Death of despair

II. Death of Despair

Martyna Jarząbska 1893 - 1911

In the cemetery, they called her "The Lady of Wiżajny" or "The Polish Lady of Wiżajny." But when she died, there was no Poland here, nor in Wiżajny, nor anywhere else on Earth. She was buried near Przerosla, though she did not die here. Her ashes rest in this cemetery, though her memory lives on only by a field cross entwined with wild roses near her hometown of Wiżajny. Over the meager mound of earth overgrown with bitter wormwood, prickly thistle, and nettles, no one cries anymore, no one remembers.

A wooden pine cross with a shrine box, from which the Virgin Mary looks down on the fields of Wiżajny, was erected by people after the body was gone. Here, where the dry pear tree stood, a large stone lay dormant, the only witnesses to Martyna's death.

I stop by the cross whenever I have the opportunity to visit Wiżajny. I instinctively bow my head before the image of the Mother of God and, in concentration, recite a short prayer for the deceased. I don't know if I do this for any purpose or just out of a simple moral imperative. I know one thing: that in summer, wild roses smell wonderful near this cross, and on the grave made of plowed stones, which have already been overgrown with dog grass, red poppies shimmer. And beyond them, golden fields of grain sway on the hills.

She had met him a year earlier. He was a forest guard on the imperial estates that encompassed almost the entire forest. He had Polish roots, though he already considered himself German. He was an immature young man. He didn't take life very seriously. He hadn't grown into anything that allows a boy to become a man.

She first saw him on the road behind Bolcie. That's where the people of Wiżajny were closest to the forest, foraging for berries, mushrooms, and firewood. Because even though it was already abroad, it existed only on maps and in the minds of Prussian and Tsarist officials, not the locals. The forest belonged to the emperor, but somehow the people made deals with the guards, who turned a blind eye. A little tobacco or vodka did the trick.

She fell in love with Wilhelm at first sight. When he caught her in the forest and demanded a ransom to redeem herself for breaking the entry ban, she saw before her a handsome boy in a forest uniform. A boy, not a man. She wasn't frightened. She gave him some tobacco, and he left her alone.

A different person had already returned home. She felt a strange unease in her heart, a strange longing. She couldn't sleep that night, nor the next, nor the next few. His figure was in her mind, his warm, rough voice in her ears, his strange, captivating gaze from beneath the brim of his cap before her eyes. She longed to see him, even just once more. She longed for him, just as one yearns to love and be loved, just as one longs for the closeness of that one special person.

She met him. After that, she went to the Forest every day. Only for him, not for the berries, mushrooms, and brushwood. Through rain, snowstorms, windy February blizzards. She trudged toward him through snowdrifts, mud, and stinking puddles. They always arranged to meet him under an old spruce in the clearing. He waited there for her, or she for him. Sometimes they went to his lodge.

Then she wanted to live. "It's so wonderful, so divine!" she shouted to him, and the echo carried through the Forest. "You've completely blown my mind!" she admitted openly, but quietly, so no one would hear. And she focused her entire existence solely on Wilhelm. In dreams and in reality.

And Wilhelm promised her everything in the world. He unfolded beautiful visions, hugged her, kissed her, told her about a vast world he'd never been to. Martyna, like a small child, believed everything, blinded by her love. For she loved the rifleman from the forest more than herself. Few people, in reality, love someone more than themselves. With each passing day, there are fewer such people. Perhaps there are no such people left today. And if there are, they probably come from here...

He made her feel like a woman for the first time. He took her to the barn by the gatehouse. She didn't know then whether he wanted it more, to satisfy his instinctive male drive, or she wanted it more, to surrender herself to him, to prove her love, her affection, in which she would be willing to do anything, anything for him. After all, she was capable of devoting herself to him completely, without restraint, without any moderation, without any sense of any limits to common sense. Reason sleeps when emotions rule a person.

The winter wasn't harsh. Despite the advanced spring, there was still plenty of hay in the barn from last year's harvest. The imperial deer, fallow deer, and roe deer didn't need so much feed to survive the winter in the Forest in good condition. The dry grass was soft and fresh. Inside, the scent was intense, of mint, St. John's wort, and wormwood. Its gray green was speckled with white dried clover and yarrow flowers.

A pleasant semi-darkness reigned in the room. Cozy warmth. A haven of peace and tranquility. The sun barely filtered through the treetops and filtered through the cracks in the wallboards. Dust motes danced playfully in its strands of light. This semblance of brightness unleashed within them the ability to inspire delight in their transience, the transience of their happiness, their useless pursuit of self-annihilation in successive streaks of shadow. Then they stopped dancing, then they ceased to exist. They became nothing. They came suddenly and just as suddenly ended. They lasted barely a moment. Like a human's fascination with another human being. The spell shattered under the onslaught of ordinary reality.

He didn't get to her immediately. He didn't pounce on her like a lusty goat. He didn't force her onto a pile of fragrant hay. Gently and slowly, he first took her hand. He cupped her small hand in his. Both were trembling. His, perhaps from impatience and suppressed excitement. Hers was fear, apprehension of what would happen. Through her skin, she felt the pulsing warmth beneath his. It pulsed quickly and anxiously. She sensed the mutual tension. A nervous pause. A seeming calm. Waiting for the courage to overcome incomprehensible scruples. On the one hand, his, that aspiration to become, to complete what the need to accomplish was budding within them both. On the other, hers, the desire to postpone this moment as far in time as possible, but not so completely that it couldn't happen at all.

She felt relief when he released her hand. The warmth didn't let go, but it didn't pulsate against her skin. As if it had lodged motionlessly within her, nested in the recesses of her body, found its place there, settling comfortably and lazily. And immediately afterward, a strange shiver ran through her. She had never felt such a pleasant feeling of warmth, followed immediately by the piercing cold. An apparent cold. Cold, which a moment later she identified as the rough touch of his hand again. The skin on his palms hardened. The most pleasant surface to feel its texture. He touched her somewhere between her elbow and shoulder... And slowly, incredibly slowly, subtly and tenderly, he moved his hand upward, so that she didn't even notice, didn't feel, as he pulled back the strap of her snow-white dress, and as it slid down her forearm and fell unconsciously onto her hand.

He approached her. He leaned his face against her smooth shoulder. He kissed her, and she instinctively pressed her head against his. She buried her face in his dark, thick hair, soft as hay. It smelled of resinous forest and hillside wind, morning mist and the dampness of evening dew. He smelled of spring and warmth, of sunshine and the blue of the May sky. She began to brush her lips against his ears, cheeks, nose, and mouth, hungrily and eagerly, impatient and greedy. And when he slipped off her dress, she no longer concealed her initial embarrassment, her fear of him and the act they both wanted to commit. She didn't hide her exposed white, virgin breasts behind her clasped hands. She felt ready within herself. The sun in the sky reached its daily midday climax.

"Do you regret it?" he asked her afterward.

"No, I don't regret it," she replied confidently. "If I did, I'd have to feel guilty about doing something wrong. And it wasn't wrong, it wasn't a sin, was it?" She searched for confirmation of her own statements in him.

He didn't let her feel his thoughts.

"Sin is when it harms God or another person. Have we harmed anyone with it?" she thought for a moment. "If anything, each of us harms ourselves."

"Or each other," he replied. He put on his shirt, fastened his seat belt, and went out to smoke in front of the barn.

A year passed. The best year of her short life. And when Easter passed, disappointment came, and with it tears, prayers, and regret. She saw her Wilhelm on the bridge. He wasn't alone. In his arms he held another woman, someone she didn't know. She saw the futility of his feelings. And yet he had bought her a ring at Goldap's, a delicate one with a blue stone that all the girls in Wiżajny envied. He was supposed to propose. He gave her a silver bell from the indulgence, they went to Suwałki to buy a shawl and shoes, he played wistful melodies on the violin under an old oak tree. It was so wonderful, so divine...

And she was left alone. He stopped coming to the tree in the Forest they had agreed to. Through another guard, she begged him for a last meeting. He was supposed to come to the oak tree after dusk before Corpus Christi.

He showed up before dawn. He was astonished by her still waiting presence. She asked, "Why?" He told her directly that he was fed up with her, that he had never loved her, that it was over. "You promised so many good, beautiful things. You're leaving me in despair," she reproached him. "Forgive me," he replied, and disappeared into the darkness of his Forest. It smelled of resin and the wind off the hills.

Martyna returned to Wiżajny. The sun hadn't yet broken the horizon. The town was still asleep. The dawn hadn't yet broken, though it was already fading, the dark, warm summer night already cooling. The fog hadn't lifted from the lakes, and there was no breeze. Everything was monochromatic and silent, as if waiting anxiously for something. The thin air smelled only of the sharp dampness of dew.

She grabbed a rope from the farmyard. She ran to the fields. Along the way, she threw her blue-eyed ring into Wiżajny Lake. She ran quickly, not looking back, partly mindlessly, partly consciously, like a wounded deer, aimless but with a specific purpose. She ran along rutted field margins, through meadows full of tiny delphinium flowers, over young green grass, barefoot in the morning dew. She reached the crossroads, where the road to Wisztyniec branched off from the road to Burniszki, and then on to Stankuny. Where, by an old pear tree, half-dry, half-green, near a large field stone, a wild rose bloomed in summer.

When the bells in the parish church rang, she surrendered her soul to God. She trusted that this was the right thing to do. God had forgiven her and welcomed her into heaven. He had grasped her, like a fleeting happiness, in His warm hands. The priest and the people had not forgiven her. They hadn't buried her in the cemetery, but they had cut down the ancient pear tree, to whose branches she had tied a rope, and they had split the stone, the last one her feet had touched on earth. They buried her body under a wild rose bush, raising a mound of field stones. They hadn't erected a cross for her. After all, they supposed, she had died in sin...

That same night, Wilhelm dreamed of her. She forgave him. The next evening, he stole her body and laid it to rest above Przerośla. There, he kept her close to him, near his home in Altenzoll. And she watched over his life from heaven. She saved him from death twice during both wars. He lived a long and happy life, never alone. Quite the opposite of her.

In a forgotten grave, beneath the eastern wall of the cemetery, under a bed of tansy, thistles, and nettles, lies Martyna Jarząbska, who died of despair.

One never dies of despair by accident.