smiling. Then she moved the ring to her ring-finger, and in an instant she vanished from the eyes of the youth, and he could not imagine what had become of her. Presently she stood before him smiling, in the same place as before, holding the ring between her fingers.

“Let me try,” said he, “whether I can also do these strange things with the ring.”

The maiden suspected no deceit, and gave it to him.

The youth pretended he did not quite know what to do with it and asked, “On which finger must I place the ring to become invulnerable to sharp weapons?” “On the ring-finger of the left hand,” said the maiden, smiling. She then took the knife herself and tried to strike him, but could not do him any harm. Then the youth took the knife from her and tried to wound himself, but he found that this too was impossible. Then he asked the maiden how he could cleave stones and rocks with the ring. She took him to the enclosure where stood a block of granite a fathom high. “Now place the ring,” said the maiden, “on the thumb of your left hand,

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and then strike the stone with your fist, and you will see the strength of your hand.” The youth did so, and to his amazement he saw the stone shiver into a thousand pieces under the blow. Then he thought, “He who does not seize good fortune by the horns is a fool, for when it has once flown, it never returns.” While he was still jesting about the destruction of the stone, he played with the ring, and slipped it suddenly on the ring-finger of his left hand. Then cried the maiden, “You will remain invisible to me until you take off the ring again.” But this was far from the young man's thoughts. He hurried forwards a few paces, and then moved the ring to the little finger of his left hand, and soared into the air like a bird. When the maiden saw him flying away, she thought at first that this experiment too was only in jest, and cried out, “Come back, my friend. You see now that I have told you the truth.” But he who did not return was the youth, and when the maiden realised his treachery, she broke out into bitter lamentations over her misfortune.

The youth did not cease his flight till he arrived, some days later, at the house of the famous sorcerer who had taught him the language of birds. The sorcerer was greatly delighted to find that his pupil's journey had turned out so successfully. He set to work at once to read the secret inscriptions on the ring, but he spent seven weeks before he could accomplish it. He then gave the young man the following instructions how to destroy the Northern Frog: – “You must have a great iron horse cast, with small wheels under each foot, so that it can be moved backwards and forwards. You must mount this, and arm yourself with an iron spear two fathoms long, which you will only be able to wield

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when you wear the magic ring on the thumb of your left hand. The spear must be as thick as a great birch-tree in the middle, and both ends must be sharpened to a point.

You must fasten two strong chains, ten fathoms long, to the middle of the spear, strong enough to hold the frog.

As soon as the frog has bitten hard on the spear, and it has pierced his jaws, you must spring like the wind from the iron horse to avoid falling into the monster's throat, and must fix the ends of the chains into the ground with iron posts so firmly that no force can drag them out again. In three or four days' time the strength of the frog will be so far exhausted that you can venture to approach it. Then place Solomon's ring on the thumb of your left hand, and beat the frog to death. But till you reach it, you must keep the ring constantly on the ringfinger of your left hand, that the monster cannot see you, or it would strike you dead with its long tail. But when you have accomplished all this, take great care not to lose the ring, nor to allow anybody to deprive you of it by a trick.�

Our friend thanked the sorcerer for his advice, and promised to reward him for his trouble afterwards. But the sorcerer answered, “I have learned so much magic wisdom by deciphering the secret inscriptions on the ring, that I need no other profit for myself.� Then they parted, and the young man hastened home, which was no longer difficult to him, as he could fly like a bird wherever he wished.

He reached home in a few weeks, and heard from the people that the horrible Northern Frog was already in the neighbourhood, and might be expected to cross the frontier any day. The king caused it to be proclaimed

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everywhere that if any one could destroy the frog, he would not only give him part of his kingdom, but his daughter in marriage likewise. A few days later, the young man came before the king, and declared that he hoped to destroy the monster, if the king would provide him with what was necessary; and the king joyfully consented. All the most skilful craftsmen of the neighbourhood were called together to construct first the iron horse, next the great spear, and lastly the iron chains, the links of which were two inches thick. But when all was ready, it was found that the iron horse was so heavy that a hundred men could not move it from its place. The youth was therefore obliged to move the horse away alone, with the help of his ring.

The frog was now hardly four miles away, so that a couple of bounds might carry it across the frontier. The young man now reflected how he could best deal with the monster alone, for, as he was obliged to push the heavy iron horse from below, he could not mount it, as the sorcerer had directed him. But he unexpectedly received advice from the beak of a raven, “Mount upon the iron horse, and set the spear against the ground, and you can then push yourself along as you would push a boat from the shore.� The young man did so, and found that he was able to proceed in this way. The monster at once opened its jaws afar off, ready to receive the expected prey. A few fathoms more, and the man and the iron horse were in the monster's jaws. The young man shook with horror, and his heart froze to ice, but he kept his wits about him, and thrust with all his might, so that the iron spear which he held upright in his hand, pierced the jaws of the monster. Then he leaped from the iron horse, and sprang away like lightning as the

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monster clashed his jaws together. A hideous roar, which was heard for many miles, announced that the Northern Frog had bitten the spear fast. When the youth turned round, he saw one point of the spear projecting a foot above the upper jaw, and concluded that the other was firmly fixed in the lower one; but the frog had crushed the iron horse between his teeth. The young man now hastened to fasten the chains in the ground, for which strong iron posts several fathoms long had been prepared.

The death-struggles of the monster lasted for three days and three nights, and when it reared itself, it struck the ground so violently with its tail, that the earth was shaken for fifty miles round. At length, when it was too weak to move its tail any longer, the young man lifted a stone with the help of his ring, which twenty men could not have moved, and beat the monster about the head with it until no further sign of life was visible.

Immeasurable was the rejoicing when the news arrived that the terrible monster was actually dead. The victor was brought to the capital with all possible respect, as if he had been a powerful king. The old king did not need to force his daughter to the marriage, for she herself desired to marry the strong man who had alone successfully accomplished what others had not been able to effect with the aid of a whole army. After some days, a magnificent wedding was prepared. The festivities lasted a whole month, and all the kings of the neighbouring countries assembled to thank the man who had rid the world of its worst enemy. But amid the marriage festival and the general rejoicings it was forgotten that the monster's carcass had been left

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unburied, and as it was now decaying, it occasioned such a stench that no one could approach it. This gave rise to diseases of which many people died. Then the king's son-in-law determined to seek help from the sorcerer of the East. This did not seem difficult to him with the aid of his ring, with which he could fly in the air like a bird.

But the proverb says that injustice never prospers, and that as we sow we reap. The king's son-in-law was doomed to realise the truth of this adage with his stolen ring. The Hell-Maiden left no stone unturned, night or day, to discover the whereabouts of her lost ring. When she learned through her magic arts that the king's sonin-law had set out in the form of a bird to visit the sorcerer, she changed herself into an eagle, and circled about in the air till the bird for which she was waiting came in sight. She recognised him at once by the ring, which he carried on a riband round his neck. Then the eagle swooped upon the bird, and at the moment that she seized him in her claws she tore the ring from his neck with her beak, before he could do anything to prevent her. Then the eagle descended to the earth with her prey, and they both stood together in their former human shapes. “Now you have fallen into my hands, you rascal,” cried the Hell-Maiden. “I accepted you as my lover, and you practised deceit and theft against me: is that my reward? You robbed me of my most precious jewel by fraud, and you hoped to pass a happy life as the king's son-in-law; but now we have turned over a new leaf. You are in my power, and you shall atone to me for all your villainy.” “Forgive me, forgive me,” said the king's son-in-law. “I know well that I have treated you very badly, but I heartily repent of my fault.” But

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the maiden answered, “Your pleadings and your repentance come too late, and nothing can help you more. I dare not overlook your offence, for that would bring me disgrace, and make me a byword among the people. Twice have you sinned against me: for, firstly, you have despised my love; and, secondly, you have stolen my ring; and now you must suffer your punishment.” As she spoke, she placed the ring on the thumb of her left hand, took the man on her arm like a doll, and carried him away. This time she did not take him to a magnificent palace, but to a cavern in the rocks where chains were hanging on the walls. The maiden grasped the ends of the chains and fettered the man hand and foot, so that it was impossible for him to escape, and she said in anger, “Here shall you remain a prisoner till your end. I will send you so much food every day, that you shall not die of hunger, but you need never expect to escape.” Then she left him.

The king and his daughter endured a time of terrible anxiety as weeks and weeks passed by, and the traveller neither returned nor sent any tidings. The king's daughter often dreamed that her consort was in great distress, and therefore she begged her father to assemble the sorcerers from all parts, in hopes that they might perhaps be able to give some information respecting what had happened to him, and how he could be rescued.

All the sorcerers could say was that he was still alive, but in great distress, and they could neither discover where he was, nor how he could be found. At length a famous sorcerer from Finland was brought to the king, who was able to inform him that his son-in-law was kept in captivity in the East, not by a human being, but by a more powerful creature. Then the king sent

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messengers to the East to seek for his lost son-in-law.

Fortunately they met with the old sorcerer who had read the inscriptions on Solomon's Seal, and had thus learned wisdom which was hidden from all others. The sorcerer soon discovered what he wished to know, and said, “The man is kept prisoner by magic art in such and such a place, but you cannot release him without my help, so I must go with you myself.�

They set out accordingly, and in a few days, led by the birds, they reached the cavern in the rock where the king's son-in-law had already languished for seven years in captivity. He recognised the sorcerer immediately, but the latter did not know him, he was so much worn and wasted. The sorcerer loosed his chains by his magic art, took him home, and nursed and tended him till he had recovered sufficient strength to set out on his journey.

He reached his destination on the very day that the old king died, and was chosen king. Then came days of joy after long days of suffering; and he lived happily till his end, but he never recovered the magic ring, nor has it ever since been seen by human eyes.

This is a reproduction of an old story as it appeared at the time of its publication. From William Forsell Kirby, The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of that Country, Vol. II (London: John C. Nimmo, 1895), pp. 237-261.

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The Wolves Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake

There is a kind of savage luxury, however gorgeous and costly, which perfectly assimilates with savage life, and where the eye may pass at one glance from the pampered inmate of the palace to the wild beast in the woods, without any sense of inconsistency to the mind.

This may be remarked, more or less, with all oriental nations. The Indian prince is in keeping with the tiger in the jungle, the Russian noble with the bear in his forests.

But it is a different and very strange sensation to find yourself in a country where inward and outward life are at variance; where the social habits of the one by no means prepare you for the rude elements of the other; where nature is wild, and man tame. This is

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conspicuously the case in the north-western part of Russia, where a German colony, although lords of the soil for hundreds of years, are still as foreign to it as they were at first; having originally brought a weak offset of civilised life into a country for which only the lineal descendants of the savage were fitted, and having since then rather vegetated upon the gradually impoverishing elements they transplanted with them, than taken root in the gradually improving soil around them. Life, therefore, in this part of the world passes with a monotony and security which reminds you of what, in point of fact, it really is, viz. a remote and provincial state of German society of the present day.

Both the inclinations and occupations of the colonists confine them to a narrow range of activity and idea. The country is too wild, the population too scattered, the distances too great, the impediments, both of soil and season, too many for them to become acquainted with the secrets of the wild nature around them; or rather, not without a trouble which no one is sufficiently interested to overcome. They travel much, from place to place, upon roads bad enough, it is true, but always beaten; they have no pursuit but mere business or mere pleasure, and no interest except in what promotes the one or the other; and, in short, know as little of what goes on in the huts of the native peasantry, or in the forest and morass haunts of the native animals, as if they were strangers in the land, instead of its proprietors. It is, therefore, as we before remarked, a strange and most unpleasant feeling, while spending your days in a state of society which partakes of the security and ease of the present day, to be suddenly reminded by some accidental circumstance of a state of nature which recalls the danger and

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adventure of centuries back.

It was early in the spring, after a long and very severe winter, when the earth was just sufficiently softened to admit its stock of summer flowers, though not sufficiently warmed to vivify them, that the garden belonging to a country-house situated in this part of Russia had become the scene of great activity. Hundreds of leafless plants and shrubs, which has passed their winter in the darkness and warmth of the house-cellar, were now brought out to resume their short summer station, and lay strewed about in various groups, roughly showing the shape of the bed or border they were to occupy. The balmy air had also summoned forth the lovely mistress of the mansion, a delicate flower, more unsuited to this wintry land even than those which lay around her, who went from one plant to another, recognising in the leafless twigs the beautiful flowers which had been, or were to be, and shifting and reshifting their places on the fresh bare earth till they assumed that position which her taste or fancy approved — just as a fine London or Paris lady may be seen in a jeweller's shop shifting her loose diamonds, upon a ground of purple velvet, into the order in which they are to be finally set. A younger lady was with her — a cousin by birth and a companion by choice — who had recently joined her, after a long separation, in a home foreign to each. Her two children were there also, beautiful and happy creatures; the elder one glad to be of use, the younger one delighted to think herself so; while Lion, an enormous dog, the living image, in size, colour, and gentleness, of Vandyke's splendid mastiff in his picture of the children of Charles I., lazily followed their steps, putting up his huge head whenever a child

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stooped hers, and laying himself invariably down exactly where a flower was to be planted.

After spending some time in this occupation, and having at length marked out the summer-garden to their satisfaction, the party turned their steps towards the house, where some beds, close under the windows, had been planted the preceding evening.

“Lion, Lion!” exclaimed the eldest child, “you should know better than to come across the fresh-raked beds,” showing us a tract of large, clumsy footmarks, which had gone directly over it. “Yes, look at the mischief you have done, old dog, and be ashamed of yourself; but keep off now! keep off!” for Lion was pressing forward with all his weight, snuffing at the prints with quick-moving nostrils. The lady stooped eagerly over the animal.

“These are no dog's footprints,” she said; and then, pointing to more distant traces farther on, “No, no. Oh, this is horrible! And so fresh too. A wolf has been here!”

She was right; the footmarks were very different from a dog's —larger and coarser even than the largest dog's, longer in shape, and with a deeper indentation of the ball of the foot. It was truly a painful and a fearful feeling to look at that flower-bed, on which the hand of man had been so recently employed, now tracked over by the feet of one of the most savage animals that exists; and the lady drew back shuddering. And Louisa, for that was the cousin's name, shuddered too, if not with so real a sense of fear, yet with a much more unlimited impression of terror. She was a stranger as much to the idea as to the sight, and, as she looked up at the window

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just above — her own bedroom window — with its peaceful white curtains and swallow's nest at the comer, and remembered that she had been sleeping within while the wild beast was trampling beneath, she felt as if she should never rest easily there again. As for the children, they both looked terrified at first, chiefly because their elders did, and then each acted according to the character within her — Olga, the elder, holding quietly by her mother's hand, and afraid even to look at the footprints, though approaching them docilely when she was bidden; while little Miss Constance, unscrewing her rosy face from its momentary alarm, trotted with great glee over the fresh-raked bed, delighted to make the most of a privilege usually forbidden her, and discovered new wolf's steps in all directions as fast as Lion made them.

They now called some of the workmen, who instantly confirmed their verdict.

“This is an old wolf, Prauer” said a rough, longhaired, shrewd-looking old peasant, scrutinising the tracts with Indian-like closeness and sagacity — “this is an old wolf, he walked so heavily; and here's a wound he has got to this paw, who knows when, from some other wolf, or maybe from Lion, — I dare say they are acquainted,” pointing out to the party a slight irregularity in the print of one of the hind feet, as if from a distorted claw. “He was here the beginning of the morning, that I can see.”

“But where was Lion ?” said the lady, eagerly.

“I went to the mill, Prauer, at sunrise, and took Lion with me, and by the time we got back the beast must

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have been off. I saw the old dog snuffing about, but the heavy dew would stop any scent. The wolves are hungry now, the waters have driven them up together, and the cattle are not let out yet. He is not far off, either; we must keep a sharp look-out. An old wolf like this will prowl about for days together round the same place, till he picks up something.”

“Heavens! how dreadful! Constance, come back this moment,” said the young mother, with an expression of anxiety which would have touched the roughest heart.

“Who knows where the creature may be now?”

“Never fear, Prauer; he's off to the woods by this time – plenty of his footmarks to be found there, I warrant,” pointing to a low, dismal-looking tract of brushwood, which formed the frontier to an immense morass, about a werst off. “Never fear old Pertel and old Lion will take care of the little Preilns. Polle üchtige! nothing at all, not a hair on their heads shall be hurt, bless them!”

“Yes, yes, good Pertel,” said the lady, with a nod and a smile, to the rough creature, “I know that. But under our very windows! — I never knew them come so near before.”

“Dreist wie ein wolf — bold as a wolf,” said the phlegmatic head-gardener, a German; “that's an old proverb.”

They now returned to the house with minds ready to take alarm at any sight or sound. The cousin knew not how much there was or was not to fear; and, though the lady did, the voice of her maternal anxiety amply made up for all the silence of her imagination. The children,

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of course, were not slow in catching the infection; and, what with fear and what with fun, there was no end to the wolves that were seen in the course of the next fourand-twenty hours. Any and every object served their turn: sheep, foals, and calves; old men and old women; stunted trees in the distance, and round grey stones near; not to mention innumerable articles of furniture in various corners of the house — all stood for wolves; not only successively, but over and over again. Lion, however, was the greatest bugbear of all, and the good old dog could not push open the door, and come lazily in, with all his claws rattling on the smooth parquête floor, without setting the children screaming, and startling the two ladies much more than they liked to confess.

But this state of things was too inconvenient to last.

A succession of false alarms is the surest cure for false fears; and, to quote the fable for once in its literal sense, they were weary of hearing “Wolf!” called.

Nevertheless, they did not undertake long walks without protection, and never at all in the direction of the morass; the children were not allowed to wander a step alone; doors and windows, which otherwise, at this time of the year, are very much left to please themselves by night as well as by day, were now every evening punctiliously closed; and one door especially, next Louisa's bedroom, at the end of a long corridor, which communicated with an unfinished addition to the house then in progress, was always eyed with great distrust. It had no means of shutting whatsoever. Nightly a bar was talked of, and daily forgotten; but “Dreist wie ein wolf!” sounded in Louisa's ears, and she pushed a heavy box firmly against it.

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Several days passed away, and the episode of the wolf's footprints was almost forgotten, when suddenly a scream and a shout were heard from a kind of bakinghouse within view of the windows. Lion started up from the cool drawing-room floor, where he lay stretched at full-length, and leaped out of the open window.

Workmen from the new building rushed across the lawn, each with such implements in their hands as they had been working with; and out of the baking-house, followed by a lad, sprung an immense wolf. At first, he bounded heavily away, and was evidently making for the wood; but Lion came close upon him, overtook him in a few seconds, and attacked him with fury. The wolf turned, and a struggle began. For a while the brave dog was alone; each alternately seemed to hang with deadly gripe upon the other, and yells, and snorts, and sharp howls filled the air. But now the foremost of the pursuers reached the spot; dog and wolf were so rolled together, that at first he stayed his blows; but soon a terrible stroke with the hatchet was given, — another, and another. The animal relinquished the dog, tried to turn upon the man, and soon: lay dead at his feet.

Meanwhile, the ladies from the mansion were also hurrying forward, full of horror for the scene, and of anxiety for Lion, but unable, in the excitement of the moment, to keep back. There lay the animal, the ground ploughed up violently around it, a monstrous and terrific sight. Death had caught it in the most savage posture, — the claws all extended, — the hind feet drawn up, the fore ones stretched forward, — the head turned sharp round, and the enormous jaws, which seemed as if they would split the skull asunder, wide open. Nature could

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hardly show a more repulsive-looking creature — one which breathed more of the ferocity of the wild beast, or excited less of the humanity of man; and, as Louisa looked down at the lifeless carcass, all lean, starved, and time-worn, with ghastly gashes, where late every nerve had been strained in defence of that life which God had given it, entangling doubts came over her mind of the justice of that Power which could make an animal to be hated for that which His Will alone had appointed it to be. But, fortunately for her, she came from a land where, with all its faults, the stone of sophistry is not given for the bread of faith; quickly, therefore, came that antidote thought, which all who seek will find — the sole key to all we understand not in the moral world — leaving only a pardonable pity for a creature born to hunt and be hunted, ordained neither to give nor to find quarter, and to whom life had apparently been as hard as death had been cruel. Poor beast! It was a savage wolf all over; rough, coarse, clumsy, and strong; the hair, or rather bristles, dusky, wiry, and thin; and not one beauty about it, except, perhaps, those long, white, sharp teeth, which had drawn so much blood, and were now tinged with that of the fine old dog. Lion lay panting beside his dead enemy, the blood trickling down his throat, on which the wolf had fixed a gripe which life could not long have sustained.

The whole history was now heard from the lad.

There had been baking going on that morning in the outhouse, and he went in to light his pipe. As he blew up the ashes he saw a great animal close beside him. In the dark he mistook it for Lion, and put out his hand; but it rose at once against him with an action not to be mistaken by a native of these climes; on which he

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screamed as loud as he could, for his breath stood still, the poor boy assured them, with fright; and the creature, taking alarm, rushed out of the door.

“The Prauer may let the little ladies run about now,” said old Pertel. “That's the same wolf that crossed the bed last Thursday; I know him by this left hind-foot;” and he held up a grim limb where an old wound had turned the claw aside. “He got this in some of his battles; many a foal yet unborn would have felt it this summer."

And the old man stroked the dead animal with satisfaction.

They now all left the scene of battle, and refreshments were given to those who had assisted at it.

Olga proposed giving the boy, who was still trembling with fright, a glass of sugar and water, this being what the ladies of this country invariably take when their nerves are shaken; but her mother suggested that a glass of brandy would be much more to his taste; and accordingly he received a dose, which not only restored the courage he had lost, but lent him a large temporary stock in addition. Lion, too, was well cared for, and immensely pitied. The wound on his throat, which was too close under his own long tongue to be reached by it, was washed with certain balsams with which this country abounds; after which, the old dog employed himself in slobbering over various rents and scratches in more accessible parts of his body, and finally went fast asleep, which the children hoped would do him much good, and, for about two minutes, spoke over him in whispers, and went round him on tiptoe.

Since the day of the footprints, the lady and her cousin had carefully refrained from any subject

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connected with wolves, or wild beasts in general; for the children's imaginations required to be studiously tranquillized, and even their own were quite lively enough without additional stimulus. But now nothing else was discussed; everything was àpropos of wolves; and some acquaintances from a distant part of the country coming in for the evening, the whole time was passed in telling wolf anecdotes.

The fact of the animal being discovered in the baking house was soon explained; for it appeared that the wolf, like the bear, is excessively fond of bread, and that, after the smell of fresh blood, that of fresh baking is surest to attract him. A peasant woman, who had just drawn her hot rye-loaves out of the oven, quitted her cottage for a few minutes, leaving her two young children playing at the same bench on which the smoking bread was laid.

Scarcely had she turned her back, when an enormous wolf sprang in, took no notice of the screaming children, but snatched a loaf from the bench. The mother, hearing screams, hastened back, and as she reached the door the wolf bounded out of it with the hot bread in his jaws. “I have heard the old woman often tell the tale,” said the speaker; “and she invariably added, ‘and so I lost my biggest loaf; but never was there a guest more welcome to it.’”

Another time, a kitchen-maid, whose office it is to bake the common rye bread, was carrying the hot loaves, towards night, across the court, when she met a large animal which she mistook in the dark for one of the huge cattle-dogs. But it rose upon her, and she felt the claws upon her bare arm, ready, at the next moment, to slit the skin, as is their wont, and rend her down. In her

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terror, she crammed a loaf into the creature's jaws, and he made off with the sop, perfectly content.

Upon the whole, it is very difficult to procure information about the wolf’s habits, or even tidings of its depredations. The common peasant, who alone knows anything about the animal, is withheld by superstition from even mentioning the name of wolf; and if he mentions him at all, designates him only as the “old one,” or the “grey one,” or the “great dog;” feeling, as was also the case in parts of Great Britain with regard to the fairies, that to call these animals by their true name is a sure way to exasperate them. This caution may be chiefly attributed, however, to the popular and very ancient belief in the “Wär Wolf;” 1 not a straightforward, open-mouthed, plain-spoken beast, against which the cattle may plunge, and fight, and defend themselves as best they may, and which either wounds or kills its prey in a fair and ferocious way; but that odious combination of human weakness and decrepitude, with demoniacal power and will, which all nations who have believed in have most unjustly persecuted and most naturally hated — in other words, a bad, miserable old woman leagued body and soul with 1

“This mysterious and widely spread superstition – the ware wolf of England, the loup garrou of France – was especially current in Germany, where many tales of its terror still exist.

Two warlocks were executed in the year 1810, at Liege, for having, under the form of ware wolves, killed several children. They had a boy of twelve years of age with them, who completed the Satanic trio, and, under the form of a raven, consumed those portions of the prey which the warlocks left.” – Grimm's Deutsche Sagen.

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Satan, who, under the form of a W채r Wolf, paralyses the cattle with her eye, and from whom the slightest wound is death. Be this as it may, the superior intelligence of the upper classes is to this day occasionally puzzled to account for the fate of a fine young ox, who will be found in the morning breathing hard, his hide bathed in foam, and with every sign of fright and exhaustion, while, perhaps, only one trifling wound will be discovered on the whole body, which swells and inflames as if poison had been infused, the animal generally dying before night. Nor does the mystery end here; for, on examining the body, the intestines will be found to be torn as with the claws of a wolf, and the whole animal in a state of inflammation, which sufficiently accounts for death.

This same superstition also favours the increase of this dreadful animal, for the peasant has a strong feeling against destroying a wolf; says that, if you disturb them, they will disturb you, and generally attributes the loss of his foal, or of foal and mother together (a too frequent occurrence), to the plunder of a wolf's nest by his less superstitious neighbour. Nevertheless the destruction of their young is the only way in which an efficient warfare with the wolf can be carried on, and the provincial government of this part of Russia wisely bestows a small reward in money for every pair of wolves' ears that is brought to the magistrate of the district; thus setting up one powerful passion in the human breast against another. But superstition has the best of it at present, and, perhaps, in the long run, is the better thing of the two.

The wolves make their nests usually deep in the

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morasses, a few sticks being dragged together in a small hollow, or under a juniper-bush, where the young wolves lie with great jaws, which open wide at the slightest noise, like; the bill of a young bird, and equally disproportionate to their size. It is at this season that the wolves are the most rapacious and dauntless, defying danger, and facing daylight to provide prey for their young. In old times, if tradition is to be believed, the abduction of peasant children for the young wolves was a thing of no uncommon occurrence, so that the father of a former day had as little chance of rearing all his children as the farmer of the present his foals. But now, with the culture of the land, and the gradual increase of farming stock, a favourable change has taken place, and the recent introduction of sheep especially has proved a great accommodation to both parties. Nevertheless, the wail of a poor peasant mother for a missing child is still raised from time to time, though the widely scattered population, and the remote situation of single villages, on that account more exposed to such depredations, allow only the occasional echo of such distress to reach the ears of the upper classes. The peasant also is an uncommunicative being; the slave of one set of foreigners, the subject of another, and oppressed by both, he shuts up his mouth and his heart, and cares little to divulge the more sacred sorrows of his life to those who are the authors of almost every other.

The evening visitors, however, related a wonderful instance which had occurred under their own knowledge :– A peasant child, just able to trot alone, and as such left to trot just where it pleased, was carried off unperceived and unhurt by a she-wolf to her nest at some distance. The young wolves, however, had just

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consumed some larger and commoner prey, and knew when they had had enough; so they let the child lie among them, and saved it up for another day. The little creature remained thus through the night, when the old one quitting the nest again, and the young ones probably sleeping, it crawled gradually away, as unintentional of escape as it had been unconscious of danger, and at length reached the fence of a remote field, where it was picked up by a labourer and brought to the house of the narrator. But the innocent child had suffered terribly, and bore upon its tender body such marks of the wolf's den as would, so long as it lived, sufficiently attest an otherwise almost incredible fact. The young wolves had forborne to devour their prey, but they had tasted it! The skin of the forehead was licked raw; all the fingers were more or less injured, but two of them were sucked and mumbled completely off!

This tale was now followed by another more tragic and equally true, having taken place only the summer before upon a neighbouring estate, so that the lady of the house, her beautiful brow contracted, and her voice lowered, related it herself to the party. A woman, whose husband, being a Junker, or something less obnoxious than a Disponent, lived in a more comfortable way than the usual run of peasants, though still classing as a peasant, was washing one day before the door of her house, with her only child, a little girl of four years old, playing about close by. Her cottage stood in a lonely part of the estate, forming almost an island in the midst of low, boggy ground. She had her head down in the wash-tub, and, hot and weary, was bending all her efforts to complete her task, when a fearful cry made her turn, and there was the child, clutched by one shoulder,

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in the jaws of a great she-wolf, the other arm extended to her. The woman was so close that she grasped a bit of the child's little petticoat in her hand, and with the other hand, screaming frantically, beat the wolf with all her force to make it let go its hold. But those relentless jaws stirred not for the cries of a mother — that gaunt form cared not for the blows of a woman. The animal set off at full speed with the child, dragging the mother along, who clung with desperation to her grasp. Thus they continued for two or three dreadful minutes, the woman only just able to hold on. Soon the wolf turned into some low, uneven ground, and the woman fell over the jagged trunk of a tree, tearing in her fall the piece of petticoat, which now only remained in her hand. The child hitherto had been aware of its mother's presence, and, so long as she clung; had not uttered a scream; but now the little victim felt itself deserted, and its screams resounded through the wood. The poor woman rose in a moment, and followed over stock and stone, tearing herself pitiably as she went, yet knowing it not; but the wolf increased in speed, the bushes grew thicker, the ground heavier, and soon the screams of the child became her only guide. Still she dashed on, frantic with distress, picked up a little shoe which the closing bushes had rubbed off, saw traces of the child's hair and clothes on the low, jagged boughs, which crossed the way; but, oh! the screams grew fainter, then louder, and then ceased altogether!

“The poor mother saw more on her way, but I can't tell what that was” said the lady, her voice choked with horror, and her fair face streaming with tears. Her hearers did not press to know, for they were chilled enough already. “And only think” she continued, “of the

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wretchedness of the poor afflicted creature, when her husband returned at night and asked for the child. She told me that she placed the piece of petticoat and the little shoe before him, but how she told him their great misery God only knows! she has no recollection. And now you don't wonder,” she added, “that I shuddered at seeing those footprints;” and she shuddered again.

“Sometimes I am in terror when my children are longer out of my sight than usual, and fancy every person that approaches me is charged with some dreadful announcement; but God avert this! mistrust is wrong.”

With these words the circle broke up. The long droshky, like a chaiselongue put upon wheels, came to the door, and the guests drove off. It was one of those exquisite nights peculiar to these climes, which the French aptly term des nuits blanches, — a night, light without moon, a day shaded without clouds, — the last glow of the evening and the first grey of morning melted together; a period when all the luminaries of the heavens seem to rest their beams without withdrawing them. The cousins stood at the door, hand in hand, gazing in the direction which their guests had taken; and a looker-on might have imagined they were envying them that calm, cool drive. But they envied them not; they honoured all that was good in this strange land, and prized all who were good to them; but a sense of solitude hung heavy upon them in the society of others, which only the solitude of their own could dispel. They had much, also, to say to one another, which a native of these climes could not comprehend, or would not like.

Not that they said aught that was strange, or wrong, or unkind; but they spoke as they thought, and they thought unlike all the world around them. So they

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lingered beneath that beautiful light, talking calmly of what was peculiar in their lot, yet not complaining of the evil, but rather extracting the good; and they spoke, too, as those speak who have no time to lose, but rather much to recover, plainly, earnestly, and touchingly, because so truly; each seeking to give knowledge of her own mind, and comfort to that of her companion. And from that which concerned their own hearts individually they soon passed on to that which concerns every heart that beats; and thoughts came which all have heard, but not all have listened to — thoughts which are locked to some, checked to others, and not even breathed freely to the most kindred spirit, except at those moments, few and fleeting, which favour their utterance and suit their sacredness. They discoursed on the wonderful economy of happiness in a world full of woe; how, the fewer the joys, the higher the enjoyment, till the last and highest of all, true peace of mind, is found to contain every other. And then they spoke of the blessing of sorrow, and of the mystery of sin, and turning to her companion that angel's face, more angelic still in the soft light, and with a transition of expression peculiar to herself, the lady added, — “And sin brought the wolves too, dear one!”

“True, true,” said Louisa; “I thought of that when the poor beast lay dead at our feet to-day.”

And so they turned and went into the house.

They now took their usual last look at the children, who slept in opposite cots in the same room. Each lay the sleeping effigy of her waking self. The eldest, composed, cool, and orderly; with pale cheek and

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smooth hair; the limbs straight, the head gently bent, the bed-clothes lying unruffled upon the regularly heaving chest; all that was beautiful, gentle, and meek; looking as if stretched out for a monumental effigy. On the other side, defying all order and bursting all bounds, was the little Constance, flushed, tumbled, and awry; the round arms tossed up, the rosy face flung back, the bed-clothes pushed off, the pillow flung out, the nightcap one way, the hair another; all that was disorderly and most lovely by night — all that was unruly and most winning by day.

“Come, my lovely one, mamma will set all to rights!” And, with a few magical movements, which the young mother's hand best knows, the head was raised up, the limbs smoothed down, the little form adjusted into a fresh position, and, with sighs and smiles, and a few murmuring sounds, the blooming creature was fast asleep again.

“Only think, that poor woman's child was the age of Constance!”

“Don't think of it,” said Louisa, “it will haunt your sleep;” and she led her cousin to her room through the children's, where they parted for the night.

“You need not shut the children's door, nor any as you go along; the house is oppressively warm, and Constance is hot.”

Louisa came through two halls and down the corridor, looked at the door into the new building, and remembered that the bar had again been forgotten; pushed the box again up, and then went into her own room and shut the door.

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The night, as we have described, was one of those which seem too good to be passed in sleep. Louisa was sad and serious, and all without and within tempted her to watch. But so long as the heaviness of the heart can yield to that of the head, there is not much that is amiss in either. By the time, therefore, that she had fully resolved to lie awake, recalling old griefs and conjuring up new, past and future, with their cares and fears, had vanished away, and of the present she knew as little as the children she had left in their cots.

How long this lasted she knew not, some hours it seemed, when she was roused by a sound in the adjoining unfinished building. At first the drowsy senses paid little attention, and dozed on; but again she was roused, louder and louder, and, starting up, she shook off sleep, flew out of bed, and, opening the door, looked into the dark passage. To her astonishment the door into the new building was half open; she advanced to shut it, when again a noise made her turn her head in the opposite direction; and there — oh, Heavens! the poor girl's blood froze in her veins — there, stealing down the passage, its back towards her, was — a wolf! An exclamation of horror which burst from her lips disturbed the animal; it turned, and the light from the half-open door shone on its green eyes and white teeth as it sprang upon her. With one convulsive bound Louisa cleared the threshold, dashed her door to, locked it, barred it, flung a chair against it, and, this done, stood in a state of agony for which no words exist. She seemed to see all in a moment; herself safe, but those children! — those children! not a door closed between them and those dreadful jaws! She was stupified with terror and a strange, dinning sound, like her heart's own

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throbbing filled her ears, and shut out every other sense.

“Dreist wie ein Wolf! — Dreist wie ein Wolf!” she repeated, mechanically; and then, forcing herself from the fainting, trance-like feeling that oppressed her, she thought for one moment that she would follow the wild beast. Her hand was on the lock, but she looked round for some weapon of defence. There was not a thing she could use, — not a stanchion to the window, not a rod to the bed. Then she listened at the door, and distinctly heard the trampling claws on the boards. The animal was still close to her door, and there was time, if she could keep her senses together, to consider some means of help. Oh, if she could but have stopped that dinning sound in her ears! but it came again, beating louder and louder, and perfectly paralysed her. The effort to open the window restored her. How she got out she knew not, but there she was on the damp ground, alone in the open garden. And now there was no time to be lost; she had to get round the end of the house, which was half closed up with bushes, half blocked up with building materials, stones, and timber. But the night had grown darker; she could not see the path; she knew that she was losing time, and yet that all depended on her haste; she felt fevered with impatience, yet torpid with terror. At length she disengaged herself from the broken, uneven ground, and struggled forward. There were the windows of the children's and her cousin's rooms; she had fancied that she could reach and open them with her hands, and call to those within; but how confused was her head! they belonged to a later part of the house, and were much higher than her own. She called and called, but her voice failed, and no one answered; she stooped for a stone or something to throw up, but only soft grass or

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moist leaves came into her hand. Suddenly a scream was heard, it was Constance's voice, — scream over scream. Frantic with terror, Louisa now dashed to another part of the house where the servants slept. As she reached it, a figure came towards her. Thank Heaven, it was old Pertel! But those screams; — they reached her louder and louder! She could only ejaculate, “Weiche Preilns! — Weiche Preilns!” — “The little ladies — the little ladies!” But he seemed neither to heed her words nor the dreadful sounds that impelled them, and took her hand, in peasant fashion, to kiss it.

“Weiche Preilns! — Weiche Preilns!” she reiterated; but again he took her hand. She struggled, but he held it firm. She looked down, and there was the fairest, softest hand locked round hers; she looked up, and there was the sweetest, gentlest face bent laughing over her.

“I must say, darling, you speak better Esthnish in your sleep than you do when you are awake. What has made you sleep so late? Olga has been knocking twice at your door, — she would not come in unbidden for the world, — and Constance has been screaming, in one of her fits of play, till the whole house heard her. And when I came at last, and took your hand to waken you, you only knocked it aside, and ejaculated 'Weiche Preilns!' with such a pitiable expression, that I woke you with my laughing. How sound you have slept!”

“Slept!” said Louisa, “indeed I have, — such a sleep as I never wish for again! But I see it all; the wolf of yesterday — Olga's knocking — Constance's screaming — your hand!” And she related her dream.

The cousins laughed together, but also thanked God together that such scenes only exist in dreams. For

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wolves neither jump up to windows, nor open doors, nor walk up and down corridors. Nevertheless, a bar was put on to that door before night.

Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake (1809-1893) was an English writer, art critic and art historian. She travelled extensively and resided briefly in Estonia during 1838-1841, 1844 and 1878. This story was originally published as “The Wolves of Esthonia� in Fraser's Magazine, 31 (April 1844), pp. 392-400 and then again in a collection of works by Lady Elizabeth entitled Livonian Tales (London: John Murray, 1846), pp. 121-136, under the title that it appears here.

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The Silver Cup Sir Stephen George Tallents

I I met him first one March night in a farmhouse in Estonia, behind the Bolshevik front, and of that night I chiefly remember the cold. I was a war correspondent then, and had been spending a couple of days in an armoured train, when one evening, just about sundown, my host asked if I would like to ride out with him and have supper with the headquarters’ staff of a neighbouring regiment. It had been a depressing day of snow-storms in which our men had failed to dislodge

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the Bolsheviks from a village a few miles ahead of our train, and I was tired of waiting in a stuffy railway carriage for an advance. So I agreed gladly, and soon found myself astride of a shivering pony, waiting for my host to start and watching a small fire which some of his men had kindled under shelter of a bank at the forest edge.

Oh! but it was cold. There was an icy wind blowing as we cantered behind our guide away from the railway, uphill through trees and scrub. And when we reached the top of the hill it met us straight in the face. I felt my little horse quail before it as we came out into the open, and I drew down the flaps of my fur cap over my ears to save them from frostbite. Even so, my feet and my fingers were soon like ice and, if I had dismounted, I do not think I could ever have got up again. We struck presently into a forest track and into partial shelter from the freezing wind; and at last, after half an hour's riding, emerged into a clearing set on a knoll, where a sentry in a sheepskin coat stopped us and walked on with us to the farm. By a gate he showed us in the failing light two dead men lying almost concealed by the drifting snow.

Bolsheviks, he said, caught running out of the farm when it had been taken a couple of days before. The head of one of them lay uncovered, the fine-featured face of quite a young boy. For a moment I wondered to myself how he could have joined that company. And then we were at the door.

Our escort knocked at the door and a guard opened it – a ragged fellow with a rifle. The door opened straight into the living room of the farm, and a knot of officers sitting at the table stood up as we entered. The wind

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blew the candle flames about their supper table, and the movement of the light half disguised their faces.

Through a door at the back of the room I had a glimpse of a peasant woman, a girl and a very old man, peering out to see who the new-comers were.

The bearded Colonel of the regiment, a man, I suppose, of about forty, got up from the head of the table and shook hands with me. I repeated this formality – it is the way of the country – with all the officers present, and then sat down on the Colonel's right, where the adjutant made way for me. Dinner began, served by the women of the farm from the adjoining room. There were two bottles of potato spirit on the table, and from these we drank each other's health, eating meantime black bread and butter and some small fish, evidently a preserve from the sea coast. In the middle of the table stood a chased silver cup of fine workmanship; and on my remarking it, my host first pledged me with it, and then told how it had been captured from the Bolsheviks ten days before. It must be very old, he said. No doubt the Reds had looted it from the country house of some baron. Then, as the restraint of myself and my new companions melted, we began to talk.

“You didn't expect to find an Englishman here, did you?” said my host.

I looked up, bewildered.

He indicated with a bend of his head a man sitting opposite me and to my right, who smiled at the introduction and bowed slightly and ironically. He was tall, with prominent cheekbones and light blue eyes set into a wide forehead, and above it a shock of tawny hair.

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He might, I thought, be about thirty-five years of age.

“Are you an Englishman?” I said.

“Partly,” he replied, speaking in English with a noticeable foreign accent. “My father was English, but my mother was a Russian.”

“Have you ever been in England?” I asked.

“Once,” he said, “when I was a lad. I've been in most European countries in my time,” he added, smiling.

“We must have a talk some day,” I said in English, and then turned back to converse in Russian with the others.

There were sounds of a man knocking the snow off his boots at the door, and a rifleman with a sheepskin cap and coat entered and stood to attention inside the door. Again the flames of the candles bent before the wind, and I caught the eyes of the Englishman looking at me across the table, with a sense that he too, like me, was partly a spectator of what was happening. The other officers were helping each other to bits of meat and potato from a dish set down in front of us.

“What is it?” said the Colonel to the new-comer.

“The Bolsheviks drove us out just before dark. We saw about twenty men, and they've got a machine gun.”

“I'll go for them at daylight,” said the Colonel. “We must go and see our men,” he added abruptly. “Excuse me, but the Englishman will keep you company.”

He and the officers filed out into the darkness. My riding companion went with them. The Englishman and

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I were left alone. I went across and sat over the fire and the Englishman joined me.

“How did you come into this country?” I asked him.

“The Bolsheviks destroyed my home. They would have killed me if they could have caught me. I lived among them in disguise for a while, and then, as I was starving, I escaped along the coast and joined the Estonians. But there's nothing for a man to do in these parts now, except to fight somebody.”

“And what's the end of it all going to be?”

“God alone knows!” he said. “As long as you treat Russia as a play, what hope is there for her?”

I laughed, and asked him what he meant.

“Before the war you used to pretend that Russia was a fairyland. Now you make out she's possessed by demons. And you're not even content to watch. You must take sides in the play, just as the crowd watching a melodrama will always cheer the hero and boo at the villain. And it's not for nothing that all the poor students in Moscow used to draw lots for the privilege of standing in the queue outside the theatre of a bitter autumn's afternoon. Treat us like characters in a play, and you may be sure that we're much too fond of the theatre not to play up to you, while the filth in the streets of Moscow will go on piling itself up until it reaches the first-floor windows. For Heaven's sake try the plan of treating us like ordinary human beings. I dare say we shan't enjoy it half so much at first,” he ended up, laughing grimly; “but believe me, no nation can spend all its time behind the footlights and survive.”

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“Do you mean to go back to Russia," I said, "or shall you come to England?”

“To-morrow morning," he said, "I'm for the attack.

What's the good of thinking about anything beyond that?”

And then his Colonel came in again and it was time for my friend and me to be gone.

I mounted heavily into the saddle, with difficulty supporting the weight of my coat. At the corner of the farm we turned to wave farewell to the lighted door.

Then with collars turned high about our ears we followed our guide into the darkness of the open country.

The wind had dropped and the distant stars shone faintly in the sky. The snow glimmered about us. The black fir trees rose solemnly from the snow. I had the vision of a vast and peaceful country, dotted miserably and insignificantly with the frightened hearts of men.

II It was early autumn before I saw the Englishman again, and I had settled down in Riga in some rooms I had found that looked past a warehouse on the river front towards the wooden bridge. I was living then in a flat that had belonged once to a Baltic nobleman, now fled to Berlin or overseas to Scandinavia; and I had a single servant – a Russian girl with, I fancy, some Balt blood in her veins, whose home had been in Moscow. She

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brought me my meals and kept my rooms clean; but we rarely talked. Once, I remember, when I spoke of the “Englishman,” she told me some tale that had been current about him in Moscow – how one night for a freak he'd bought up all the tables in the Moscow restaurants, and then had dined in state with a single companion at one of them. “The Madman” they had called him in those days. It gave me a clue to his life; but I did not make out whether she had ever known him personally. A Lettish officer, too, of my acquaintance spoke about him one evening as an outlaw on whose head three armies already had set a price. I gathered that he had left the Estonians and joined the Letts. But of himself I saw but little, though I ran up against him once or twice on the road, when I was wandering about the country among the troops. At those meetings I had little chance of talking to him, and, looking back, remember the setting of them rather than the man. I saw him, for example, early in the morning of the day on which the Baltic troops so nearly took Riga. All night long the retreating Lettish army had defiled back across the bridge and I, after standing for a while and watching the silent and dispirited procession of men and carts, had lain down in my clothes for broken snatches of sleep, expecting any moment that the enemy would be in the town. Someone, however, set to and held the further end of the bridge. I could see, when from time to time I got up and looked out of the window, the flashes of rifle and machine-gun fire leaping into the darkness five hundred yards away across the river, and wondered how the fight was going. But afterwards no one seemed to know for certain who had been the hero of the night. Later, in passing talk, I heard the Englishman's name coupled

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with the exploit. But, when he came and knocked on my door the next morning, he told me nothing of the night or of the part he had played in it – only sat gulping down a hurried breakfast, silently and with a preoccupied air, and when he had finished, caught up his revolver and his steel helmet again and went out, with a muttered word of thanks, to rejoin his men.

Nearly a month later, I met him one day out in the country to the west of Dünamünde. Snow – the first snow of the year – had fallen in the night; and the white earth, tinged with blue and with the long shadows of the brief day upon it, was hardly distinguishable at the horizon from the delicate blue of the autumn sky. I remember chiefly how strange the world looked that morning, like a woman in whom the donning of a new dress had pointed a noble and unsuspected beauty. As I was watching it from the corner of a wood, the Englishman passed me with a troop of Lettish cavalry, eager with the pursuit of the retiring Germans; but I had no time to do more than wave my hand to him before he and his company were gone.

A few weeks later I came across him one night just in front of Mitau. They had told us in Riga that the German headquarters there had been captured, and I had pushed out in the hope of being early in the town.

I had ridden out to where a bridge across a frozen river had been blown up by the retiring enemy, and then had gone slowly forward on foot along the high road through the forest, with the red glare of a great fire glowing ahead of me in the sky. Just outside Mitau I came upon the headquarters of a Lettish regiment, and in the kitchen of the country house where they were

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established found the Englishman bending over a map in a company of other officers. He was told off, I learned, to take a report back to Riga, and I, finding that Mitau was still feebly holding out, arranged to go back with him. We spoke but little as we trudged back to the frozen river. The fir trees, dim and mysterious, stood ranked upon our either hand. From time to time there met us out of the darkness and the falling snow, men marching up to the front, silently, with heads bent forward and packs and rifles slung across their shoulders. But snow and darkness seemed to separate us from them, and I at least, in spite of my companion, was oppressed with loneliness. Both of us, I am sure, were glad to reach the river, where we mounted and rode back to Riga.

We crossed the Dwina bridge together, and then my companion went off with his report to headquarters, while I went straight to my rooms to prepare for the two of us. We had been fasting for many hours, and when at length we sat down to the table, we still talked but little till we had eaten a good supper and drawn up our chairs round the open wood fire with a bottle of Grand Marnier, which I had brought out from England, set between us, and the silver cup that had been given to me on the night of our first meeting, standing by its side.

“Well,” said the Englishman, as he settled down into an arm-chair, threw his feet up against the stove, and, pouring it out, drank half a cupful of the liqueur, “that's finished.” And he put down the cup on the table with a gesture in which there seemed to be no satisfaction, but only the embittered taste of despair. “I've fought those fellows,” he cried, and he swept his arm in a circle to

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the east, “as I've fought the Germans and anyone else I could find to fight. But sometimes I've felt that if I stopped fighting for a moment, I should go through the lines and take my chance of being shot for the sake of joining them.”

“You've deserved a rest,” said I. “Rest!” said he. “I can't rest.” And I caught in his eyes a plain flicker of the same despair with which he had laid down the silver cup.

I refrained from adding another platitude, and waited for him to go on.

“Perhaps,” he went on, and for a moment he smiled, “perhaps it's the curse of my mixed blood. I suppose you think that I might settle down in the town here now and take a pension, if this damned Government could afford it, and hang my trophies on the walls and buy some furniture from the Jews and marry and grow fat ...

But have you ever seen children trying to run away from their own shadows? That's me always trying to escape from the shadow of myself.”

And he blew a great cloud of smoke out into the still air of the room.

I looked out of the window. Far away across the river the horizon was still red with the glare of burning farms.

“There'll be peace here now ... perhaps ... for a while.

And about the ashes of those farms they'll try and build up an imitation of England, with officials and factories and trade unions, and a host of hungry Jews waiting as the grey crows wait on the Dwina ice to pick up morsels as it floats melting down. It may be it was all worth

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fighting for. It may even be that for a time they will seem to succeed. But that's a question that I needn't ask.

I'm not one of your reconstructors. I couldn't sit down peacefully in Riga and help to build all that up again.

My father, you know, was an English doctor” -– I didn't know, for he had never spoken in detail of his parentage before – “an English doctor, who left his practice one autumn morning and fled to Moscow with my mother. A home was destroyed when I was conceived, and I can never be anything but an instrument of destruction. My father died when I was fifteen, but I've not forgotten some of the things he used to read to me. There was something about bringing to the world not peace but a sword. There was something, too, about the poor inheriting the earth. I've wandered in my time and I've never come across a country yet that wasn't organised with the main intention of preventing the poor from inheriting the earth. And what's the result? All Europe east of the Rhine in hunger and despair, and west of the Rhine – towns like I once saw in Lancashire the only time that I visited my grandfather. Isn't it worth spilling the blood and destroying the happiness of a generation in an attempt to devise a better life than that?

“Do you know what it is to be always waiting for something to happen? I've always been like that; and when other men have been sitting and playing cards and smoking and making love and making money, something within me has always driven me apart to solitude, feeling that everything about me was unreal and that there was something yet to come. Often I've thought that it was my mixed blood that made me separate, that I was homeless, cursed, like the Jews. But now the whole world's homeless and I'm solitary no

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longer. All the breadth of Europe they're coming to meet me, leaving their cards and their women and their roubles, hurrying to join a force that they feel is becoming stronger. Look at those red fires in Courland!

'A few burning farms,' you'll say. Yes, but those few burning farms are the flares of a dying civilisation.

That's the signal that the world's been waiting for. And now it's given, be sure that the world will obey it, and march no one knows where.”

He stopped, and taking a stick from the fireside, bent forward and lit his pipe. As he sat back in his chair, his eyes caught the silver cup on the table beside us.

“There's the curse of the world!” he said abruptly.

“What's civilisation meant to us but the fear of those who drank out of goblets and the hatred of those who couldn't?”

We sat staring at the piece of silver, till he, seizing the bottle itself, drained the liqueur that remained in it.

“They told me,” he said, putting the bottle down, “to go back with a message in the morning. Well, it's nearly morning already. But why should I rob of its privilege the one country that is left to put a price on my head?”

And with that, he sprang up and strode across the room to take up his belt and arms and to put on his greatcoat. I sat staring at the silver goblet. Outside in the cold I could hear the stamping of horses on the stones.

Then the door shut. I heard footfalls on the stairs, a movement among the horses outside, the start of a horse being mounted; and then, sharp and diminishing, the steps of horses that moved away quickly down the street.

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Sir Stephen George Tallents CB, CBE (1884-1958) was a British civil servant and an expert of public relations.

He was appointed British Commissioner for the Baltic Provinces in February 1919 and assisted with drawing up the treaty that established Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He also adjudicated the establishment of the border between Estonia and Latvia, notably in relation to dividing the city of Valga/Valka. This story originally appeared in a collection of short stories: Stephen Tallents, The Dancer and Other Tales (London: Constable & Company Limited, 1922), pp. 96-106.

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The Story of Oliver and Scarymouse Agnieszka Kunz

Another rainy day at the museum. Jane hated November and everything connected to it. ‘The worst time of the year ever’ – she thought – ‘the rain doesn’t want to go away to make room for the snow.’ She definitely liked winter, mostly because of the moment when she got home, changed her clothes and curled up under a warm blanket with a cup of tea or hot chocolate. But right now she just had to survive November and overcome her hatred for this type of weather.

It had been almost three months since she started to work at the museum. But this Saturday was different from the ones she had experienced so far. Somehow everyone was busy and she was the only one who had

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showed up. While cleaning the floor in the room behind the studio, she found a really old looking box full of books. It was not unusual to find books at the museum; pretty much every room was full of them, discarded from libraries all over the country. This box was different though. But she couldn’t say why. Maybe because it had no label, making it impossible to say where it came from. Maybe because it was hidden in the corner of the room. Or maybe because of the drawing of a plush animal on the top of the box. It looked a little bit like a mix of a teddy bear and a mouse, drawn by a small child. She could not resist opening the box. As soon as she did, all the lights went out. ‘Weird’ – she thought – ‘I have never seen that happen before.’ She looked in the office and in the warehouse for a new light bulb, but couldn’t find any and the closest shop was too far to walk. She was intrigued by the bizarre drawing.

Jane noticed a small lamp on a table, which seemed to work. Back in the room, she started to take books out of the box. All of them were in English and by famous English authors like Kipling, Huxley and Conan Doyle.

And then she found it. The cover of the book had exactly the same picture of the strange animal that was on the outside of the box. “The Story of Oliver and Scarymouse” was the title. The name of the author was too blurry to make out and it didn’t appear anywhere else inside. The cover was damaged and some of the pages were missing. Apparently it had been read a lot.

On the second page she found a barely visible dedication written in pencil – “To my dear Alice, don’t be afraid to pack your backpack.” She sat down crosslegged on the floor and started to read.

Oliver didn’t want to admit it in front of his travel

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companion, but he didn’t exactly know where they were going. When they left home in the morning, all he knew was that he had to go somewhere. He was sure he would recognise the place when he got there. He planned to travel alone, without his parents or his friends Timothy and Robin, and even without Scarymouse. But he hadn’t thought of telling Scarymouse not to go with him.

Because even if he had, she probably still would have followed him, because Scarymouse always did what she wanted and Oliver had to accept that. Secretly, he hoped that Scarymouse would find her own way and just leave him alone because he didn’t need anything or anyone in his life.

The mouse walked beside Oliver every day, though most of the time she was actually running with her small plush legs. ‘People walk too fast’ – she thought – ‘and they do not look at other smaller creatures.’ She didn’t want to admit that every night she slept with one eye open, because she was afraid that Oliver would leave under the cover of the night and she wouldn't be able to find him again.

They marched for several hours, during which Oliver didn’t say a word, and Scarymouse wanted to sing and dance because of the adventure they were having together. Maybe it was the greatest adventure of their lives. ‘It's funny’ – Scarymouse thought – ‘Often, when people want to do something, they are afraid of other people’s reactions or ashamed of their own desires. And yet this is so easy, to just wake up one day and fulfill your dreams.’

Jane stopped after a few pages because her hands were shaking. It was already getting late, and dusk and coldness were breaking into the museum from every

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corner. She found an old woolen blanket, wrapped it around herself, and went back to the story.

The journey continued. Oliver still wasn’t talking much, but at least now he was answering Scarymouse’s questions.

“Why are you so silent?” - Scarymouse asked, breaking the silence.

“Because I have nothing to say” – Oliver answered.

“If people only spoke when they had something to say, the ability to speak would have probably disappeared by now” – she said. Oliver did not react to her words.

Night came. Scarymouse didn’t like nights. Well, maybe she liked them, but only when she slumbered soundlessly on the shelf in front of Oliver’s bed. At night the world is scary, shrubs and trees turn into strange creatures, their boughs into writhing snakes. Nights give ordinary objects frightening shapes. ‘That is why no one should be alone at night’ – she thought at the exact same moment that Oliver said the words out loud.

“No one should be alone at night.”

He covered her with his blanket. And for the first time since they left home, she was not afraid of the snakes.

Jane was touched by the story. It reminded her of her childhood that she spent with his father in the countryside. Her mother worked as a professor at the university, and every summer she read books that she didn’t have time to read during the year. Unfortunately she didn’t have time for her own daughter, but Jane’s father tried to make it up to her by organising some day trips. Jane had her own small backpack, where she always put a blanket, a box with sandwiches, apples

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from the garden and her favourite sweater. The trips stopped when Jane turned 14 and her father died. The last thing he gave her was a new, bigger backpack for longer journeys they would have taken.

Her memories were bittersweet and Jane didn’t want to think any more about her childhood. She took a breath and went back to the story. Unfortunately a few of the pages were partly torn out, but she was able to gather that Oliver and Scarymouse met another scarymouse on the way, who told them about Scaryland – the place where all the plush mice live together in harmony and happiness. And they found it.

Oliver knew that the time for Scarymouse to leave.

But he did not want to let her go because he was afraid of being alone. And she was too afraid to start a conversation about leaving because she didn’t want to hurt him.

And so they left Scaryland after only a few days. This time, however, they didn’t laugh and joke or even talk because they were both immersed in their own thoughts.

“You know I like you very much, Scarymouse” – said Oliver, expressing his feelings for the first time in his life.

“I know” – for the first time in her life she said very little.

“And I want the best for you.” She did not answer; she just smiled under her mouse whiskers. “I'm afraid of being alone and I wanted you to accompany me on the journey. But now I see how selfish I was. And right now, your place is not with me but with them in Scaryland.

And I have to let you go.”

Scarymouse’s eyes flashed but she remained silent.

She walked slowly dragging her feet until she disappeared beyond the horizon. A few minutes later she

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ran back into her friend’s arms. The hugs lasted a long time, but in the end Scarymouse went back to the land of plush mice. Oliver sat down and wept. ‘This is how it is’ – he thought – ‘some people stay with us even though they don’t want to and some leave because they have to.’

It was nearly midnight when Jane finished the book.

For a brief moment, she couldn’t get up from the floor.

Then she realised that somewhere in the bottom of her closet there should be the old backpack she got from her father. She went home, found it and put “The Story of Oliver and Scarymouse” inside. And then she went to sleep.

Agnieszka Kunz: This is the first time a short story of Agnieszka’s has been published, although there have been many writing attempts now hiding in a sock drawer. She was born in Poland, but for the past two years she has been sharing her time between the children centre where she works and the Printing Museum in Tartu. She is currently working on her new blog “Tartumania”.

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[untitled] Tina Rowe

I'm 51 and it surprises me. In April 2014, I spent almost four days with people in their early 20s. It felt strange to be in the company of so many adults who had parents the same age (and even younger) as me. It made me think about my father because I am coming to the same age that my father was when he died. I tell people he had a problem with his heart, and he did, in a kind of way, he suffered from depression and it beat him. At the age of 52 on a beautiful autumn day in 1979 he committed suicide and left us all reeling, guilty and bereft.

My father was a nice man, but in my eyes he was always just that. A father. My special kind of adult whose 6ft bulky presence was all about authority and

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experience. He was from another world that I would never have to be part of because he was born in the 1920s and that was so long ago those times were in some ways completely irrelevant. To be honest, I never considered that he had existed at all until I did.

His death wrecked my education in some respects and I stopped studying art and started to look at the world. I have travelled a lot. My father only left the country on two occasions. First just after the war, when for some reason or other he was flown to Holland and he came back with photographs of tulip fields. The second time he and mother went on one of those strange cruise lets, from some port in the UK to a port in Belgium or even Holland again. They did not get off the ship, but they went away together. That was during the last good year of his life.

I find it difficult to keep myself moored at home. I am restless and greedy for other places and ways of doing things. I've lived in two countries besides the one I belong to and intend to live abroad again. For the most part I have done this travelling alone. I started writing this sitting in an apartment in an old communist bloc in the Estonian town of Tartu, where I was spending a month as artist in residence and it smelt just like one I had lived in in Poland 20 years earlier, I found it kind of comforting. I could easily have seen my father, given the opportunity, living the kind of life I had lived though as a musician rather than a teacher. I could see him playing the drums or piano in some jazz band, smoking foreign cigarettes, drinking too much wine and shyly getting his heart broken by the wrong type of girl.

Whenever I have been abroad, I have always found

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myself addressing him at some point. Talking about what I am seeing and feeling because the man I knew would have been interested. It inevitably ends up with me being wrapped in a blanket of sadness. He has had many candles lit in his name, in Europe, in Asia, in Australasia and North America.

But I could never find a vocabulary about him that satisfied me because I only saw him as my father. And then something shifted during the stay in a beautiful Estonian house in the bleak and pretty Estonian countryside on the island of Saaremaa. I got so irritated hearing other people talking young stuff that I left off to take some photographs of a collapsed house I had seen from the car when we arrived. During the walk, I found myself talking about him instead of to him as I usually do.

My father had mostly just been a person who had responsibility for me and for the most part acquitted himself well and with great care. He helped me with school work, patiently taking me through my times table, showing me how to progress chords on the piano and to play by ear. He had taken me to colleges before I left school to make it easier for me to make my decisions about my future. Education was extremely important to him as his own lack of school certificate, scuppered by the Second World War, had effectively bricked him into the wall.

At 16, I thought I was a grown up. I had left school, I was a student and pretty soon I would be away from home at Camberwell, or Wimbledon or somewhere similar, learning to be an illustrator, or a print maker, who knows. Nobody will ever know as it didn't happen

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because of what he did and I allowed it to dictate what I did next.

After he died it never occurred to me just how much I had got from him and how I was letting him down by allowing myself to become mired in sadness about what happened. When everybody else was just about ready to file me under bin, he had kept the faith. After his death the only part of my college experience that had any meaning for me was photography with his camera and that just wasn't an art subject at the end of the 1970s so I kept it but didn't make the most of it.

I have seen him in the abstract for years, an adult I loved who died. As if being an adult wasn't what I have become. But I am an adult; I have been an adult for years. I made the mistake of thinking I was the most adult amongst the group this weekend and one of the things an adult does is listen to younger people and think to themselves how empty most conversations are when you are young.

But those conversations are not really empty; they are just tempered with inexperience. There is none of the appearance of depth that is really just the sheer weight of decades. When you are young, the idea of decades is a survey of constant change. When you are older, it becomes the gradual layering of more and more of the same.

1979 is the year that defines me. On 3rd of May Margaret Thatcher was swept to power over the rotting staves of what socialism had become. My god I hated her. For good reason it turned out. When she died, I checked my feelings for her, and found those feelings

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were as profound as they ever were and she wasn't dead enough.

On the 2nd October 1979, I had a row with my mother at the breakfast table because I had decided that I didn't want to stay at art college after only two weeks and wanted to leave home and live in London. I went to leave the house without kissing her goodbye. My father intercepted me at the door, stooped enough that his eyes were level with mine and said: “Kiss your mother goodbye please. Kiss your mother goodbye for me.�

Privately, I called myself Judas for a long time for doing as he asked. But now, I know it would have prevented nothing had I chosen to ignore him.

Two days in 1979 define me, on one day came a profound and terrible sadness on another a loathing so ingrained that I cannot squeeze the slightest drop of compassion for the wounded and confused husk Margaret Thatcher became.

At that time I was in some respects still a child. My politics were unsubtle; my knowledge was not in any way sophisticated. In truth some of my dearly held beliefs from that time are not even memories and I can only stare blankly when I am reminded of some jinks of the high or low variety that I indulged in. And this is the thing that coalesced while I was striding down a dirt track, on an island, closer to a Russia that didn't even exist when I was young than where I am supposed to be.

I realised that I am still the same person as I was at 16.

But I became aware that I am just a little more than one year younger than my father was when he died. I have one foot still in my childhood and it will always be the same. It was during that walk that my father stopped

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being just an adult parent to me and the conflicting pulls of dreaming and responsibility started to make sense.

Tina Rowe: Tina is an artist from the United Kingdom. She wrote this piece whilst undertaking an artist residency in Estonia during spring 2014. You can see her work at www.tinarowe.co.uk.

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Made with the support of Siim Sutrop and Taimo Peelo.

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