Laba's Trunk

Laba's Trunk is both a container for Handsome Laba’s remarkable wardrobe and the material center of his rise and collapse. Its contents transform him into a village spectacle; their theft leaves the chest empty and his life without the purpose he had built around display. The trunk’s changing condition—from covered cargo to a source of public fascination, then to an emptied and damaged object—marks the reversal at the heart of his story.

Arrival and Contents

After a year of absence, Handsome Laba returned to the village in a cart drawn by a large horse. A cloth covered the large chest lying on the cart beside him. He greeted the villagers and went into his hut with Labina, while the gathered crowd waited outside. The chest was initially present but closed: its contents had not yet been shown, and the villagers could only wonder what it held.

When Handsome Laba emerged, he wore a suit of striking finery, including a striped silk shirt, a bright tie, a soft flannel suit, a satin handkerchief, polished black boots, and a gold watch. He then took numerous other garments and accessories from the chest: colorful jackets of unusual cut, trousers, shirts, patent-leather shoes, handkerchiefs, ties, socks, and underclothes. The village’s ordinary clothes were homespun jackets, simply constructed trousers, and rough leather boots with wooden soles. Against that everyday standard, the chest held not just a change of clothes but a collection whose abundance and unfamiliarity made its owner an unprecedented local attraction.

A Storehouse Turned into a Public Spectacle

The chest’s contents extended beyond the hut through the clothes Handsome Laba wore on public occasions. At church, people watched him rather than the priest or altar: he sat beside Labina in a black satin suit and flowered shirt, conspicuously consulting his watch. His appearance displaced the vestments that had previously represented the height of local splendor. After the service, villagers waited for him, and wealthy peasants invited him to their homes for dinners in his honor. The possessions first revealed through the chest thus became instruments of public attention and social standing.

The trunk itself remained in the household, but what it stored shaped the couple’s daily lives. Handsome Laba kept the attic as his exclusive realm and carried the key to its large padlock alongside a medallion of the Holy Virgin. The key joined the chest and its contents to a guarded private space: access to the attic was controlled, and the treasures were not simply part of the household’s ordinary possessions. Meanwhile, Handsome Laba went out to receptions, sometimes many miles away, while Labina remained responsible for the farm, the horse, and his belongings. The display that brought him admiration left her with labor and humiliation.

The Empty Chest

A year after his return, Labina came home from the fields expecting to find her husband in the attic with his treasures. Instead, the house was still, and the attic door stood open. Inside, the chest lay on the floor with its lid torn off and its pale bottom exposed. A hole in the roof showed how the thief had carried away the contents. The chest, previously secured behind a locked door and associated with an expanding wardrobe, now displayed the fact of its own emptiness.

Handsome Laba had gone to bathe in the lake and returned to put on his parade clothes. Finding the roof opening and the emptied chest, he discovered that nearly everything around which his public identity had been organized was gone. Only Laba's Patterned Tie remained among the disturbed straw. He used it for the final deliberate act of his life, dying by suicide beside the chest. The narrative links his death directly to the loss of the possessions: without them, the weddings, funerals, and other occasions on which he had enjoyed being watched no longer offered him a reason to live.

Loss, Mystery, and Significance

The chest’s origin and the history of its contents remain unresolved. Handsome Laba never explained where he had been during his absence, how he acquired the clothes, or what price he might have paid for them. After the theft, neither the thief nor any of the missing objects was found. Villagers proposed competing explanations and suspected Labina, but she never discovered what had happened. The contents therefore retain their mystery even after they have vanished; the story offers no recovered inventory or account that could settle their provenance.

As an object, Laba's Trunk changes from a covered load into the source of a dazzling collection, then into evidence of a theft and the loss that follows it. Its importance lies not only in what it contains, but in the power those contents acquire within a poor village accustomed to plain clothing. The possessions make Handsome Laba visible and admired, while the locked attic and his control of its key keep them apart from ordinary household life. Once the chest is emptied, the boundary between the man and his treasures collapses: the objects are gone, and the identity sustained by displaying them cannot endure their absence.