The Haiduks

The Haiduks

Panait Istrati

Translated by John Penuel

Original title: Présentation des haïdoucs

English translation copyright 2012 by John Penuel

Published at Smashwords by John Penuel

Cover image: Bashi-bazouk (detail), Jean-Léon Gérôme

Table of Contents

The Refuge in the Black Valley

Floarea Codrilor’s Tale

Élie the Sage

Élie the Sage’s Tale

Spilca the Monk

Spilca the Monk’s Tale

Movila the Vataf

Movila the Vataf’s Tale

Jérémie, Child of the Forest

Jérémie’s Tale

A Haiduk

The Haiduk’s Reply

Glossary

More by Panait Istrati

The Refuge in the Black Valley

Now for the haiduks, Adrien, said Jérémie. First of all, Florichica, our commander, who, for greater womanly dignity, dropped the diminutive and called herself: FLOAREA CODRILOR, CAPTAIN OF THE HAIDUKS.

You want to put the burden of responsibility on my shoulders, a woman’s shoulders, and the price of my death on my head. I accept both. So we must get to know each other: you will tell me who you are, and I, going first, will tell you who I am.

For a long moment, pacing back and forth, wearing a worried expression, she said nothing.

Six months after Cosma’s death, the day after our arrival in the Black Valley, that foggy morning in mid-October, the captain’s words tumbled out, words as menacing as Cosma’s fall, as the defection of half of her band—led by the vataf—as menacing, above all, as our solitude in the heart of those high, little-known, and untrammeled mountains.

The fourteen men who had opted for a new life lay, wrapped in their lined cojocs, amid their weapons and their bags, still strewn about, while the horses grazed freely—blessed animal calm. The general staff (made up of Spilca, the mysterious monk; Movila, the new vataf; Élie and me) was to decide on this new life. But our captain’s sudden and unexpected demand had surprised us. Eighteen pairs of eyes turned on the stouthearted woman, full of experience and quick to take action.

Wearing a cashmere turban, with a fox shawl thrown over her shoulders, and very nimble in her wide trousers—shalwar—she was furiously pacing the inside of the Cave of the Bear, which we had taken possession of the evening before—our winter refuge. The vataf rose and set up the chéaoun to make Turkish coffee, a luxury introduced by Floarea. She considered it necessary to life, even to life in the wilderness.

And either to collect her thoughts or to give us time to collect ours, she went quiet, walked back and forth, and gazed absently at her small band or at the sides of the narrow valley, engulfed in fog. Her long face was slightly pale, there were circles around her eyes, and her lips, usually like twin strawberries, were badly chapped. The men followed her with a gaze at once unsettled and respectful: this legacy of Cosma’s seemed full of mystery to them, of nobility. It was clear that she had covered a lot of ground and had a profound knowledge of the country, the torturers of which she had declared an uncompromising and just war on.

The brave like that. And yet: a woman. A woman wearing shalwar, to be sure, but a woman. And pretty, to top it off. What will she do with her beauty in these mountains full of bears? It was true that, once Cosma was dead, no one had been able to mount his steed better than she had or endure fatigue and privations as well or make tougher decisions. Before the body of her only lover, she had said:

From now on, with your help, I will be Floarea Codrilor, the forest lover, friend to the free man, righter of wrongs.

Movila, the vataf, offered her a fildjan of steaming coffee and his tobacco box, at the sight of which her black pupils were set aflame. An improvised stool was set up for her. She drank and smoked. And she picked up where she had left off.

Floarea Codrilor’s Tale

I am going to tell you—and I’ll go first—who I am:

I am a deceitful woman who can be sincere when she wants to be and when her partner is worth it. I had no father, which people call coming from the flowers. My mother, a shepherdess from her childhood to her death, dealt, her entire life, only with fields, winds, her flute, her dogs, the flocks of sheep she tended, and their sheep scab, which she rooted out. Except for the sheep scab, which she often had to treat on her own hands, it all pleased her. Alas, life is not made up of pleasures alone. The poor woman also went through an ordeal, only one, but which affected her entire life: as a little girl, she lost an eye while she was playing.

We usually forget our infirmities, especially when they originate in childhood. But a day didn’t go by without my mother’s remembering that accident.

She didn’t cry, but never again did she laugh wholeheartedly. What she forgot was the world, the world that knew nothing either of her grief or of her grudge against life. She sought consolation (and found it) in the creatures and things I mentioned earlier.

She was at peace until she reached the age of thirty. All the same, she had disorders of a sort, spells of anxiety, hot flashes. To cool off, my mother thought rubbing your body with snow, in winter, was good enough. Summers, she would let herself roll like a log down a grassy slope. But these practices only added to her troubles—one day, letting herself roll, she landed on a shepherd, and she had found her salvation.

Salvation, but not serenity. Because, like my mother, that devil of a shepherd, with a head just like an Astrakhan sheep’s, also had an affliction. Not that he was one-eyed or one-armed; on the contrary, he was very whole, too whole. He needed to be the master of a harem, whereas he was nothing but the keeper of a sheepfold. His affliction was made worse as a result of his being difficult, haughty, and contemptuous in his choices. My mother, who never needed anything from anybody, lived in fine companionship with that lusty fellow until one day in April, when, because of the aggressive spring, he complained to the one-eyed woman about the diet of bread and water he had been reduced to. As a good girlfriend, aware of her friend’s loves, the one-eyed woman, asked several questions, all while knitting:

So you don’t have Sultana, the wheelwright’s daughter, anymore?

Yes, but she has a stomach problem. . . .

And the Marie you were mad about?

She can’t walk anymore. . . .

So try with Catherine, who eats you up with her eyes.

She eats me up with her eyes. . . . But she doesn’t let herself be eaten up; she’s afraid.

Still, you know the foreign song that goes:

A woman is a bitch always ready for love

And a man is a brute easy to excite. . . .

So you should find as many as you like.

The shepherd had gotten angry:

Why am I ‘a brute’? Because I like doing it? What should I like then? A pike’s mouth. A hedgehog’s skin? Do you want me to walk around naked in nettles up to my chin? Or to rub myself, like you, with snow? Or risk getting a stick stuck in my stomach by letting myself roll down a hillside, like you again, you who don’t risk anything?

Here, finally, according to the story my mother told me, is the way the emotional hour following the fit of anger of anger thrown by the shepherd with a head just like that of an Astrakhan sheep’s went, the hour that the celestial bell sounded the beginning of my life:

I was two weeks from my thirtieth birthday. I had come into the world on Saint George’s Day, the date of which never changes, and, as it turns out, it was the first week of April. When he had calmed down, Akime started studying my ankle and then said:

‘I see, Rada, that you have an ankle like a goat’s, and it’s very pretty: why don’t you show me your knee? If it’s as pretty as your ankle, I’ll marry you, Rada.’

When Akime said that to me, I was sitting on the ground and knitting, whereas he was standing up, leaning on his staff. I hadn’t looked at his face more than three times in five years, not at his face or at anyone else’s since I no longer had but one eye: but hearing him tell me he’d marry me if I had a pretty knee, yes, I looked up, because I thought he had gone crazy. I saw then that Akime had a nice black mustache and the beautiful eyes of an excited stallion. I looked at him only for an instant. You can’t look at it for long. But this little was enough for me to make up my mind to show him my knee, all while saying to myself, ‘Now, Rada, my girl, you’re finished with snow and rolling down slopes: now it’s going to be something different.’ Still, knowing myself humiliated by my affliction, to anger him I said:

‘Oh, poor Akime. . . . If you had to marry all the girls who showed you their knees you’d need a barracks.’

‘Rada, I swear to you I’ll marry you. May the wolves eat my sheep if I don’t marry you.’

‘No need to swear, Akime: men are forced to promise everything because women ask for the moon as soon as they show their knees. But I’m not one of those women. Here’s my knee, Akime.’

"And I showed it to him, without looking at Akime’s face, then went on knitting. Akime took his heavy cap and flung it to the ground with such force that, too filled with wind, it popped like a pig bladder. At that very instant, I felt myself being lifted, my waist being encircled by an arm as hard as wood. I let myself be carried, but