Peregrinus

Chapter I

SCHOLA, SCHOLA ⁽²⁾

I am sixteen and sit on a hard bench in school. The bearded Latin teacher drones on and on. His babble wafts past my ears. Outside soft wind caresses the chestnut trees in bloom. Their young leaves kiss window panes. Muffled city sounds penetrate the thick walls of a one-time fortress and now our school.

This is the last hour of the last day of the school year. The teacher drones on and on something about Caesar, that rock – faced martinet who conquered the then known world.

But I must wake up from my dream and remember. A book is not a dream, or is it?

Now I am on a train traveling northeast towards my Uncle's farm close to the mysterious Soviet border. We are five in the compartment: Aunt Helen our massive commander, her aide-de-camp, our enemy the Tutor a 2nd year economics student, Mike 16 (that's I), my brother Leo 14, and our youngest brother Tom who is 12. Aunt Helen is tormenting the deferential Tutor about his family. He is evasive; it seems he has none. Noses to the window we three watch the scenery. The train rocks us rhythmically past the dancing festoons of telephone wires and golden trunks of pine trees as we look to remember forever.

Thirty or so miles from Wilno we arrive at our destination - the Soly station. The train stops here for three minutes venting steam mightily from its over-pressured steel lungs. The aunt and the pale-faced Tutor scramble to unload our many bags, valises, and satchels. The locomotive sighs, ejects hot vapor, blows oily smoke, shudders, and churning its well oiled push rods slowly leaves the station.

As the wisps of steam drift away a grinning face appears ahead. It is Franuk, my Uncle's farm hand, our friend and symbol of the magical vacation time. He picks up the luggage and leads us to the wagon. This time it is not an ordinary peasant one-horse telega, but, undoubtedly in honor of Aunt Helen, a real estate wagon, high off the ground and wide with comfortable seats. Two well-matched dappled-gray mares are hitched to the wagon. Their harnesses of freshly oiled black leather with brass fittings shine brightly in the afternoon sun.

My Uncle's land, Staniszki, is some 20 miles away, that is a 4-5 hours' ride. Franuk cracks his whip and soon the station is behind us fading in a swirl of dust kicked up by horses' hoofs drumming a steady beat on the unpaved road that winds between rows of shimmering alder bushes in the hollows and blue-green juniper hedges on tops of the gently rising hillocks. Wintertime, these hedges protect the road from drifting snow. In June the hedgerows are full of birds and small animals - mice, turtles, hedgehogs, rabbits, and an occasional red fox hiding under the tangled branches of these never trimmed shrubs.

As we clip-clop along the trail we listen to magpies quarreling with sparrows and blackbirds mimicking finches, their more musical neighbors.

There are thin cloudlets in the sky. On a grand scale they mirror real and imaginary things below. Here, a dragon's head chases a nun with a crooked nose. There, a bearded man guards a flock of woolly sheep and, in the western sky, a tribe of feathery Indians silently celebrates their rain dance.

I am trying to read a book, but there is much to see and hear - the birds in the roadside shrubs, the sky, the trail ahead and behind, a few farmsteads in the distance each protected from winter winds and summer heat by a ring of trees.

An occasional farmer bringing in the hay - the man leading his horse, the wife carrying a rake behind the wagon, and children jumping atop the swaying load of scented grass.

My brother Leo is, at the moment, a fanatic walking cane carver. He has picked up by the station a resinous pine stick. Now, with his pen knife he carefully cuts rings, circles, squares, triangles, and descending spirals in the soft brown bark of the stick. He gently removes pieces and strips of bark, laboriously creating a mini-totem pole which is intended as a peace offering to the Tutor who, presently, keeps a handkerchief to his purple nose, pleading allergy to the road dust with his bleary eyes. Next to him Aunt Helen dozes fitfully opening one eye or the other at every major jolt of the wagon.

The youngest brother Tom is pestering Franuk. Sitting next to the driver he bothers him with one million questions each ending with the non-sequitur: "Please, can I have the reins?"

At last Franuk relents and hands over the thick leather straps. Immediately the horses cock their ears, glance back, and from a canter slow down to a walk. Franuk grins showing white teeth in his wide, whiskered face shaved once a week, Sunday morning.

Despite frantic efforts of the small driver the horses will not trot or canter. They even show distinct tendency to stray into the tall roadside grasses and attempt to reach fragrant blades with their greedy extended lips.