Repository path: workshop/translations/smierc/R06-v1/translation.md · rendered 2026-09-09

T-smierc-R06-v1 — Reymont, «Śmierć», opening scene, single pass

Source. Władysław Stanisław Reymont, «Śmierć» (1893), from the 1923 Nowele text on Polish Wikisource; cleaned copy at workshop/experiments/E-20260731e-option-census/runs/smierc_pl_clean.txt. Paragraphs 0–51 of that file, 880 Polish words — the opening scene entire, from the daughter shaking her dying father awake to the neighbours in the entry after the priest has gone in.

Regime. R06 — the lead's single pass, no revision. Frozen in its own commit before the R04 self-revision begins (R04 §Procedure 2a). The project's first translation from Polish, and its thirteenth source language.

Contamination: none, measured prospectively. tools/dependence_check.py, unmodified, against Benecke & Busch's "Death" in Selected Polish Tales (Oxford 1921; Project Gutenberg 8378), whose text was extracted to file and never read. Probe unit (¶0–9, 230 words): longest shared run 8 tokens, 0 shared 12-grams, 0 shared 15-grams, verdict clean. The measurement was made before the span was fixed and before the rest was drafted — the order CLAUDE.md prescribes.

The gate fired on the first candidate and this artifact is the second. See workshop/translations/janko/R06-v1/unitA.md: 308 words of Sienkiewicz's «Janko muzykant» against Curtin 1893 returned a longest shared run of 18 tokens and 7 shared 12-grams, and the work was abandoned rather than explained. That is the standing rule used as a selection gate rather than as a flag.

— Father! Father! get up, d'ye hear? come on now, get up a bit.

— Lord God! Mary! eh! — he groaned, as she shook him hard. Only his face showed out from under the sheepskin, a face fallen in, crumpled, ploughed over with furrows, grey as the same earth he had worked all those years, and grown over with grey hair like the stubble-breaking of late autumn. His eyes were clenched shut, and from between half-open lips, livid and cracked, his tongue hung out; he was gasping hard.

— Get up! come on! — his daughter was shouting.

— Grandad! — piped a small girl in nothing but a shift and an apron tied tight across her chest, climbing up to see into the sick man's face.

— Grandad! — and she had tears in her blue eyes and sorrow in her grubby little face.

— Grandad! — she called once more, tugging at the pillow.

— Get out of it! — cried her mother, and catching her by the scruff shoved her in behind the stove.

— Bitch, out of doors! — she screamed, tripping over an old, half-blind brute of a dog that was nosing round the bed. — Out! will you not go, you! — and she kicked with her wooden clog so hard that the wretched creature went over, but was at the closed door in a moment, whimpering. The little one snuffled by the stove, grinding at her nose and eyes with her fists.

— Father, get up now, while I'm asking you civil!

The sick man was silent; his head had turned over to one side and the rattling came heavier and heavier. There was not much life left in him.

— Get up, what's this, is it here with me you're wanting to die like a dog? Not while I'm living. Off to Julina with you, you old cur! You signed the land over to her, then let her keep you… Come on now, while I'm still asking…

— O sweet Jesus! O Mary!…

A spasm dragged at his face, which was beaded with the sweat of his pain. All at once his daughter tore the featherbed off him, then took him round the middle and threw him half onto the floor, so that only his head and shoulders were still on the bed — limp as a log, and like a log stiff and dried out.

— A priest! Father! — he whispered through the rattle.

— I'll give you your priest, I will! — It's the pigsty for you to die in, you that wronged me, like a dog — and she took him hard under the arms; but at that moment she let go and hastily flung the featherbed back over the whole of him, for a shadow had flickered past the window. Someone was coming to the cottage.

She had barely time to heave the old man's legs back onto the bed. She had gone livid with rage, and she beat out the featherbed furiously, straightening the bed.

Dyziakowa came in.

— Praised be Jesus Christ.

— For ever and ever! — she muttered, looking up from under her brows at the newcomer.

— Good day to you, how are you keeping? are you well?… — God reward you… middling…

And how's the old man? is he well?

And she stamped, knocking the snow off her clogs.

— Eh! not he, he's only just drawing breath.

Neighbour! neighbour! — she bent over the old man.

— A priest! — groaned the sick man.

— Would you look at that, good people! He didn't know me. The poor soul's wanting a priest…

It'll come to dying for the old man, for certain it will, no mistake, he's done. O people, people… Well then, have you sent for the priest?

— And who have I got to send, then?

— You'd never leave a Christian soul without the holy comfort.

— I'll not leave him by himself and I'll not go running; and maybe he'll mend yet.

— Oh aye! ee, do you not hear how it plays in the poor wretch's chest? That's nothing, that's only his innards squeaking, for certain, or his stomach's got the cramp. Why, last year, when my Walek was ailing…

— My dear soul, run for the parish priest, and be quick about it, for look you…

— True, true, the poor wretch looks to be at his last, we must fetch him, we must — and she pulled her apron tighter about her head.

— God keep you.

— Go with God!

Dyziakowa went out, and Antkowa set about her cleaning: she scraped the mud off the floor, swept, strewed ashes, and then started setting out the pots and washing them. Every moment she threw a hating look at the bed, spat, clenched her fists, or else with a groan caught at her head in a desperate helplessness.

— Fifteen morgs, the pigs, three head of cattle, the gear, the clothes — the half of it, no mistake, a good six thousand! Lord God!

And as if the thought of so great a sum had galled her worse, she scoured till it thundered, and then banged the bowls up onto the shelf.

— May you—! may you—! — and she went on thinking out loud: — The hens, the geese, the calves, so much good stuff, so much good stuff! and he signed it all over to that slattern! May the wasting take you, may the worms eat you through under some fence, for the wrong you've done me, for my being left an orphan!

She sprang at the bed in a fury, with an enormous shout.

— Up! — and seeing that the sick man did not stir, she fell to shaking her fists over him and railing:

— To die, that's what you came to me for, is it? and maybe I'm to pay for the burial? buy a new sukmana? oh aye! Not while I'm living, you'll get what's coming. If Julina's so good, be off to her. Was it me that was to keep you in your old age? She's the better one, since you—

She did not finish, for a little bell rang and the priest came in with the sacrament.

Antkowa bowed down to his feet, wiping eyes watering with rage, and having set out holy water and the sprinkler on a chipped plate, went out into the entry, where several people were already standing, having come in behind the priest.

— Praised be.

— For ever. — Well, how is it?

— Nothing at all; he came to the one he wronged to die, and he won't die. O poor me, poor me! — and she began to cry.

— True, true, it's rotting for him and living for you — they answered with one voice, nodding their heads.

— Is that what a father of one's own body does?… — she went on. — Didn't Antek and I toil and slave like a pair of oxen? I never sold one egg, nor a quarter-pound of butter, I kept slipping it to him, and what little milk there was I tore out from under my own girl's mouth and gave it to him, for he's old after all and a father — and he signed everything over to Tomek! Fifteen morgs, the cottage, the cows, the pigs, the calf, and the carts, and the gear — that's nothing! O unhappy me! there's no justice left in the world, there's none, oh! oh!

She leaned against the wall and cried aloud.

— Don't cry, neighbour, don't cry. The Lord God is merciful, but He's choosy too; He'll pay you back yet — said one of the women.

— You're a fool, you'd do better not to yap for nothing. A wrong's a wrong. The old man will get his dying done, and the want will stay — her husband answered.