THE COSSACKS

A Tale of 1852

By Leo Tolstoy


Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude




CONTENTS

 Chapter I
 Chapter II
 Chapter III
 Chapter IV
 Chapter V
 Chapter VI
 Chapter VII
 Chapter VIII
 Chapter IX
 Chapter X
 Chapter XI
 Chapter XII
 Chapter XIII
 Chapter XIV
 Chapter XV
 Chapter XVI
 Chapter XVII
 Chapter XVIII
 Chapter XIX
 Chapter XX
 Chapter XXI
 Chapter XXII
 Chapter XXIII
 Chapter XXIV
 Chapter XXV
 Chapter XXVI
 Chapter XXVII
 Chapter XXVIII
 Chapter XXIX
 Chapter XXX
 Chapter XXXI
 Chapter XXXII
 Chapter XXXIII
 Chapter XXXIV
 Chapter XXXV
 Chapter XXXVI
 Chapter XXXVII
 Chapter XXXVIII
 Chapter XXXIX
 Chapter XL
 Chapter XLI
 Chapter XLII




Chapter I


All is quiet in Moscow. The squeak of wheels is seldom heard in the
snow-covered street. There are no lights left in the windows and the
street lamps have been extinguished. Only the sound of bells, borne
over the city from the church towers, suggests the approach of morning.
The streets are deserted. At rare intervals a night-cabman’s sledge
kneads up the snow and sand in the street as the driver makes his way
to another corner where he falls asleep while waiting for a fare. An
old woman passes by on her way to church, where a few wax candles burn
with a red light reflected on the gilt mountings of the icons. Workmen
are already getting up after the long winter night and going to their
work—but for the gentlefolk it is still evening.

From a window in Chevalier’s Restaurant a light—illegal at that hour—is
still to be seen through a chink in the shutter. At the entrance a
carriage, a sledge, and a cabman’s sledge, stand close together with
their backs to the curbstone. A three-horse sledge from the
post-station is there also. A yard-porter muffled up and pinched with
cold is sheltering behind the corner of the house.

“And what’s the good of all this jawing?” thinks the footman who sits
in the hall weary and haggard. “This always happens when I’m on duty.”
From the adjoining room are heard the voices of three young men,
sitting there at a table on which are wine and the remains of supper.
One, a rather plain, thin, neat little man, sits looking with tired
kindly eyes at his friend, who is about to start on a journey. Another,
a tall man, lies on a sofa beside a table on which are empty bottles,
and plays with his watch-key. A third, wearing a short, fur-lined coat,
is pacing up and down the room stopping now and then to crack an almond
between his strong, rather thick, but well-tended fingers. He keeps
smiling at something and his face and eyes are all aglow. He speaks
warmly and gesticulates, but evidently does not find the words he wants
and those that occur to him seem to him inadequate to express what has
risen to his heart.

“Now I can speak out fully,” said the traveller. “I don’t want to
defend myself, but I should like you at least to understand me as I
understand myself, and not look at the matter superficially. You say I
have treated her badly,” he continued, addressing the man with the
kindly eyes who was watching him.

“Yes, you are to blame,” said the latter, and his look seemed to
express still more kindliness and weariness.

“I know why you say that,” rejoined the one who was leaving. “To be
loved is in your opinion as great a happiness as to love, and if a man
obtains it, it is enough for his whole life.”

“Yes, quite enough, my dear fellow, more than enough!” confirmed the
plain little man, opening and shutting his eyes.

“But why shouldn’t the man love too?” said the traveller thoughtfully,
looking at his friend with something like pity. “Why shouldn’t one
love? Because love doesn’t come ... No, to be beloved is a misfortune.
It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you
cannot give. O my God!” he added, with a gesture of his arm. “If it all
happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a
way of its own! Why, it’s as if I had stolen that love! You think so
too, don’t deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all
the horrid and stupid things I have found time to do in my life—and
there are many—this is one I do not and cannot repent of. Neither at
the beginning nor afterwards did I lie to myself or to her. It seemed
to me that I had at last fallen in love, but then I saw that it was an
involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the way to love, and I
could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I couldn’t? What was I
to do?”

“Well, it’s ended now!” said his friend, lighting a cigar to master his
sleepiness. “The fact is that you have not yet loved and do not know
what love is.”

The man in the fur-lined coat was going to speak again, and put his
hands to his head, but could not express what he wanted to say.

“Never loved! ... Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I have
within me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger than that
desire! But then, again, does such love exist? There always remains
something incomplete. Ah well! What’s the use of talking? I’ve made an
awful mess of life! But anyhow it’s all over now; you are quite right.
And I feel that I am beginning a new life.”

“Which you will again make a mess of,” said the man who lay on the sofa
playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen to him.

“I am sad and yet glad to go,” he continued. “Why I am sad I don’t
know.”

And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing that
this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man is never
such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it
seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and
interesting than himself.

“Dmítri Andréich! The coachman won’t wait any longer!” said a young
serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf tied round
his head. “The horses have been standing since twelve, and it’s now
four o’clock!”

Dmítri Andréich looked at his serf, Vanyúsha. The scarf round
Vanyúsha’s head, his felt boots and sleepy face, seemed to be calling
his master to a new life of labour, hardship, and activity.

“True enough! Good-bye!” said he, feeling for the unfastened hook and
eye on his coat.

In spite of advice to mollify the coachman by another tip, he put on
his cap and stood in the middle of the room. The friends kissed once,
then again, and after a pause, a third time. The man in the fur-lined
coat approached the table and emptied a champagne glass, then took the
plain little man’s hand and blushed.

“Ah well, I will speak out all the same ... I must and will be frank
with you because I am fond of you ... Of course you love her—I always
thought so—don’t you?”

“Yes,” answered his friend, smiling still more gently.

“And perhaps...”

“Please sir, I have orders to put out the candles,” said the sleepy
attendant, who had been listening to the last part of the conversation
and wondering why gentlefolk always talk about one and the same thing.
“To whom shall I make out the bill? To you, sir?” he added, knowing
whom to address and turning to the tall man.

“To me,” replied the tall man. “How much?”

“Twenty-six rubles.”

The tall man considered for a moment, but said nothing and put the bill
in his pocket.

The other two continued their talk.

“Good-bye, you are a capital fellow!” said the short plain man with the
mild eyes. Tears filled the eyes of both. They stepped into the porch.

“Oh, by the by,” said the traveller, turning with a blush to the tall
man, “will you settle Chevalier’s bill and write and let me know?”

“All right, all right!” said the tall man, pulling on his gloves. “How
I envy you!” he added quite unexpectedly when they were out in the
porch.

The traveller got into his sledge, wrapped his coat about him, and
said: “Well then, come along!” He even moved a little to make room in
the sledge for the man who said he envied him—his voice trembled.

“Good-bye, Mítya! I hope that with God’s help you...” said the tall
one. But his wish was that the other would go away quickly, and so he
could not finish the sentence.

They were silent a moment. Then someone again said, “Good-bye,” and a
voice cried, “Ready,” and the coachman touched up the horses.

“Hy, Elisár!” One of the friends called out, and the other coachman and
the sledge-drivers began moving, clicking their tongues and pulling at
the reins. Then the stiffened carriage-wheels rolled squeaking over the
frozen snow.

“A fine fellow, that Olénin!” said one of the friends. “But what an
idea to go to the Caucasus—as a cadet, too! I wouldn’t do it for
anything. ... Are you dining at the club tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

They separated.

The traveller felt warm, his fur coat seemed too hot. He sat on the
bottom of the sledge and unfastened his coat, and the three shaggy
post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into another,
past houses he had never before seen. It seemed to Olénin that only
travellers starting on a long journey went through those streets. All
was dark and silent and dull around him, but his soul was full of
memories, love, regrets, and a pleasant tearful feeling.




 Chapter II


“I’m fond of them, very fond! ... First-rate fellows! ... Fine!” he
kept repeating, and felt ready to cry. But why he wanted to cry, who
were the first-rate fellows he was so fond of—was more than he quite
knew. Now and then he looked round at some house and wondered why it
was so curiously built; sometimes he began wondering why the post-boy
and Vanyúsha, who were so different from himself, sat so near, and
together with him were being jerked about and swayed by the tugs the
side-horses gave at the frozen traces, and again he repeated: “First
rate ... very fond!” and once he even said: “And how it seizes one ...
excellent!” and wondered what made him say it. “Dear me, am I drunk?”
he asked himself. He had had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was
not the wine alone that was having this effect on Olénin. He remembered
all the words of friendship heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he
believed) addressed to him on his departure. He remembered the clasp of
hands, glances, the moments of silence, and the sound of a voice
saying, “Good-bye, Mítya!” when he was already in the sledge. He
remembered his own deliberate frankness. And all this had a touching
significance for him. Not only friends and relatives, not only people
who had been indifferent to him, but even those who did not like him,
seemed to have agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive him,
before his departure, as people do before confession or death. “Perhaps
I shall not return from the Caucasus,” he thought. And he felt that he
loved his friends and some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But
it was not love for his friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart
that he could not repress the meaningless words that seemed to rise of
themselves to his lips; nor was it love for a woman (he had never yet
been in love) that had brought on this mood. Love for himself, love
full of hope—warm young love for all that was good in his own soul (and
at that moment it seemed to him that there was nothing but good in
it)—compelled him to weep and to mutter incoherent words.

Olénin was a youth who had never completed his university course, never
served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some government office
or other), who had squandered half his fortune and had reached the age
of twenty-four without having done anything or even chosen a career. He
was what in Moscow society is termed _un jeune homme_.

At the age of eighteen he was free—as only rich young Russians in the
’forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be. Neither
physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he could do as
he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor
fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in
nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing he
was not a morose or blase young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the
contrary continually let himself be carried away. He had come to the
conclusion that there is no such thing as love, yet his heart always
overflowed in the presence of any young and attractive woman. He had
long been aware that honours and position were nonsense, yet
involuntarily he felt pleased when at a ball Prince Sergius came up and
spoke to him affably. But he yielded to his impulses only in so far as
they did not limit his freedom. As soon as he had yielded to any
influence and became conscious of its leading on to labour and
struggle, he instinctively hastened to free himself from the feeling or
activity into which he was being drawn and to regain his freedom. In
this way he experimented with society-life, the civil service, farming,
music—to which at one time he intended to devote his life—and even with
the love of women in which he did not believe. He meditated on the use
to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man
only once in a lifetime: that force which gives a man the power of
making himself, or even—as it seemed to him—of making the universe,
into anything he wishes: should it be to art, to science, to love of
woman, or to practical activities? It is true that some people are
devoid of this impulse, and on entering life at once place their necks
under the first yoke that offers itself and honestly labour under it
for the rest of their lives. But Olénin was too strongly conscious of
the presence of that all-powerful God of Youth—of that capacity to be
entirely transformed into an aspiration or idea—the capacity to wish
and to do—to throw oneself headlong into a bottomless abyss without
knowing why or wherefore. He bore this consciousness within himself,
was proud of it and, without knowing it, was happy in that
consciousness. Up to that time he had loved only himself, and could not
help loving himself, for he expected nothing but good of himself and
had not yet had time to be disillusioned. On leaving Moscow he was in
that happy state of mind in which a young man, conscious of past
mistakes, suddenly says to himself, “That was not the real thing.” All
that had gone before was accidental and unimportant. Till then he had
not really tried to live, but now with his departure from Moscow a new
life was beginning—a life in which there would be no mistakes, no
remorse, and certainly nothing but happiness.

It is always the case on a long journey that till the first two or
three stages have been passed imagination continues to dwell on the
place left behind, but with the first morning on the road it leaps to
the end of the journey and there begins building castles in the air. So
it happened to Olénin.

After leaving the town behind, he gazed at the snowy fields and felt
glad to be alone in their midst. Wrapping himself in his fur coat, he
lay at the bottom of the sledge, became tranquil, and fell into a doze.
The parting with his friends had touched him deeply, and memories of
that last winter spent in Moscow and images of the past, mingled with
vague thoughts and regrets, rose unbidden in his imagination.

He remembered the friend who had seen him off and his relations with
the girl they had talked about. The girl was rich. “How could he love
her knowing that she loved me?” thought he, and evil suspicions crossed
his mind. “There is much dishonesty in men when one comes to reflect.”
Then he was confronted by the question: “But really, how is it I have
never been in love? Every one tells me that I never have. Can it be
that I am a moral monstrosity?” And he began to recall all his
infatuations. He recalled his entry into society, and a friend’s sister
with whom he spent several evenings at a table with a lamp on it which
lit up her slender fingers busy with needlework, and the lower part of
her pretty delicate face. He recalled their conversations that dragged
on like the game in which one passes on a stick which one keeps alight
as long as possible, and the general awkwardness and restraint and his
continual feeling of rebellion at all that conventionality. Some voice
had always whispered: “That’s not it, that’s not it,” and so it had
proved. Then he remembered a ball and the mazurka he danced with the
beautiful D——. “How much in love I was that night and how happy! And
how hurt and vexed I was next morning when I woke and felt myself still
free! Why does not love come and bind me hand and foot?” thought he.
“No, there is no such thing as love! That neighbour who used to tell
me, as she told Dubróvin and the Marshal, that she loved the stars, was
not _it_ either.”

And now his farming and work in the country recurred to his mind, and
in those recollections also there was nothing to dwell on with
pleasure. “Will they talk long of my departure?” came into his head;
but who “they” were he did not quite know. Next came a thought that
made him wince and mutter incoherently. It was the recollection of M.
Cappele the tailor, and the six hundred and seventy-eight rubles he
still owed him, and he recalled the words in which he had begged him to
wait another year, and the look of perplexity and resignation which had
appeared on the tailor’s face. “Oh, my God, my God!” he repeated,
wincing and trying to drive away the intolerable thought. “All the same
and in spite of everything she loved me,” thought he of the girl they
had talked about at the farewell supper. “Yes, had I married her I
should not now be owing anything, and as it is I am in debt to
Vasílyev.” Then he remembered the last night he had played with
Vasílyev at the club (just after leaving her), and he recalled his
humiliating requests for another game and the other’s cold refusal. “A
year’s economizing and they will all be paid, and the devil take
them!”... But despite this assurance he again began calculating his
outstanding debts, their dates, and when he could hope to pay them off.
“And I owe something to Morell as well as to Chevalier,” thought he,
recalling the night when he had run up so large a debt. It was at a
carousel at the gipsies arranged by some fellows from Petersburg:
Sáshka B——, an aide-de-camp to the Tsar, Prince D——, and that pompous
old——. “How is it those gentlemen are so self-satisfied?” thought he,
“and by what right do they form a clique to which they think others
must be highly flattered to be admitted? Can it be because they are on
the Emperor’s staff? Why, it’s awful what fools and scoundrels they
consider other people to be! But I showed them that I at any rate, on
the contrary, do not at all want their intimacy. All the same, I fancy
Andrew, the steward, would be amazed to know that I am on familiar
terms with a man like Sáshka B——, a colonel and an aide-de-camp to the
Tsar! Yes, and no one drank more than I did that evening, and I taught
the gipsies a new song and everyone listened to it. Though I have done
many foolish things, all the same I am a very good fellow,” thought he.

Morning found him at the third post-stage. He drank tea, and himself
helped Vanyúsha to move his bundles and trunks and sat down among them,
sensible, erect, and precise, knowing where all his belongings were,
how much money he had and where it was, where he had put his passport
and the post-horse requisition and toll-gate papers, and it all seemed
to him so well arranged that he grew quite cheerful and the long
journey before him seemed an extended pleasure-trip.

All that morning and noon he was deep in calculations of how many
versts he had travelled, how many remained to the next stage, how many
to the next town, to the place where he would dine, to the place where
he would drink tea, and to Stavrópol, and what fraction of the whole
journey was already accomplished. He also calculated how much money he
had with him, how much would be left over, how much would pay off all
his debts, and what proportion of his income he would spend each month.
Towards evening, after tea, he calculated that to Stavrópol there still
remained seven-elevenths of the whole journey, that his debts would
require seven months’ economy and one-eighth of his whole fortune; and
then, tranquillized, he wrapped himself up, lay down in the sledge, and
again dozed off. His imagination was now turned to the future: to the
Caucasus. All his dreams of the future were mingled with pictures of
Amalat-Beks, Circassian women, mountains, precipices, terrible
torrents, and perils. All these things were vague and dim, but the love
of fame and the danger of death furnished the interest of that future.
Now, with unprecedented courage and a strength that amazed everyone, he
slew and subdued an innumerable host of hillsmen; now he was himself a
hillsman and with them was maintaining their independence against the
Russians. As soon as he pictured anything definite, familiar Moscow
figures always appeared on the scene. Sáshka B—— fights with the
Russians or the hillsmen against him. Even the tailor Cappele in some
strange way takes part in the conqueror’s triumph. Amid all this he
remembered his former humiliations, weaknesses, and mistakes, and the
recollection was not disagreeable. It was clear that there among the
mountains, waterfalls, fair Circassians, and dangers, such mistakes
could not recur. Having once made full confession to himself there was
an end of it all. One other vision, the sweetest of them all, mingled
with the young man’s every thought of the future—the vision of a woman.
And there, among the mountains, she appeared to his imagination as a
Circassian slave, a fine figure with a long plait of hair and deep
submissive eyes. He pictured a lonely hut in the mountains, and on the
threshold _she_ stands awaiting him when, tired and covered with dust,
blood, and fame, he returns to her. He is conscious of her kisses, her
shoulders, her sweet voice, and her submissiveness. She is enchanting,
but uneducated, wild, and rough. In the long winter evenings he begins
her education. She is clever and gifted and quickly acquires all the
knowledge essential. Why not? She can quite easily learn foreign
languages, read the French masterpieces and understand them: _Notre
Dame de Paris_, for instance, is sure to please her. She can also speak
French. In a drawing-room she can show more innate dignity than a lady
of the highest society. She can sing, simply, powerfully, and
passionately.... “Oh, what nonsense!” said he to himself. But here they
reached a post-station and he had to change into another sledge and
give some tips. But his fancy again began searching for the “nonsense”
he had relinquished, and again fair Circassians, glory, and his return
to Russia with an appointment as aide-de-camp and a lovely wife rose
before his imagination. “But there’s no such thing as love,” said he to
himself. “Fame is all rubbish. But the six hundred and seventy-eight
rubles?... And the conquered land that will bring me more wealth than I
need for a lifetime? It will not be right though to keep all that
wealth for myself. I shall have to distribute it. But to whom? Well,
six hundred and seventy-eight rubles to Cappele and then we’ll see.”
... Quite vague visions now cloud his mind, and only Vanyúsha’s voice
and the interrupted motion of the sledge break his healthy youthful
slumber. Scarcely conscious, he changes into another sledge at the next
stage and continues his journey.

Next morning everything goes on just the same: the same kind of
post-stations and tea-drinking, the same moving horses’ cruppers, the
same short talks with Vanyúsha, the same vague dreams and drowsiness,
and the same tired, healthy, youthful sleep at night.




 Chapter III


The farther Olénin travelled from Central Russia the farther he left
his memories behind, and the nearer he drew to the Caucasus the lighter
his heart became. “I’ll stay away for good and never return to show
myself in society,” was a thought that sometimes occurred to him.
“These people whom I see here are _not_ people. None of them know me
and none of them can ever enter the Moscow society I was in or find out
about my past. And no one in that society will ever know what I am
doing, living among these people.” And quite a new feeling of freedom
from his whole past came over him among the rough beings he met on the
road whom he did not consider to be _people_ in the sense that his
Moscow acquaintances were.

The rougher the people and the fewer the signs of civilization the
freer he felt. Stavrópol, through which he had to pass, irked him. The
signboards, some of them even in French, ladies in carriages, cabs in
the marketplace, and a gentleman wearing a fur cloak and tall hat who
was walking along the boulevard and staring at the passersby, quite
upset him. “Perhaps these people know some of my acquaintances,” he
thought; and the club, his tailor, cards, society ... came back to his
mind. But after Stavrópol everything was satisfactory—wild and also
beautiful and warlike, and Olénin felt happier and happier. All the
Cossacks, post-boys, and post-station masters seemed to him simple folk
with whom he could jest and converse simply, without having to consider
to what class they belonged. They all belonged to the human race which,
without his thinking about it, all appeared dear to Olénin, and they
all treated him in a friendly way.

Already in the province of the Don Cossacks his sledge had been
exchanged for a cart, and beyond Stavrópol it became so warm that
Olénin travelled without wearing his fur coat. It was already spring—an
unexpected joyous spring for Olénin. At night he was no longer allowed
to leave the Cossack villages, and they said it was dangerous to travel
in the evening. Vanyúsha began to be uneasy, and they carried a loaded
gun in the cart. Olénin became still happier. At one of the
post-stations the post-master told of a terrible murder that had been
committed recently on the high road. They began to meet armed men. “So
this is where it begins!” thought Olénin, and kept expecting to see the
snowy mountains of which mention was so often made. Once, towards
evening, the Nogáy driver pointed with his whip to the mountains
shrouded in clouds. Olénin looked eagerly, but it was dull and the
mountains were almost hidden by the clouds. Olénin made out something
grey and white and fleecy, but try as he would he could find nothing
beautiful in the mountains of which he had so often read and heard. The
mountains and the clouds appeared to him quite alike, and he thought
the special beauty of the snow peaks, of which he had so often been
told, was as much an invention as Bach’s music and the love of women,
in which he did not believe. So he gave up looking forward to seeing
the mountains. But early next morning, being awakened in his cart by
the freshness of the air, he glanced carelessly to the right. The
morning was perfectly clear. Suddenly he saw, about twenty paces away
as it seemed to him at first glance, pure white gigantic masses with
delicate contours, the distinct fantastic outlines of their summits
showing sharply against the far-off sky. When he had realized the
distance between himself and them and the sky and the whole immensity
of the mountains, and felt the infinitude of all that beauty, he became
afraid that it was but a phantasm or a dream. He gave himself a shake
to rouse himself, but the mountains were still the same.

“What’s that! What is it?” he said to the driver.

“Why, the mountains,” answered the Nogáy driver with indifference.

“And I too have been looking at them for a long while,” said Vanyúsha.
“Aren’t they fine? They won’t believe it at home.”

The quick progress of the three-horsed cart along the smooth road
caused the mountains to appear to be running along the horizon, while
their rosy crests glittered in the light of the rising sun. At first
Olénin was only astonished at the sight, then gladdened by it; but
later on, gazing more and more intently at that snow-peaked chain that
seemed to rise not from among other black mountains, but straight out
of the plain, and to glide away into the distance, he began by slow
degrees to be penetrated by their beauty and at length to _feel_ the
mountains. From that moment all he saw, all he thought, and all he
felt, acquired for him a new character, sternly majestic like the
mountains! All his Moscow reminiscences, shame, and repentance, and his
trivial dreams about the Caucasus, vanished and did not return. “Now it
has begun,” a solemn voice seemed to say to him. The road and the
Térek, just becoming visible in the distance, and the Cossack villages
and the people, all no longer appeared to him as a joke. He looked at
himself or Vanyúsha, and again thought of the mountains. ... Two
Cossacks ride by, their guns in their cases swinging rhythmically
behind their backs, the white and bay legs of their horses mingling
confusedly ... and the mountains! Beyond the Térek rises the smoke from
a Tartar village... and the mountains! The sun has risen and glitters
on the Térek, now visible beyond the reeds ... and the mountains! From
the village comes a Tartar wagon, and women, beautiful young women,
pass by... and the mountains! “_Abreks_ canter about the plain, and
here am I driving along and do not fear them! I have a gun, and
strength, and youth... and the mountains!”




 Chapter IV


That whole part of the Térek line (about fifty miles) along which lie
the villages of the Grebénsk Cossacks is uniform in character both as
to country and inhabitants. The Térek, which separates the Cossacks
from the mountaineers, still flows turbid and rapid though already
broad and smooth, always depositing greyish sand on its low reedy right
bank and washing away the steep, though not high, left bank, with its
roots of century-old oaks, its rotting plane trees, and young
brushwood. On the right bank lie the villages of pro-Russian, though
still somewhat restless, Tartars. Along the left bank, back half a mile
from the river and standing five or six miles apart from one another,
are Cossack villages. In olden times most of these villages were
situated on the banks of the river; but the Térek, shifting northward
from the mountains year by year, washed away those banks, and now there
remain only the ruins of the old villages and of the gardens of pear
and plum trees and poplars, all overgrown with blackberry bushes and
wild vines. No one lives there now, and one only sees the tracks of the
deer, the wolves, the hares, and the pheasants, who have learned to
love these places. From village to village runs a road cut through the
forest as a cannon-shot might fly. Along the roads are cordons of
Cossacks and watch-towers with sentinels in them. Only a narrow strip
about seven hundred yards wide of fertile wooded soil belongs to the
Cossacks. To the north of it begin the sand-drifts of the Nogáy or
Mozdók steppes, which fetch far to the north and run, Heaven knows
where, into the Trukhmén, Astrakhán, and Kirghíz-Kaisátsk steppes. To
the south, beyond the Térek, are the Great Chéchnya river, the
Kochkálov range, the Black Mountains, yet another range, and at last
the snowy mountains, which can just be seen but have never yet been
scaled. In this fertile wooded strip, rich in vegetation, has dwelt as
far back as memory runs the fine warlike and prosperous Russian tribe
belonging to the sect of Old Believers, and called the Grebénsk
Cossacks.

Long long ago their Old Believer ancestors fled from Russia and settled
beyond the Térek among the Chéchens on the Grebén, the first range of
wooded mountains of Chéchnya. Living among the Chéchens the Cossacks
intermarried with them and adopted the manners and customs of the hill
tribes, though they still retained the Russian language in all its
purity, as well as their Old Faith. A tradition, still fresh among
them, declares that Tsar Iván the Terrible came to the Térek, sent for
their Elders, and gave them the land on this side of the river,
exhorting them to remain friendly to Russia and promising not to
enforce his rule upon them nor oblige them to change their faith. Even
now the Cossack families claim relationship with the Chéchens, and the
love of freedom, of leisure, of plunder and of war, still form their
chief characteristics. Only the harmful side of Russian influence shows
itself—by interference at elections, by confiscation of church bells,
and by the troops who are quartered in the country or march through it.

A Cossack is inclined to hate less the _dzhigit_ hillsman who maybe has
killed his brother, than the soldier quartered on him to defend his
village, but who has defiled his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects
his enemy the hillsman and despises the soldier, who is in his eyes an
alien and an oppressor. In reality, from a Cossack’s point of view a
Russian peasant is a foreign, savage, despicable creature, of whom he
sees a sample in the hawkers who come to the country and in the
Ukrainian immigrants whom the Cossack contemptuously calls
“woolbeaters”. For him, to be smartly dressed means to be dressed like
a Circassian. The best weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the
best horses are bought, or stolen, from them. A dashing young Cossack
likes to show off his knowledge of Tartar, and when carousing talks
Tartar even to his fellow Cossack.

In spite of all these things this small Christian clan stranded in a
tiny corner of the earth, surrounded by half-savage Mohammedan tribes
and by soldiers, considers itself highly advanced, acknowledges none
but Cossacks as human beings, and despises everybody else. The Cossack
spends most of his time in the cordon, in action, or in hunting and
fishing. He hardly ever works at home. When he stays in the village it
is an exception to the general rule and then he is holiday-making. All
Cossacks make their own wine, and drunkenness is not so much a general
tendency as a rite, the non-fulfilment of which would be considered
apostasy. The Cossack looks upon a woman as an instrument for his
welfare; only the unmarried girls are allowed to amuse themselves. A
married woman has to work for her husband from youth to very old age:
his demands on her are the Oriental ones of submission and labour. In
consequence of this outlook women are strongly developed both
physically and mentally, and though they are—as everywhere in the
East—nominally in subjection, they possess far greater influence and
importance in family-life than Western women. Their exclusion from
public life and inurement to heavy male labour give the women all the
more power and importance in the household. A Cossack, who before
strangers considers it improper to speak affectionately or needlessly
to his wife, when alone with her is involuntarily conscious of her
superiority. His house and all his property, in fact the entire
homestead, has been acquired and is kept together solely by her labour
and care. Though firmly convinced that labour is degrading to a Cossack
and is only proper for a Nogáy labourer or a woman, he is vaguely aware
of the fact that all he makes use of and calls his own is the result of
that toil, and that it is in the power of the woman (his mother or his
wife) whom he considers his slave, to deprive him of all he possesses.
Besides, the continuous performance of man’s heavy work and the
responsibilities entrusted to her have endowed the Grebénsk women with
a peculiarly independent masculine character and have remarkably
developed their physical powers, common sense, resolution, and
stability. The women are in most cases stronger, more intelligent, more
developed, and handsomer than the men. A striking feature of a Grebénsk
woman’s beauty is the combination of the purest Circassian type of face
with the broad and powerful build of Northern women. Cossack women wear
the Circassian dress: a Tartar smock, _beshmet_, and soft slippers; but
they tie their kerchiefs round their heads in the Russian fashion.
Smartness, cleanliness and elegance in dress and in the arrangement of
their huts, are with them a custom and a necessity. In their relations
with men the women, and especially the unmarried girls, enjoy perfect
freedom.

Novomlínsk village was considered the very heart of Grebénsk
Cossackdom. In it more than elsewhere the customs of the old Grebénsk
population have been preserved, and its women have from time immemorial
been renowned all over the Caucasus for their beauty. A Cossack’s
livelihood is derived from vineyards, fruit-gardens, water melon and
pumpkin plantations, from fishing, hunting, maize and millet growing,
and from war plunder. Novomlínsk village lies about two and a half
miles away from the Térek, from which it is separated by a dense
forest. On one side of the road which runs through the village is the
river; on the other, green vineyards and orchards, beyond which are
seen the driftsands of the Nogáy Steppe. The village is surrounded by
earth-banks and prickly bramble hedges, and is entered by tall gates
hung between posts and covered with little reed-thatched roofs. Beside
them on a wooden gun-carriage stands an unwieldy cannon captured by the
Cossacks at some time or other, and which has not been fired for a
hundred years. A uniformed Cossack sentinel with dagger and gun
sometimes stands, and sometimes does not stand, on guard beside the
gates, and sometimes presents arms to a passing officer and sometimes
does not.

Below the roof of the gateway is written in black letters on a white
board: “Houses 266: male inhabitants 897: female 1012.” The Cossacks’
houses are all raised on pillars two and a half feet from the ground.
They are carefully thatched with reeds and have large carved gables. If
not new they are at least all straight and clean, with high porches of
different shapes; and they are not built close together but have ample
space around them, and are all picturesquely placed along broad streets
and lanes. In front of the large bright windows of many of the houses,
beyond the kitchen gardens, dark green poplars and acacias with their
delicate pale verdure and scented white blossoms overtop the houses,
and beside them grow flaunting yellow sunflowers, creepers, and grape
vines. In the broad open square are three shops where drapery,
sunflower and pumpkin seeds, locust beans and gingerbreads are sold;
and surrounded by a tall fence, loftier and larger than the other
houses, stands the Regimental Commander’s dwelling with its casement
windows, behind a row of tall poplars. Few people are to be seen in the
streets of the village on weekdays, especially in summer. The young men
are on duty in the cordons or on military expeditions; the old ones are
fishing or helping the women in the orchards and gardens. Only the very
old, the sick, and the children, remain at home.




 Chapter V


It was one of those wonderful evenings that occur only in the Caucasus.
The sun had sunk behind the mountains but it was still light. The
evening glow had spread over a third of the sky, and against its
brilliancy the dull white immensity of the mountains was sharply
defined. The air was rarefied, motionless, and full of sound. The
shadow of the mountains reached for several miles over the steppe. The
steppe, the opposite side of the river, and the roads, were all
deserted. If very occasionally mounted men appeared, the Cossacks in
the cordon and the Chéchens in their _aouls_ (villages) watched them
with surprised curiosity and tried to guess who those questionable men
could be.

At nightfall people from fear of one another flock to their dwellings,
and only birds and beasts fearless of man prowl in those deserted
spaces. Talking merrily, the women who have been tying up the vines
hurry away from the gardens before sunset. The vineyards, like all the
surrounding district, are deserted, but the villages become very
animated at that time of the evening. From all sides, walking, riding,
or driving in their creaking carts, people move towards the village.
Girls with their smocks tucked up and twigs in their hands run chatting
merrily to the village gates to meet the cattle that are crowding
together in a cloud of dust and mosquitoes which they bring with them
from the steppe. The well-fed cows and buffaloes disperse at a run all
over the streets and Cossack women in coloured _beshmets_ go to and fro
among them. You can hear their merry laughter and shrieks mingling with
the lowing of the cattle. There an armed and mounted Cossack, on leave
from the cordon, rides up to a hut and, leaning towards the window,
knocks. In answer to the knock the handsome head of a young woman
appears at the window and you can hear caressing, laughing voices.
There a tattered Nogáy labourer, with prominent cheekbones, brings a
load of reeds from the steppes, turns his creaking cart into the
Cossack captain’s broad and clean courtyard, and lifts the yoke off the
oxen that stand tossing their heads while he and his master shout to
one another in Tartar. Past a puddle that reaches nearly across the
street, a barefooted Cossack woman with a bundle of firewood on her
back makes her laborious way by clinging to the fences, holding her
smock high and exposing her white legs. A Cossack returning from
shooting calls out in jest: “Lift it higher, shameless thing!” and
points his gun at her. The woman lets down her smock and drops the
wood. An old Cossack, returning home from fishing with his trousers
tucked up and his hairy grey chest uncovered, has a net across his
shoulder containing silvery fish that are still struggling; and to take
a short cut climbs over his neighbour’s broken fence and gives a tug to
his coat which has caught on the fence. There a woman is dragging a dry
branch along and from round the corner comes the sound of an axe.
Cossack children, spinning their tops wherever there is a smooth place
in the street, are shrieking; women are climbing over fences to avoid
going round. From every chimney rises the odorous _kisyak_ smoke. From
every homestead comes the sound of increased bustle, precursor to the
stillness of night.

Granny Ulítka, the wife of the Cossack cornet who is also teacher in
the regimental school, goes out to the gates of her yard like the other
women, and waits for the cattle which her daughter Maryánka is driving
along the street. Before she has had time fully to open the wattle gate
in the fence, an enormous buffalo cow surrounded by mosquitoes rushes
up bellowing and squeezes in. Several well-fed cows slowly follow her,
their large eyes gazing with recognition at their mistress as they
swish their sides with their tails.

The beautiful and shapely Maryánka enters at the gate and throwing away
her switch quickly slams the gate to and rushes with all the speed of
her nimble feet to separate and drive the cattle into their sheds.
“Take off your slippers, you devil’s wench!” shouts her mother, “you’ve
worn them into holes!” Maryánka is not at all offended at being called
a “devil’s wench”, but accepting it as a term of endearment cheerfully
goes on with her task. Her face is covered with a kerchief tied round
her head. She is wearing a pink smock and a green _beshmet_. She
disappears inside the lean-to shed in the yard, following the big fat
cattle; and from the shed comes her voice as she speaks gently and
persuasively to the buffalo: “Won’t she stand still? What a creature!
Come now, come old dear!” Soon the girl and the old woman pass from the
shed to the dairy carrying two large pots of milk, the day’s yield.
From the dairy chimney rises a thin cloud of _kisyak_ smoke: the milk
is being used to make into clotted cream. The girl makes up the fire
while her mother goes to the gate. Twilight has fallen on the village.
The air is full of the smell of vegetables, cattle, and scented
_kisyak_ smoke. From the gates and along the streets Cossack women come
running, carrying lighted rags. From the yards one hears the snorting
and quiet chewing of the cattle eased of their milk, while in the
street only the voices of women and children sound as they call to one
another. It is rare on a week-day to hear the drunken voice of a man.

One of the Cossack wives, a tall, masculine old woman, approaches
Granny Ulítka from the homestead opposite and asks her for a light. In
her hand she holds a rag.

“Have you cleared up, Granny?”

“The girl is lighting the fire. Is it fire you want?” says Granny
Ulítka, proud of being able to oblige her neighbour.

Both women enter the hut, and coarse hands unused to dealing with small
articles tremblingly lift the lid of a matchbox, which is a rarity in
the Caucasus. The masculine-looking new-comer sits down on the doorstep
with the evident intention of having a chat.

“And is your man at the school, Mother?” she asked.

“He’s always teaching the youngsters, Mother. But he writes that he’ll
come home for the holidays,” said the cornet’s wife.

“Yes, he’s a clever man, one sees; it all comes useful.”

“Of course it does.”

“And my Lukáshka is at the cordon; they won’t let him come home,” said
the visitor, though the cornet’s wife had known all this long ago. She
wanted to talk about her Lukáshka whom she had lately fitted out for
service in the Cossack regiment, and whom she wished to marry to the
cornet’s daughter, Maryánka.

“So he’s at the cordon?”

“He is, Mother. He’s not been home since last holidays. The other day I
sent him some shirts by Fómushkin. He says he’s all right, and that his
superiors are satisfied. He says they are looking out for _abreks_
again. Lukáshka is quite happy, he says.”

“Ah well, thank God,” said the cornet’s wife. “‘Snatcher’ is certainly
the only word for him.” Lukáshka was surnamed “the Snatcher” because of
his bravery in snatching a boy from a watery grave, and the cornet’s
wife alluded to this, wishing in her turn to say something agreeable to
Lukáshka’s mother.

“I thank God, Mother, that he’s a good son! He’s a fine fellow,
everyone praises him,” says Lukáshka’s mother. “All I wish is to get
him married; then I could die in peace.”

“Well, aren’t there plenty of young women in the village?” answered the
cornet’s wife slyly as she carefully replaced the lid of the matchbox
with her horny hands.

“Plenty, Mother, plenty,” remarked Lukáshka’s mother, shaking her head.
“There’s your girl now, your Maryánka—that’s the sort of girl! You’d
have to search through the whole place to find such another!” The
cornet’s wife knows what Lukáshka’s mother is after, but though she
believes him to be a good Cossack she hangs back: first because she is
a cornet’s wife and rich, while Lukáshka is the son of a simple Cossack
and fatherless, secondly because she does not want to part with her
daughter yet, but chiefly because propriety demands it.

“Well, when Maryánka grows up she’ll be marriageable too,” she answers
soberly and modestly.

“I’ll send the matchmakers to you—I’ll send them! Only let me get the
vineyard done and then we’ll come and make our bows to you,” says
Lukáshka’s mother. “And we’ll make our bows to Elias Vasílich too.”

“Elias, indeed!” says the cornet’s wife proudly. “It’s to me you must
speak! All in its own good time.”

Lukáshka’s mother sees by the stern face of the cornet’s wife that it
is not the time to say anything more just now, so she lights her rag
with the match and says, rising: “Don’t refuse us, think of my words.
I’ll go, it is time to light the fire.”

As she crosses the road swinging the burning rag, she meets Maryánka,
who bows.

“Ah, she’s a regular queen, a splendid worker, that girl!” she thinks,
looking at the beautiful maiden. “What need for her to grow any more?
It’s time she was married and to a good home; married to Lukáshka!”

But Granny Ulítka had her own cares and she remained sitting on the
threshold thinking hard about something, till the girl called her.




 Chapter VI


The male population of the village spend their time on military
expeditions and in the cordon—or “at their posts”, as the Cossacks say.
Towards evening, that same Lukáshka the Snatcher, about whom the old
women had been talking, was standing on a watch-tower of the
Nízhni-Protótsk post situated on the very banks of the Térek. Leaning
on the railing of the tower and screwing up his eyes, he looked now far
into the distance beyond the Térek, now down at his fellow Cossacks,
and occasionally he addressed the latter. The sun was already
approaching the snowy range that gleamed white above the fleecy clouds.
The clouds undulating at the base of the mountains grew darker and
darker. The clearness of evening was noticeable in the air. A sense of
freshness came from the woods, though round the post it was still hot.
The voices of the talking Cossacks vibrated more sonorously than
before. The moving mass of the Térek’s rapid brown waters contrasted
more vividly with its motionless banks. The waters were beginning to
subside and here and there the wet sands gleamed drab on the banks and
in the shallows. The other side of the river, just opposite the cordon,
was deserted; only an immense waste of low-growing reeds stretched far
away to the very foot of the mountains. On the low bank, a little to
one side, could be seen the flat-roofed clay houses and the
funnel-shaped chimneys of a Chéchen village. The sharp eyes of the
Cossack who stood on the watch-tower followed, through the evening
smoke of the pro-Russian village, the tiny moving figures of the
Chéchen women visible in the distance in their red and blue garments.

Although the Cossacks expected _abreks_ to cross over and attack them
from the Tartar side at any moment, especially as it was May when the
woods by the Térek are so dense that it is difficult to pass through
them on foot and the river is shallow enough in places for a horseman
to ford it, and despite the fact that a couple of days before a Cossack
had arrived with a circular from the commander of the regiment
announcing that spies had reported the intention of a party of some
eight men to cross the Térek, and ordering special vigilance—no special
vigilance was being observed in the cordon. The Cossacks, unarmed and
with their horses unsaddled just as if they were at home, spent their
time some in fishing, some in drinking, and some in hunting. Only the
horse of the man on duty was saddled, and with its feet hobbled was
moving about by the brambles near the wood, and only the sentinel had
his Circassian coat on and carried a gun and sword. The corporal, a
tall thin Cossack with an exceptionally long back and small hands and
feet, was sitting on the earth-bank of a hut with his _beshmet_
unbuttoned. On his face was the lazy, bored expression of a superior,
and having shut his eyes he dropped his head upon the palm first of one
hand and then of the other. An elderly Cossack with a broad
greyish-black beard was lying in his shirt, girdled with a black strap,
close to the river and gazing lazily at the waves of the Térek as they
monotonously foamed and swirled. Others, also overcome by the heat and
half naked, were rinsing clothes in the Térek, plaiting a fishing line,
or humming tunes as they lay on the hot sand of the river bank. One
Cossack, with a thin face much burnt by the sun, lay near the hut
evidently dead drunk, by a wall which though it had been in shadow some
two hours previously was now exposed to the sun’s fierce slanting rays.

Lukáshka, who stood on the watch-tower, was a tall handsome lad about
twenty years old and very like his mother. His face and whole build, in
spite of the angularity of youth, indicated great strength, both
physical and moral. Though he had only lately joined the Cossacks at
the front, it was evident from the expression of his face and the calm
assurance of his attitude that he had already acquired the somewhat
proud and warlike bearing peculiar to Cossacks and to men generally who
continually carry arms, and that he felt he was a Cossack and fully
knew his own value. His ample Circassian coat was torn in some places,
his cap was on the back of his head Chéchen fashion, and his leggings
had slipped below his knees. His clothing was not rich, but he wore it
with that peculiar Cossack foppishness which consists in imitating the
Chéchen brave. Everything on a real brave is ample, ragged, and
neglected, only his weapons are costly. But these ragged clothes and
these weapons are belted and worn with a certain air and matched in a
certain manner, neither of which can be acquired by everybody and which
at once strike the eye of a Cossack or a hillsman. Lukáshka had this
resemblance to a brave. With his hands folded under his sword, and his
eyes nearly closed, he kept looking at the distant Tartar village.
Taken separately his features were not beautiful, but anyone who saw
his stately carriage and his dark-browed intelligent face would
involuntarily say, “What a fine fellow!”

“Look at the women, what a lot of them are walking about in the
village,” said he in a sharp voice, languidly showing his brilliant
white teeth and not addressing anyone in particular.

Nazárka who was lying below immediately lifted his head and remarked:

“They must be going for water.”

“Supposing one scared them with a gun?” said Lukáshka, laughing,
“Wouldn’t they be frightened?”

“It wouldn’t reach.”

“What! Mine would carry beyond. Just wait a bit, and when their feast
comes round I’ll go and visit Giréy Khan and drink _buza_ there,” said
Lukáshka, angrily swishing away the mosquitoes which attached
themselves to him.

A rustling in the thicket drew the Cossack’s attention. A pied mongrel
half-setter, searching for a scent and violently wagging its scantily
furred tail, came running to the cordon. Lukáshka recognized the dog as
one belonging to his neighbour, Uncle Eróshka, a hunter, and saw,
following it through the thicket, the approaching figure of the hunter
himself.

Uncle Eróshka was a gigantic Cossack with a broad, snow-white beard and
such broad shoulders and chest that in the wood, where there was no one
to compare him with, he did not look particularly tall, so well
proportioned were his powerful limbs. He wore a tattered coat and, over
the bands with which his legs were swathed, sandals made of undressed
deer’s hide tied on with strings; while on his head he had a rough
little white cap. He carried over one shoulder a screen to hide behind
when shooting pheasants, and a bag containing a hen for luring hawks,
and a small falcon; over the other shoulder, attached by a strap, was a
wild cat he had killed; and stuck in his belt behind were some little
bags containing bullets, gunpowder, and bread, a horse’s tail to swish
away the mosquitoes, a large dagger in a torn scabbard smeared with old
bloodstains, and two dead pheasants. Having glanced at the cordon he
stopped.

“Hy, Lyam!” he called to the dog in such a ringing bass that it awoke
an echo far away in the wood; and throwing over his shoulder his big
gun, of the kind the Cossacks call a “flint”, he raised his cap.

“Had a good day, good people, eh?” he said, addressing the Cossacks in
the same strong and cheerful voice, quite without effort, but as loudly
as if he were shouting to someone on the other bank of the river.

“Yes, yes, Uncle!” answered from all sides the voices of the young
Cossacks.

“What have you seen? Tell us!” shouted Uncle Eróshka, wiping the sweat
from his broad red face with the sleeve of his coat.

“Ah, there’s a vulture living in the plane tree here, Uncle. As soon as
night comes he begins hovering round,” said Nazárka, winking and
jerking his shoulder and leg.

“Come, come!” said the old man incredulously.

“Really, Uncle! You must keep watch,” replied Nazárka with a laugh.

The other Cossacks began laughing.

The wag had not seen any vulture at all, but it had long been the
custom of the young Cossacks in the cordon to tease and mislead Uncle
Eróshka every time he came to them.

“Eh, you fool, always lying!” exclaimed Lukáshka from the tower to
Nazárka.

Nazárka was immediately silenced.

“It must be watched. I’ll watch,” answered the old man to the great
delight of all the Cossacks. “But have you seen any boars?”

“Watching for boars, are you?” said the corporal, bending forward and
scratching his back with both hands, very pleased at the chance of some
distraction. “It’s _abreks_ one has to hunt here and not boars! You’ve
not heard anything, Uncle, have you?” he added, needlessly screwing up
his eyes and showing his close-set white teeth.

“_Abreks_,” said the old man. “No, I haven’t. I say, have you any
_chikhir?_ Let me have a drink, there’s a good man. I’m really quite
done up. When the time comes I’ll bring you some fresh meat, I really
will. Give me a drink!” he added.

“Well, and are you going to watch?” inquired the corporal, as though he
had not heard what the other said.

“I did mean to watch tonight,” replied Uncle Eróshka. “Maybe, with
God’s help, I shall kill something for the holiday. Then you shall have
a share, you shall indeed!”

“Uncle! Hallo, Uncle!” called out Lukáshka sharply from above,
attracting everybody’s attention. All the Cossacks looked up at him.
“Just go to the upper water-course, there’s a fine herd of boars there.
I’m not inventing, really! The other day one of our Cossacks shot one
there. I’m telling you the truth,” added he, readjusting the musket at
his back and in a tone that showed he was not joking.

“Ah! Lukáshka the Snatcher is here!” said the old man, looking up.
“Where has he been shooting?”

“Haven’t you seen? I suppose you’re too young!” said Lukáshka. “Close
by the ditch,” he went on seriously with a shake of the head. “We were
just going along the ditch when all at once we heard something
crackling, but my gun was in its case. Elias fired suddenly ... But
I’ll show you the place, it’s not far. You just wait a bit. I know
every one of their footpaths ... Daddy Mósev,” said he, turning
resolutely and almost commandingly to the corporal, “it’s time to
relieve guard!” and holding aloft his gun he began to descend from the
watch-tower without waiting for the order.

“Come down!” said the corporal, after Lukáshka had started, and glanced
round. “Is it your turn, Gúrka? Then go ... True enough your Lukáshka
has become very skilful,” he went on, addressing the old man. “He keeps
going about just like you, he doesn’t stay at home. The other day he
killed a boar.”




 Chapter VII


The sun had already set and the shades of night were rapidly spreading
from the edge of the wood. The Cossacks finished their task round the
cordon and gathered in the hut for supper. Only the old man still
stayed under the plane tree watching for the vulture and pulling the
string tied to the falcon’s leg, but though a vulture was really
perching on the plane tree it declined to swoop down on the lure.
Lukáshka, singing one song after another, was leisurely placing nets
among the very thickest brambles to trap pheasants. In spite of his
tall stature and big hands every kind of work, both rough and delicate,
prospered under Lukáshka’s fingers.

“Hallo, Luke!” came Nazárka’s shrill, sharp voice calling him from the
thicket close by. “The Cossacks have gone in to supper.”

Nazárka, with a live pheasant under his arm, forced his way through the
brambles and emerged on the footpath.

“Oh!” said Lukáshka, breaking off in his song, “where did you get that
cock pheasant? I suppose it was in my trap?”

Nazárka was of the same age as Lukáshka and had also only been at the
front since the previous spring.

He was plain, thin and puny, with a shrill voice that rang in one’s
ears. They were neighbours and comrades. Lukáshka was sitting on the
grass cross-legged like a Tartar, adjusting his nets.

“I don’t know whose it was—yours, I expect.”

“Was it beyond the pit by the plane tree? Then it is mine! I set the
nets last night.”

Lukáshka rose and examined the captured pheasant. After stroking the
dark burnished head of the bird, which rolled its eyes and stretched
out its neck in terror, Lukáshka took the pheasant in his hands.

“We’ll have it in a pilau tonight. You go and kill and pluck it.”

“And shall we eat it ourselves or give it to the corporal?”

“He has plenty!”

“I don’t like killing them,” said Nazárka.

“Give it here!”

Lukáshka drew a little knife from under his dagger and gave it a swift
jerk. The bird fluttered, but before it could spread its wings the
bleeding head bent and quivered.

“That’s how one should do it!” said Lukáshka, throwing down the
pheasant. “It will make a fat pilau.”

Nazárka shuddered as he looked at the bird.

“I say, Lukáshka, that fiend will be sending us to the ambush again
tonight,” he said, taking up the bird. (He was alluding to the
corporal.) “He has sent Fómushkin to get wine, and it ought to be his
turn. He always puts it on us.”

Lukáshka went whistling along the cordon.

“Take the string with you,” he shouted.

Nazirka obeyed.

“I’ll give him a bit of my mind today, I really will,” continued
Nazárka. “Let’s say we won’t go; we’re tired out and there’s an end of
it! No, really, you tell him, he’ll listen to you. It’s too bad!”

“Get along with you! What a thing to make a fuss about!” said Lukáshka,
evidently thinking of something else. “What bosh! If he made us turn
out of the village at night now, that would be annoying: there one can
have some fun, but here what is there? It’s all one whether we’re in
the cordon or in ambush. What a fellow you are!”

“And are you going to the village?”

“I’ll go for the holidays.”

“Gúrka says your Dunáyka is carrying on with Fómushkin,” said Nazárka
suddenly.

“Well, let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka, showing his regular
white teeth, though he did not laugh. “As if I couldn’t find another!”

“Gúrka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there was
Fómushkin sitting and eating pie. Gúrka stopped awhile and then went
away, and passing by the window he heard her say, ‘He’s gone, the
fiend.... Why don’t you eat your pie, my own? You needn’t go home for
the night,’ she says. And Gúrka under the window says to himself,
‘That’s fine!’”

“You’re making it up.”

“No, quite true, by Heaven!”

“Well, if she’s found another let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka,
after a pause. “There’s no lack of girls and I was sick of her anyway.”

“Well, see what a devil you are!” said Nazárka. “You should make up to
the cornet’s girl, Maryánka. Why doesn’t she walk out with any one?”

Lukáshka frowned. “What of Maryánka? They’re all alike,” said he.

“Well, you just try...”

“What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?”

And Lukáshka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon pulling
leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly, catching
sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the handle of his
dagger and cut it down. “What a ramrod it will make,” he said, swinging
the sapling till it whistled through the air.

The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen floor
of the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the question of whose
turn it was to lie in ambush was raised. “Who is to go tonight?”
shouted one of the Cossacks through the open door to the corporal in
the next room.

“Who is to go?” the corporal shouted back. “Uncle Burlák has been and
Fómushkin too,” said he, not quite confidently. “You two had better go,
you and Nazárka,” he went on, addressing Lukáshka. “And Ergushóv must
go too; surely he has slept it off?”

“You don’t sleep it off yourself so why should he?” said Nazárka in a
subdued voice.

The Cossacks laughed.

Ergushóv was the Cossack who had been lying drunk and asleep near the
hut. He had only that moment staggered into the room rubbing his eyes.

Lukáshka had already risen and was getting his gun ready.

“Be quick and go! Finish your supper and go!” said the corporal; and
without waiting for an expression of consent he shut the door,
evidently not expecting the Cossack to obey. “Of course,” thought he,
“if I hadn’t been ordered to I wouldn’t send anyone, but an officer
might turn up at any moment. As it is, they say eight _abreks_ have
crossed over.”

“Well, I suppose I must go,” remarked Ergushóv, “it’s the regulation.
Can’t be helped! The times are such. I say, we must go.”

Meanwhile Lukáshka, holding a big piece of pheasant to his mouth with
both hands and glancing now at Nazárka, now at Ergushóv, seemed quite
indifferent to what passed and only laughed at them both. Before the
Cossacks were ready to go into ambush. Uncle Eróshka, who had been
vainly waiting under the plane tree till night fell, entered the dark
outer room.

“Well, lads,” his loud bass resounded through the low-roofed room
drowning all the other voices, “I’m going with you. You’ll watch for
Chéchens and I for boars!”




 Chapter VIII


It was quite dark when Uncle Eróshka and the three Cossacks, in their
cloaks and shouldering their guns, left the cordon and went towards the
place on the Térek where they were to lie in ambush. Nazárka did not
want to go at all, but Lukáshka shouted at him and they soon started.
After they had gone a few steps in silence the Cossacks turned aside
from the ditch and went along a path almost hidden by reeds till they
reached the river. On its bank lay a thick black log cast up by the
water. The reeds around it had been recently beaten down.

“Shall we lie here?” asked Nazárka.

“Why not?” answered Lukáshka. “Sit down here and I’ll be back in a
minute. I’ll only show Daddy where to go.”

“This is the best place; here we can see and not be seen,” said
Ergushóv, “so it’s here we’ll lie. It’s a first-rate place!”

Nazárka and Ergushóv spread out their cloaks and settled down behind
the log, while Lukáshka went on with Uncle Eróshka.

“It’s not far from here. Daddy,” said Lukáshka, stepping softly in
front of the old man; “I’ll show you where they’ve been—I’m the only
one that knows, Daddy.”

“Show me! You’re a fine fellow, a regular Snatcher!” replied the old
man, also whispering.

Having gone a few steps Lukáshka stopped, stooped down over a puddle,
and whistled. “That’s where they come to drink, d’you see?” He spoke in
a scarcely audible voice, pointing to fresh hoof-prints.

“Christ bless you,” answered the old man. “The boar will be in the
hollow beyond the ditch,” he added. “I’ll watch, and you can go.”

Lukáshka pulled his cloak up higher and walked back alone, throwing
swift glances now to the left at the wall of reeds, now to the Térek
rushing by below the bank. “I daresay he’s watching or creeping along
somewhere,” thought he of a possible Chéchen hillsman. Suddenly a loud
rustling and a splash in the water made him start and seize his musket.
From under the bank a boar leapt up—his dark outline showing for a
moment against the glassy surface of the water and then disappearing
among the reeds. Lukáshka pulled out his gun and aimed, but before he
could fire the boar had disappeared in the thicket. Lukáshka spat with
vexation and went on. On approaching the ambuscade he halted again and
whistled softly. His whistle was answered and he stepped up to his
comrades.

Nazárka, all curled up, was already asleep. Ergushóv sat with his legs
crossed and moved slightly to make room for Lukáshka.

“How jolly it is to sit here! It’s really a good place,” said he. “Did
you take him there?”

“Showed him where,” answered Lukáshka, spreading out his cloak. “But
what a big boar I roused just now close to the water! I expect it was
the very one! You must have heard the crash?”

“I did hear a beast crashing through. I knew at once it was a beast. I
thought to myself: ‘Lukáshka has roused a beast,’” Ergushóv said,
wrapping himself up in his cloak. “Now I’ll go to sleep,” he added.
“Wake me when the cocks crow. We must have discipline. I’ll lie down
and have a nap, and then you will have a nap and I’ll watch—that’s the
way.”

“Luckily I don’t want to sleep,” answered Lukáshka.

The night was dark, warm, and still. Only on one side of the sky the
stars were shining, the other and greater part was overcast by one huge
cloud stretching from the mountaintops. The black cloud, blending in
the absence of any wind with the mountains, moved slowly onwards, its
curved edges sharply defined against the deep starry sky. Only in front
of him could the Cossack discern the Térek and the distance beyond.
Behind and on both sides he was surrounded by a wall of reeds.
Occasionally the reeds would sway and rustle against one another
apparently without cause. Seen from down below, against the clear part
of the sky, their waving tufts looked like the feathery branches of
trees. Close in front at his very feet was the bank, and at its base
the rushing torrent. A little farther on was the moving mass of glassy
brown water which eddied rhythmically along the bank and round the
shallows. Farther still, water, banks, and cloud all merged together in
impenetrable gloom. Along the surface of the water floated black
shadows, in which the experienced eyes of the Cossack detected trees
carried down by the current. Only very rarely sheet-lightning, mirrored
in the water as in a black glass, disclosed the sloping bank opposite.
The rhythmic sounds of night—the rustling of the reeds, the snoring of
the Cossacks, the hum of mosquitoes, and the rushing water, were every
now and then broken by a shot fired in the distance, or by the gurgling
of water when a piece of bank slipped down, the splash of a big fish,
or the crashing of an animal breaking through the thick undergrowth in
the wood. Once an owl flew past along the Térek, flapping one wing
against the other rhythmically at every second beat. Just above the
Cossack’s head it turned towards the wood and then, striking its wings
no longer after every other flap but at every flap, it flew to an old
plane tree where it rustled about for a long time before settling down
among the branches. At every one of these unexpected sounds the
watching Cossack listened intently, straining his hearing, and screwing
up his eyes while he deliberately felt for his musket.

The greater part of the night was past. The black cloud that had moved
westward revealed the clear starry sky from under its torn edge, and
the golden upturned crescent of the moon shone above the mountains with
a reddish light. The cold began to be penetrating. Nazárka awoke, spoke
a little, and fell asleep again. Lukáshka feeling bored got up, drew
the knife from his dagger-handle and began to fashion his stick into a
ramrod. His head was full of the Chéchens who lived over there in the
mountains, and of how their brave lads came across and were not afraid
of the Cossacks, and might even now be crossing the river at some other
spot. He thrust himself out of his hiding-place and looked along the
river but could see nothing. And as he continued looking out at
intervals upon the river and at the opposite bank, now dimly
distinguishable from the water in the faint moonlight, he no longer
thought about the Chéchens but only of when it would be time to wake
his comrades, and of going home to the village. In the village he
imagined Dunáyka, his “little soul”, as the Cossacks call a man’s
mistress, and thought of her with vexation. Silvery mists, a sign of
coming morning, glittered white above the water, and not far from him
young eagles were whistling and flapping their wings. At last the
crowing of a cock reached him from the distant village, followed by the
long-sustained note of another, which was again answered by yet other
voices.

“Time to wake them,” thought Lukáshka, who had finished his ramrod and
felt his eyes growing heavy. Turning to his comrades he managed to make
out which pair of legs belonged to whom, when it suddenly seemed to him
that he heard something splash on the other side of the Térek. He
turned again towards the horizon beyond the hills, where day was
breaking under the upturned crescent, glanced at the outline of the
opposite bank, at the Térek, and at the now distinctly visible
driftwood upon it. For one instant it seemed to him that he was moving
and that the Térek with the drifting wood remained stationary. Again he
peered out. One large black log with a branch particularly attracted
his attention. The tree was floating in a strange way right down the
middle of the stream, neither rocking nor whirling. It even appeared
not to be floating altogether with the current, but to be crossing it
in the direction of the shallows. Lukáshka stretching out his neck
watched it intently. The tree floated to the shallows, stopped, and
shifted in a peculiar manner. Lukáshka thought he saw an arm stretched
out from beneath the tree.

“Supposing I killed an _abrek_ all by myself!” he thought, and seized
his gun with a swift, unhurried movement, putting up his gun-rest,
placing the gun upon it, and holding it noiselessly in position.
Cocking the trigger, with bated breath he took aim, still peering out
intently.

“I won’t wake them,” he thought. But his heart began beating so fast
that he remained motionless, listening. Suddenly the trunk gave a
plunge and again began to float across the stream towards our bank.

“Suppose I miss?...” thought he, and now by the faint light of the moon
he caught a glimpse of a Tartar’s head in front of the floating wood.
He aimed straight at the head which appeared to be quite near—just at
the end of his rifle’s barrel. He glanced cross. “Right enough it is an
_abrek!_” he thought joyfully, and suddenly rising to his knees he
again took aim. Having found the sight, barely visible at the end of
the long gun, he said: “In the name of the Father and of the Son,” in
the Cossack way learnt in his childhood, and pulled the trigger. A
flash of lightning lit up for an instant the reeds and the water, and
the sharp, abrupt report of the shot was carried across the river,
changing into a prolonged roll somewhere in the far distance. The piece
of driftwood now floated not across, but with the current, rocking and
whirling.

“Stop, I say!” exclaimed Ergushóv, seizing his musket and raising
himself behind the log near which he was lying.

“Shut up, you devil!” whispered Lukáshka, grinding his teeth.
“_Abreks!_”

“Whom have you shot?” asked Nazárka. “Who was it, Lukáshka?”

Lukáshka did not answer. He was reloading his gun and watching the
floating wood. A little way off it stopped on a sand-bank, and from
behind it something large that rocked in the water came into view.

“What did you shoot? Why don’t you speak?” insisted the Cossacks.

“_Abreks_, I tell you!” said Lukáshka.

“Don’t humbug! Did the gun go off? ...”

“I’ve killed an _abrek_, that’s what I fired at,” muttered Lukáshka in
a voice choked by emotion, as he jumped to his feet. “A man was
swimming...” he said, pointing to the sandbank. “I killed him. Just
look there.”

“Have done with your humbugging!” said Ergushóv again, rubbing his
eyes.

“Have done with what? Look there,” said Lukáshka, seizing him by the
shoulders and pulling him with such force that Ergushóv groaned.

He looked in the direction in which Lukáshka pointed, and discerning a
body immediately changed his tone.

“O Lord! But I say, more will come! I tell you the truth,” said he
softly, and began examining his musket. “That was a scout swimming
across: either the others are here already or are not far off on the
other side—I tell you for sure!” Lukáshka was unfastening his belt and
taking off his Circassian coat.

“What are you up to, you idiot?” exclaimed Ergushóv. “Only show
yourself and you’ve lost all for nothing, I tell you true! If you’ve
killed him he won’t escape. Let me have a little powder for my
musket-pan—you have some? Nazárka, you go back to the cordon and look
alive; but don’t go along the bank or you’ll be killed—I tell you
true.”

“Catch me going alone! Go yourself!” said Nazárka angrily.

Having taken off his coat, Lukáshka went down to the bank.

“Don’t go in, I tell you!” said Ergushóv, putting some powder on the
pan. “Look, he’s not moving. I can see. It’s nearly morning; wait till
they come from the cordon. You go, Nazárka. You’re afraid! Don’t be
afraid, I tell you.”

“Luke, I say, Lukáshka! Tell us how you did it!” said Nazárka.

Lukáshka changed his mind about going into the water just then. “Go
quick to the cordon and I will watch. Tell the Cossacks to send out the
patrol. If the _abreks_ are on this side they must be caught,” said he.

“That’s what I say. They’ll get off,” said Ergushóv, rising. “True,
they must be caught!”

Ergushóv and Nazárka rose and, crossing themselves, started off for the
cordon—not along the riverbank but breaking their way through the
brambles to reach a path in the wood.

“Now mind, Lukáshka—they may cut you down here, so you’d best keep a
sharp look-out, I tell you!”

“Go along; I know,” muttered Lukáshka; and having examined his gun
again he sat down behind the log.

He remained alone and sat gazing at the shallows and listening for the
Cossacks; but it was some distance to the cordon and he was tormented
by impatience. He kept thinking that the other _abreks_ who were with
the one he had killed would escape. He was vexed with the _abreks_ who
were going to escape just as he had been with the boar that had escaped
the evening before. He glanced round and at the opposite bank,
expecting every moment to see a man, and having arranged his gun-rest
he was ready to fire. The idea that he might himself be killed never
entered his head.




 Chapter IX


It was growing light. The Chéchen’s body which was gently rocking in
the shallow water was now clearly visible. Suddenly the reeds rustled
not far from Luke and he heard steps and saw the feathery tops of the
reeds moving. He set his gun at full cock and muttered: “In the name of
the Father and of the Son,” but when the cock clicked the sound of
steps ceased.

“Hallo, Cossacks! Don’t kill your Daddy!” said a deep bass voice
calmly; and moving the reeds apart Daddy Eróshka came up close to Luke.

“I very nearly killed you, by God I did!” said Lukáshka.

“What have you shot?” asked the old man.

His sonorous voice resounded through the wood and downward along the
river, suddenly dispelling the mysterious quiet of night around the
Cossack. It was as if everything had suddenly become lighter and more
distinct.

“There now. Uncle, you have not seen anything, but I’ve killed a
beast,” said Lukáshka, uncocking his gun and getting up with unnatural
calmness.

The old man was staring intently at the white back, now clearly
visible, against which the Térek rippled.

“He was swimming with a log on his back. I spied him out! ... Look
there. There! He’s got blue trousers, and a gun I think.... Do you
see?” inquired Luke.

“How can one help seeing?” said the old man angrily, and a serious and
stern expression appeared on his face. “You’ve killed a brave,” he
said, apparently with regret.

“Well, I sat here and suddenly saw something dark on the other side. I
spied him when he was still over there. It was as if a man had come
there and fallen in. Strange! And a piece of driftwood, a good-sized
piece, comes floating, not with the stream but across it; and what do I
see but a head appearing from under it! Strange! I stretched out of the
reeds but could see nothing; then I rose and he must have heard, the
beast, and crept out into the shallow and looked about. ‘No, you
don’t!’ I said, as soon as he landed and looked round, ‘you won’t get
away!’ Oh, there was something choking me! I got my gun ready but did
not stir, and looked out. He waited a little and then swam out again;
and when he came into the moonlight I could see his whole back. ‘In the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost’... and through
the smoke I see him struggling. He moaned, or so it seemed to me. ‘Ah,’
I thought, ‘the Lord be thanked, I’ve killed him!’ And when he drifted
onto the sand-bank I could see him distinctly: he tried to get up but
couldn’t. He struggled a bit and then lay down. Everything could be
seen. Look, he does not move—he must be dead! The Cossacks have gone
back to the cordon in case there should be any more of them.”

“And so you got him!” said the old man. “He is far away now, my lad!
...” And again he shook his head sadly.

Just then the sound reached them of breaking bushes and the loud voices
of Cossacks approaching along the bank on horseback and on foot. “Are
you bringing the skiff?” shouted Lukáshka.

“You’re a trump, Luke! Lug it to the bank!” shouted one of the
Cossacks.

Without waiting for the skiff Lukáshka began to undress, keeping an eye
all the while on his prey.

“Wait a bit, Nazárka is bringing the skiff,” shouted the corporal.

“You fool! Maybe he is alive and only pretending! Take your dagger with
you!” shouted another Cossack.

“Get along,” cried Luke, pulling off his trousers. He quickly undressed
and, crossing himself, jumped, plunging with a splash into the river.
Then with long strokes of his white arms, lifting his back high out of
the water and breathing deeply, he swam across the current of the Térek
towards the shallows. A crowd of Cossacks stood on the bank talking
loudly. Three horsemen rode off to patrol. The skiff appeared round a
bend. Lukáshka stood up on the sandbank, leaned over the body, and gave
it a couple of shakes.

“Quite dead!” he shouted in a shrill voice.

The Chéchen had been shot in the head. He had on a pair of blue
trousers, a shirt, and a Circassian coat, and a gun and dagger were
tied to his back. Above all these a large branch was tied, and it was
this which at first had misled Lukáshka.

“What a carp you’ve landed!” cried one of the Cossacks who had
assembled in a circle, as the body, lifted out of the skiff, was laid
on the bank, pressing down the grass.

“How yellow he is!” said another.

“Where have our fellows gone to search? I expect the rest of them are
on the other bank. If this one had not been a scout he would not have
swum that way. Why else should he swim alone?” said a third.

“Must have been a smart one to offer himself before the others; a
regular brave!” said Lukáshka mockingly, shivering as he wrung out his
clothes that had got wet on the bank.

“His beard is dyed and cropped.”

“And he has tied a bag with a coat in it to his back.”

“That would make it easier for him to swim,” said some one.

“I say, Lukáshka,” said the corporal, who was holding the dagger and
gun taken from the dead man. “Keep the dagger for yourself and the coat
too; but I’ll give you three rubles for the gun. You see it has a hole
in it,” said he, blowing into the muzzle. “I want it just for a
souvenir.”

Lukáshka did not answer. Evidently this sort of begging vexed him but
he knew it could not be avoided.

“See, what a devil!” said he, frowning and throwing down the Chéchen’s
coat. “If at least it were a good coat, but it’s a mere rag.”

“It’ll do to fetch firewood in,” said one of the Cossacks.

“Mósev, I’ll go home,” said Lukáshka, evidently forgetting his vexation
and wishing to get some advantage out of having to give a present to
his superior.

“All right, you may go!”

“Take the body beyond the cordon, lads,” said the corporal, still
examining the gun, “and put a shelter over him from the sun. Perhaps
they’ll send from the mountains to ransom it.”

“It isn’t hot yet,” said someone.

“And supposing a jackal tears him? Would that be well?” remarked
another Cossack.

“We’ll set a watch; if they should come to ransom him it won’t do for
him to have been torn.”

“Well, Lukáshka, whatever you do you must stand a pail of vodka for the
lads,” said the corporal gaily.

“Of course! That’s the custom,” chimed in the Cossacks. “See what luck
God has sent you! Without ever having seen anything of the kind before,
you’ve killed a brave!”

“Buy the dagger and coat and don’t be stingy, and I’ll let you have the
trousers too,” said Lukáshka. “They’re too tight for me; he was a thin
devil.”

One Cossack bought the coat for a ruble and another gave the price of
two pails of vodka for the dagger.

“Drink, lads! I’ll stand you a pail!” said Luke. “I’ll bring it myself
from the village.”

“And cut up the trousers into kerchiefs for the girls!” said Nazárka.

The Cossacks burst out laughing.

“Have done laughing!” said the corporal. “And take the body away. Why
have you put the nasty thing by the hut?”

“What are you standing there for? Haul him along, lads!” shouted
Lukáshka in a commanding voice to the Cossacks, who reluctantly took
hold of the body, obeying him as though he were their chief. After
dragging the body along for a few steps the Cossacks let fall the legs,
which dropped with a lifeless jerk, and stepping apart they then stood
silent for a few moments. Nazárka came up and straightened the head,
which was turned to one side so that the round wound above the temple
and the whole of the dead man’s face were visible. “See what a mark he
has made right in the brain,” he said. “He won’t get lost. His owners
will always know him!” No one answered, and again the Angel of Silence
flew over the Cossacks.

The sun had risen high and its diverging beams were lighting up the
dewy grass. Near by, the Térek murmured in the awakened wood and,
greeting the morning, the pheasants called to one another. The Cossacks
stood still and silent around the dead man, gazing at him. The brown
body, with nothing on but the wet blue trousers held by a girdle over
the sunken stomach, was well shaped and handsome. The muscular arms lay
stretched straight out by his sides; the blue, freshly shaven, round
head with the clotted wound on one side of it was thrown back. The
smooth tanned forehead contrasted sharply with the shaven part of the
head. The open glassy eyes with lowered pupils stared upwards, seeming
to gaze past everything. Under the red trimmed moustache the fine lips,
drawn at the corners, seemed stiffened into a smile of good-natured
subtle raillery. The fingers of the small hands covered with red hairs
were bent inward, and the nails were dyed red.

Lukáshka had not yet dressed. He was wet. His neck was redder and his
eyes brighter than usual, his broad jaws twitched, and from his healthy
body a hardly perceptible steam rose in the fresh morning air.

“He too was a man!” he muttered, evidently admiring the corpse.

“Yes, if you had fallen into his hands you would have had short
shrift,” said one of the Cossacks.

The Angel of Silence had taken wing. The Cossacks began bustling about
and talking. Two of them went to cut brushwood for a shelter, others
strolled towards the cordon. Luke and Nazárka ran to get ready to go to
the village.

Half an hour later they were both on their way homewards, talking
incessantly and almost running through the dense woods which separated
the Térek from the village.

“Mind, don’t tell her I sent you, but just go and find out if her
husband is at home,” Luke was saying in his shrill voice.

“And I’ll go round to Yámka too,” said the devoted Nazárka. “We’ll have
a spree, shall we?”

“When should we have one if not today?” replied Luke.

When they reached the village the two Cossacks drank, and lay down to
sleep till evening.




 Chapter X


On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a
Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of
Novomlínsk. The horses had been unharnessed and the companies’ wagons
were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs
gathered from various yards (where they had not been sufficiently
securely stored) were now cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were
settling accounts with the soldiers. The Service Corps men were driving
piles in the ground to which to tie the horses, and the quartermasters
were going about the streets just as if they were at home, showing
officers and men to their quarters. Here were green ammunition boxes in
a line, the company’s carts, horses, and cauldrons in which buckwheat
porridge was being cooked.

Here were the captain and the lieutenant and the sergeant-major, Onisim
Mikháylovich, and all this was in the Cossack village where it was
reported that the companies were ordered to take up their quarters:
therefore they were at home here.

But why they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were, and whether
they wanted the troops to be there, and whether they were Old Believers
or not—was all quite immaterial. Having received their pay and been
dismissed, tired out and covered with dust, the soldiers noisily and in
disorder, like a swarm of bees about to settle, spread over the squares
and streets.

Quite regardless of the Cossacks’ ill will, chattering merrily and with
their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts and
hung up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered the
women. At their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons, a large
group of soldiers assembled and with little pipes between their teeth
they gazed, now at the smoke which rose into the hot sky, becoming
visible when it thickened into white clouds as it rose, and now at the
camp fires which were quivering in the pure air like molten glass, and
bantered and made fun of the Cossack men and women because they do not
live at all like Russians. In all the yards one could see soldiers and
hear their laughter and the exasperated and shrill cries of Cossack
women defending their houses and refusing to give the soldiers water or
cooking utensils. Little boys and girls, clinging to their mothers and
to each other, followed all the movements of the troopers (never before
seen by them) with frightened curiosity, or ran after them at a
respectful distance.

The old Cossacks came out silently and dismally and sat on the earthen
embankments of their huts, and watched the soldiers’ activity with an
air of leaving it all to the will of God without understanding what
would come of it.

Olénin, who had joined the Caucasian Army as a cadet three months
before, was quartered in one of the best houses in the village, the
house of the cornet, Elias Vasílich—that is to say at Granny Ulítka’s.

“Goodness knows what it will be like, Dmítri Andréich,” said the
panting Vanyúsha to Olénin, who, dressed in a Circassian coat and
mounted on a Kabardá horse which he had bought in Gróznoe, was after a
five-hours’ march gaily entering the yard of the quarters assigned to
him.

“Why, what’s the matter?” he asked, caressing his horse and looking
merrily at the perspiring, dishevelled, and worried Vanyúsha, who had
arrived with the baggage wagons and was unpacking.

Olénin looked quite a different man. In place of his clean-shaven lips
and chin he had a youthful moustache and a small beard. Instead of a
sallow complexion, the result of nights turned into day, his cheeks,
his forehead, and the skin behind his ears were now red with healthy
sunburn. In place of a clean new black suit he wore a dirty white
Circassian coat with a deeply pleated skirt, and he bore arms. Instead
of a freshly starched collar, his neck was tightly clasped by the red
band of his silk _beshmet_. He wore Circassian dress but did not wear
it well, and anyone would have known him for a Russian and not a Tartar
brave. It was the thing—but not the real thing. But for all that, his
whole person breathed health, joy, and satisfaction.

“Yes, it seems funny to you,” said Vanyúsha, “but just try to talk to
these people yourself: they set themselves against one and there’s an
end of it. You can’t get as much as a word out of them.” Vanyúsha
angrily threw down a pail on the threshold. “Somehow they don’t seem
like Russians.”

“You should speak to the Chief of the Village!”

“But I don’t know where he lives,” said Vanyúsha in an offended tone.

“Who has upset you so?” asked Olénin, looking round.

“The devil only knows. Faugh! There is no real master here. They say he
has gone to some kind of _kriga_, and the old woman is a real devil.
God preserve us!” answered Vanyúsha, putting his hands to his head.
“How we shall live here I don’t know. They are worse than Tartars, I do
declare—though they consider themselves Christians! A Tartar is bad
enough, but all the same he is more noble. Gone to the _kriga_ indeed!
What this _kriga_ they have invented is, I don’t know!” concluded
Vanyúsha, and turned aside.

“It’s not as it is in the serfs’ quarters at home, eh?” chaffed Olénin
without dismounting.

“Please sir, may I have your horse?” said Vanyúsha, evidently perplexed
by this new order of things but resigning himself to his fate.

“So a Tartar is more noble, eh, Vanyúsha?” repeated Olénin, dismounting
and slapping the saddle.

“Yes, you’re laughing! You think it funny,” muttered Vanyúsha angrily.

“Come, don’t be angry, Vanyúsha,” replied Olénin, still smiling. “Wait
a minute, I’ll go and speak to the people of the house; you’ll see I
shall arrange everything. You don’t know what a jolly life we shall
have here. Only don’t get upset.”

Vanyúsha did not answer. Screwing up his eyes he looked contemptuously
after his master, and shook his head. Vanyúsha regarded Olénin as only
his master, and Olénin regarded Vanyúsha as only his servant; and they
would both have been much surprised if anyone had told them that they
were friends, as they really were without knowing it themselves.
Vanyúsha had been taken into his proprietor’s house when he was only
eleven and when Olénin was the same age. When Olénin was fifteen he
gave Vanyúsha lessons for a time and taught him to read French, of
which the latter was inordinately proud; and when in specially good
spirits he still let off French words, always laughing stupidly when he
did so.

Olénin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of the
hut. Maryánka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all Cossack women
do in the house, jumped away from the door, frightened, and pressing
herself against the wall covered the lower part of her face with the
broad sleeve of her Tartar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olénin
in the semi-darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure
of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth
he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine
print smock, and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike
terror and wild curiosity.

“This is _she_,” thought Olénin. “But there will be many others like
her” came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door.

Old Granny Ulítka, also dressed only in a smock, was stooping with her
back turned to him, sweeping the floor.


“Good-day to you. Mother! I’ve come about my lodgings,” he began.

The Cossack woman, without unbending, turned her severe but still
handsome face towards him.

“What have you come here for? Want to mock at us, eh? I’ll teach you to
mock; may the black plague seize you!” she shouted, looking askance
from under her frowning brow at the new-comer.

Olénin had at first imagined that the way-worn, gallant Caucasian Army
(of which he was a member) would be everywhere received joyfully, and
especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war; and he therefore
felt perplexed by this reception. Without losing presence of mind
however he tried to explain that he meant to pay for his lodgings, but
the old woman would not give him a hearing.

“What have you come for? Who wants a pest like you, with your scraped
face? You just wait a bit; when the master returns he’ll show you your
place. I don’t want your dirty money! A likely thing—just as if we had
never seen any! You’ll stink the house out with your beastly tobacco
and want to put it right with money! Think we’ve never seen a pest! May
you be shot in your bowels and your heart!” shrieked the old woman in a
piercing voice, interrupting Olénin.

“It seems Vanyúsha was right!” thought Olénin. “‘A Tartar would be
nobler’,” and followed by Granny Ulítka’s abuse he went out of the hut.
As he was leaving, Maryánka, still wearing only her pink smock, but
with her forehead covered down to her eyes by a white kerchief,
suddenly slipped out from the passage past him. Pattering rapidly down
the steps with her bare feet she ran from the porch, stopped, and
looking round hastily with laughing eyes at the young man, vanished
round the corner of the hut.

Her firm youthful step, the untamed look of the eyes glistening from
under the white kerchief, and the firm stately build of the young
beauty, struck Olénin even more powerfully than before. “Yes, it must
be _she_,” he thought, and troubling his head still less about the
lodgings, he kept looking round at Maryánka as he approached Vanyúsha.

“There you see, the girl too is quite savage, just like a wild filly!”
said Vanyúsha, who though still busy with the luggage wagon had now
cheered up a bit. “_La fame!_” he added in a loud triumphant voice and
burst out laughing.




 Chapter XI


Towards evening the master of the house returned from his fishing, and
having learnt that the cadet would pay for the lodging, pacified the
old woman and satisfied Vanyúsha’s demands.

Everything was arranged in the new quarters. Their hosts moved into the
winter hut and let their summer hut to the cadet for three rubles a
month. Olénin had something to eat and went to sleep. Towards evening
he woke up, washed and made himself tidy, dined, and having lit a
cigarette sat down by the window that looked onto the street. It was
cooler. The slanting shadow of the hut with its ornamental gables fell
across the dusty road and even bent upwards at the base of the wall of
the house opposite. The steep reed-thatched roof of that house shone in
the rays of the setting sun. The air grew fresher. Everything was
peaceful in the village. The soldiers had settled down and become
quiet. The herds had not yet been driven home and the people had not
returned from their work.

Olénin’s lodging was situated almost at the end of the village. At rare
intervals, from somewhere far beyond the Térek in those parts whence
Olénin had just come (the Chéchen or the Kumýtsk plain), came muffled
sounds of firing. Olénin was feeling very well contented after three
months of bivouac life. His newly washed face was fresh and his
powerful body clean (an unaccustomed sensation after the campaign) and
in all his rested limbs he was conscious of a feeling of tranquillity
and strength. His mind, too, felt fresh and clear. He thought of the
campaign and of past dangers. He remembered that he had faced them no
worse than other men, and that he was accepted as a comrade among
valiant Caucasians. His Moscow recollections were left behind Heaven
knows how far! The old life was wiped out and a quite new life had
begun in which there were as yet no mistakes. Here as a new man among
new men he could gain a new and good reputation. He was conscious of a
youthful and unreasoning joy of life. Looking now out of the window at
the boys spinning their tops in the shadow of the house, now round his
neat new lodging, he thought how pleasantly he would settle down to
this new Cossack village life. Now and then he glanced at the mountains
and the blue sky, and an appreciation of the solemn grandeur of nature
mingled with his reminiscences and dreams. His new life had begun, not
as he imagined it would when he left Moscow, but unexpectedly well.
“The mountains, the mountains, the mountains!” they permeated all his
thoughts and feelings.

“He’s kissed his dog and licked the jug! ... Daddy Eróshka has kissed
his dog!” suddenly the little Cossacks who had been spinning their tops
under the window shouted, looking towards the side street. “He’s drunk
his bitch, and his dagger!” shouted the boys, crowding together and
stepping backwards.

These shouts were addressed to Daddy Eróshka, who with his gun on his
shoulder and some pheasants hanging at his girdle was returning from
his shooting expedition.

“I have done wrong, lads, I have!” he said, vigorously swinging his
arms and looking up at the windows on both sides of the street. “I have
drunk the bitch; it was wrong,” he repeated, evidently vexed but
pretending not to care.

Olénin was surprised by the boys’ behavior towards the old hunter, but
was still more struck by the expressive, intelligent face and the
powerful build of the man whom they called Daddy Eróshka.

“Here Daddy, here Cossack!” he called. “Come here!”

The old man looked into the window and stopped.

“Good evening, good man,” he said, lifting his little cap off his
cropped head.

“Good evening, good man,” replied Olénin. “What is it the youngsters
are shouting at you?”

Daddy Eróshka came up to the window. “Why, they’re teasing the old man.
No matter, I like it. Let them joke about their old daddy,” he said
with those firm musical intonations with which old and venerable people
speak. “Are you an army commander?” he added.

“No, I am a cadet. But where did you kill those pheasants?” asked
Olénin.

“I dispatched these three hens in the forest,” answered the old man,
turning his broad back towards the window to show the hen pheasants
which were hanging with their heads tucked into his belt and staining
his coat with blood. “Haven’t you seen any?” he asked. “Take a brace if
you like! Here you are,” and he handed two of the pheasants in at the
window. “Are you a sportsman yourself?” he asked.

“I am. During the campaign I killed four myself.”

“Four? What a lot!” said the old man sarcastically. “And are you a
drinker? Do you drink _chikhir?_”

“Why not? I like a drink.”

“Ah, I see you are a trump! We shall be _kunaks_, you and I,” said
Daddy Eróshka.

“Step in,” said Olénin. “We’ll have a drop of _chikhir_.”

“I might as well,” said the old man, “but take the pheasants.” The old
man’s face showed that he liked the cadet. He had seen at once that he
could get free drinks from him, and that therefore it would be all
right to give him a brace of pheasants.

Soon Daddy Eróshka’s figure appeared in the doorway of the hut, and it
was only then that Olénin became fully conscious of the enormous size
and sturdy build of this man, whose red-brown face with its perfectly
white broad beard was all furrowed by deep lines produced by age and
toil. For an old man, the muscles of his legs, arms, and shoulders were
quite exceptionally large and prominent. There were deep scars on his
head under the short-cropped hair. His thick sinewy neck was covered
with deep intersecting folds like a bull’s. His horny hands were
bruised and scratched. He stepped lightly and easily over the
threshold, unslung his gun and placed it in a corner, and casting a
rapid glance round the room noted the value of the goods and chattels
deposited in the hut, and with out-turned toes stepped softly, in his
sandals of raw hide, into the middle of the room. He brought with him a
penetrating but not unpleasant smell of _chikhir_ wine, vodka,
gunpowder, and congealed blood.

Daddy Eróshka bowed down before the icons, smoothed his beard, and
approaching Olénin held out his thick brown hand. “_Koshkildy_,” said
he; “That is Tartar for ‘Good-day’—‘Peace be unto you,’ it means in
their tongue.”

“_Koshkildy_, I know,” answered Olénin, shaking hands.

“Eh, but you don’t, you won’t know the right order! Fool!” said Daddy
Eróshka, shaking his head reproachfully. “If anyone says ‘_Koshkildy_’
to you, you must say ‘_Allah rasi bo sun_,’ that is, ‘God save you.’
That’s the way, my dear fellow, and not ‘_Koshkildy_.’ But I’ll teach
you all about it. We had a fellow here, Elias Mósevich, one of your
Russians, he and I were _kunaks_. He was a trump, a drunkard, a thief,
a sportsman—and what a sportsman! I taught him everything.”

“And what will you teach me?” asked Olénin, who was becoming more and
more interested in the old man.

“I’ll take you hunting and teach you to fish. I’ll show you Chéchens
and find a girl for you, if you like—even that! That’s the sort I am!
I’m a wag!”—and the old man laughed. “I’ll sit down. I’m tired.
_Karga?_” he added inquiringly.

“And what does ‘_Karga_’ mean?” asked Olénin.

“Why, that means ‘All right’ in Georgian. But I say it just so. It is a
way I have, it’s my favourite word. _Karga_, _Karga_. I say it just so;
in fun I mean. Well, lad, won’t you order the _chikhir?_ You’ve got an
orderly, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Hey, Iván!” shouted the old man. “All your soldiers are Iváns. Is
yours Iván?”

“True enough, his name is Iván—Vanyúsha. Here Vanyúsha! Please get some
_chikhir_ from our landlady and bring it here.”

“Iván or Vanyúsha, that’s all one. Why are all your soldiers Iváns?
Iván, old fellow,” said the old man, “you tell them to give you some
from the barrel they have begun. They have the best _chikhir_ in the
village. But don’t give more than thirty kopeks for the quart, mind,
because that witch would be only too glad.... Our people are anathema
people; stupid people,” Daddy Eróshka continued in a confidential tone
after Vanyúsha had gone out. “They do not look upon you as on men, you
are worse than a Tartar in their eyes. ‘Worldly Russians’ they say. But
as for me, though you are a soldier you are still a man, and have a
soul in you. Isn’t that right? Elias Mósevich was a soldier, yet what a
treasure of a man he was! Isn’t that so, my dear fellow? That’s why our
people don’t like me; but I don’t care! I’m a merry fellow, and I like
everybody. I’m Eróshka; yes, my dear fellow.”

And the old Cossack patted the young man affectionately on the
shoulder.




 Chapter XII


Vanyúsha, who meanwhile had finished his housekeeping arrangements and
had even been shaved by the company’s barber and had pulled his
trousers out of his high boots as a sign that the company was stationed
in comfortable quarters, was in excellent spirits. He looked
attentively but not benevolently at Eróshka, as at a wild beast he had
never seen before, shook his head at the floor which the old man had
dirtied and, having taken two bottles from under a bench, went to the
landlady.

“Good evening, kind people,” he said, having made up his mind to be
very gentle. “My master has sent me to get some _chikhir_. Will you
draw some for me, good folk?”

The old woman gave no answer. The girl, who was arranging the kerchief
on her head before a little Tartar mirror, looked round at Vanyúsha in
silence.

“I’ll pay money for it, honoured people,” said Vanyúsha, jingling the
coppers in his pocket. “Be kind to us and we, too will be kind to you,”
he added.

“How much?” asked the old woman abruptly. “A quart.”

“Go, my own, draw some for them,” said Granny Ulítka to her daughter.
“Take it from the cask that’s begun, my precious.”

The girl took the keys and a decanter and went out of the hut with
Vanyúsha.

“Tell me, who is that young woman?” asked Olénin, pointing to Maryánka,
who was passing the window. The old man winked and nudged the young man
with his elbow.

“Wait a bit,” said he and reached out of the window. “Khm,” he coughed,
and bellowed, “Maryánka dear. Hallo, Maryánka, my girlie, won’t you
love me, darling? I’m a wag,” he added in a whisper to Olénin. The
girl, not turning her head and swinging her arms regularly and
vigorously, passed the window with the peculiarly smart and bold gait
of a Cossack woman and only turned her dark shaded eyes slowly towards
the old man.

“Love me and you’ll be happy,” shouted Eróshka, winking, and he looked
questioningly at the cadet.

“I’m a fine fellow, I’m a wag!” he added. “She’s a regular queen, that
girl. Eh?”

“She is lovely,” said Olénin. “Call her here!”

“No, no,” said the old man. “For that one a match is being arranged
with Lukáshka, Luke, a fine Cossack, a brave, who killed an _abrek_ the
other day. I’ll find you a better one. I’ll find you one that will be
all dressed up in silk and silver. Once I’ve said it I’ll do it. I’ll
get you a regular beauty!”

“You, an old man—and say such things,” replied Olénin. “Why, it’s a
sin!”

“A sin? Where’s the sin?” said the old man emphatically. “A sin to look
at a nice girl? A sin to have some fun with her? Or is it a sin to love
her? Is that so in your parts? ... No, my dear fellow, it’s not a sin,
it’s salvation! God made you and God made the girl too. He made it all;
so it is no sin to look at a nice girl. That’s what she was made for;
to be loved and to give joy. That’s how I judge it, my good fellow.”

Having crossed the yard and entered a cool dark storeroom filled with
barrels, Maryánka went up to one of them and repeating the usual prayer
plunged a dipper into it. Vanyúsha standing in the doorway smiled as he
looked at her. He thought it very funny that she had only a smock on,
close-fitting behind and tucked up in front, and still funnier that she
wore a necklace of silver coins. He thought this quite un-Russian and
that they would all laugh in the serfs’ quarters at home if they saw a
girl like that. “_La fille comme c’est tres bien_, for a change,” he
thought. “I’ll tell that to my master.”

“What are you standing in the light for, you devil!” the girl suddenly
shouted. “Why don’t you pass me the decanter!”

Having filled the decanter with cool red wine, Maryánka handed it to
Vanyúsha.

“Give the money to Mother,” she said, pushing away the hand in which he
held the money.

Vanyúsha laughed.

“Why are you so cross, little dear?” he said good-naturedly,
irresolutely shuffling with his feet while the girl was covering the
barrel.

She began to laugh.

“And you! Are you kind?”

“We, my master and I, are very kind,” Vanyúsha answered decidedly. “We
are so kind that wherever we have stayed our hosts were always very
grateful. It’s because he’s generous.”

The girl stood listening.

“And is your master married?” she asked.

“No. The master is young and unmarried, because noble gentlemen can
never marry young,” said Vanyúsha didactically.

“A likely thing! See what a fed-up buffalo he is—and too young to
marry! Is he the chief of you all?” she asked.

“My master is a cadet; that means he’s not yet an officer, but he’s
more important than a general—he’s an important man! Because not only
our colonel, but the Tsar himself, knows him,” proudly explained
Vanyúsha. “We are not like those other beggars in the line regiment,
and our papa himself was a Senator. He had more than a thousand serfs,
all his own, and they send us a thousand rubles at a time. That’s why
everyone likes us. Another may be a captain but have no money. What’s
the use of that?”

“Go away. I’ll lock up,” said the girl, interrupting him.

Vanyúsha brought Olénin the wine and announced that “_La fille c’est
tres joulie_,” and, laughing stupidly, at once went out.




 Chapter XIII


Meanwhile the tattoo had sounded in the village square. The people had
returned from their work. The herd lowed as in clouds of golden dust it
crowded at the village gate. The girls and the women hurried through
the streets and yards, turning in their cattle. The sun had quite
hidden itself behind the distant snowy peaks. One pale bluish shadow
spread over land and sky. Above the darkened gardens stars just
discernible were kindling, and the sounds were gradually hushed in the
village. The cattle having been attended to and left for the night, the
women came out and gathered at the corners of the streets and, cracking
sunflower seeds with their teeth, settled down on the earthen
embankments of the houses. Later on Maryánka, having finished milking
the buffalo and the other two cows, also joined one of these groups.

The group consisted of several women and girls and one old Cossack man.

They were talking about the _abrek_ who had been killed.

The Cossack was narrating and the women questioning him.

“I expect he’ll get a handsome reward,” said one of the women.

“Of course. It’s said that they’ll send him a cross.”

“Mósev did try to wrong him. Took the gun away from him, but the
authorities at Kizlyár heard of it.”

“A mean creature that Mósev is!”

“They say Lukáshka has come home,” remarked one of the girls.

“He and Nazárka are merry-making at Yámka’s.” (Yámka was an unmarried,
disreputable Cossack woman who kept an illicit pot-house.) “I heard say
they had drunk half a pailful.”

“What luck that Snatcher has,” somebody remarked. “A real snatcher. But
there’s no denying he’s a fine lad, smart enough for anything, a
right-minded lad! His father was just such another. Daddy Kiryák was:
he takes after his father. When he was killed the whole village howled.
Look, there they are,” added the speaker, pointing to the Cossacks who
were coming down the street towards them.

“And Ergushóv has managed to come along with them too! The drunkard!”

Lukáshka, Nazárka, and Ergushóv, having emptied half a pail of vodka,
were coming towards the girls. The faces of all three, but especially
that of the old Cossack, were redder than usual. Ergushóv was reeling
and kept laughing and nudging Nazárka in the ribs.

“Why are you not singing?” he shouted to the girls. “Sing to our
merry-making, I tell you!”

They were welcomed with the words, “Had a good day? Had a good day?”

“Why sing? It’s not a holiday,” said one of the women. “You’re tight,
so you go and sing.”

Ergushóv roared with laughter and nudged Nazárka. “You’d better sing.
And I’ll begin too. I’m clever, I tell you.”

“Are you asleep, fair ones?” said Nazárka. “We’ve come from the cordon
to drink your health. We’ve already drunk Lukáshka’s health.”

Lukáshka, when he reached the group, slowly raised his cap and stopped
in front of the girls. His broad cheekbones and neck were red. He stood
and spoke softly and sedately, but in his tranquillity and sedateness
there was more of animation and strength than in all Nazárka’s
loquacity and bustle. He reminded one of a playful colt that with a
snort and a flourish of its tail suddenly stops short and stands as
though nailed to the ground with all four feet. Lukáshka stood quietly
in front of the girls, his eyes laughed, and he spoke but little as he
glanced now at his drunken companions and now at the girls. When
Maryánka joined the group he raised his cap with a firm deliberate
movement, moved out of her way and then stepped in front of her with
one foot a little forward and with his thumbs in his belt, fingering
his dagger. Maryánka answered his greeting with a leisurely bow of her
head, settled down on the earth-bank, and took some seeds out of the
bosom of her smock. Lukáshka, keeping his eyes fixed on Maryánka,
slowly cracked seeds and spat out the shells. All were quiet when
Maryánka joined the group.

“Have you come for long?” asked a woman, breaking the silence.

“Till tomorrow morning,” quietly replied Lukáshka.

“Well, God grant you get something good,” said the Cossack; “I’m glad
of it, as I’ve just been saying.”

“And I say so too,” put in the tipsy Ergushóv, laughing. “What a lot of
visitors have come,” he added, pointing to a soldier who was passing
by. “The soldiers’ vodka is good—I like it.”

“They’ve sent three of the devils to us,” said one of the women.
“Grandad went to the village Elders, but they say nothing can be done.”

“Ah, ha! Have you met with trouble?” said Ergushóv.

“I expect they have smoked you out with their tobacco?” asked another
woman. “Smoke as much as you like in the yard, I say, but we won’t
allow it inside the hut. Not if the Elder himself comes, I won’t allow
it. Besides, they may rob you. He’s not quartered any of them on
himself, no fear, that devil’s son of an Elder.”

“You don’t like it?” Ergushóv began again.

“And I’ve also heard say that the girls will have to make the soldiers’
beds and offer them _chikhir_ and honey,” said Nazárka, putting one
foot forward and tilting his cap like Lukáshka.

Ergushóv burst into a roar of laughter, and seizing the girl nearest to
him, he embraced her. “I tell you true.”

“Now then, you black pitch!” squealed the girl, “I’ll tell your old
woman.”

“Tell her,” shouted he. “That’s quite right what Nazárka says; a
circular has been sent round. He can read, you know. Quite true!” And
he began embracing the next girl.

“What are you up to, you beast?” squealed the rosy, round-faced
Ústenka, laughing and lifting her arm to hit him.

The Cossack stepped aside and nearly fell.

“There, they say girls have no strength, and you nearly killed me.”

“Get away, you black pitch, what devil has brought you from the
cordon?” said Ústenka, and turning away from him she again burst out
laughing. “You were asleep and missed the _abrek_, didn’t you? Suppose
he had done for you it would have been all the better.”

“You’d have howled, I expect,” said Nazárka, laughing.

“Howled! A likely thing.”

“Just look, she doesn’t care. She’d howl, Nazárka, eh? Would she?” said
Ergushóv.

Lukáshka all this time had stood silently looking at Maryánka. His gaze
evidently confused the girl.

“Well, Maryánka! I hear they’ve quartered one of the chiefs on you?” he
said, drawing nearer.

Maryánka, as was her wont, waited before she replied, and slowly
raising her eyes looked at the Cossack. Lukáshka’s eyes were laughing
as if something special, apart from what was said, was taking place
between himself and the girl.

“Yes, it’s all right for them as they have two huts,” replied an old
woman on Maryánka’s behalf, “but at Fómushkin’s now they also have one
of the chiefs quartered on them and they say one whole corner is packed
full with his things, and the family have no room left. Was such a
thing ever heard of as that they should turn a whole horde loose in the
village?” she said. “And what the plague are they going to do here?”

“I’ve heard say they’ll build a bridge across the Térek,” said one of
the girls.

“And I’ve been told that they will dig a pit to put the girls in
because they don’t love the lads,” said Nazárka, approaching Ústenka;
and he again made a whimsical gesture which set everybody laughing, and
Ergushóv, passing by Maryánka, who was next in turn, began to embrace
an old woman.

“Why don’t you hug Maryánka? You should do it to each in turn,” said
Nazárka.

“No, my old one is sweeter,” shouted the Cossack, kissing the
struggling old woman.

“You’ll throttle me,” she screamed, laughing.

The tramp of regular footsteps at the other end of the street
interrupted their laughter. Three soldiers in their cloaks, with their
muskets on their shoulders, were marching in step to relieve guard by
the ammunition wagon.

The corporal, an old cavalry man, looked angrily at the Cossacks and
led his men straight along the road where Lukáshka and Nazárka were
standing, so that they should have to get out of the way. Nazárka
moved, but Lukáshka only screwed up his eyes and turned his broad back
without moving from his place.

“People are standing here, so you go round,” he muttered, half turning
his head and tossing it contemptuously in the direction of the
soldiers.

The soldiers passed by in silence, keeping step regularly along the
dusty road.

Maryánka began laughing and all the other girls chimed in.

“What swells!” said Nazárka, “Just like long-skirted choristers,” and
he walked a few steps down the road imitating the soldiers.

Again everyone broke into peals of laughter.

Lukáshka came slowly up to Maryánka.

“And where have you put up the chief?” he asked.

Maryánka thought for a moment.

“We’ve let him have the new hut,” she said.

“And is he old or young,” asked Lukáshka, sitting down beside her.

“Do you think I’ve asked?” answered the girl. “I went to get him some
_chikhir_ and saw him sitting at the window with Daddy Eróshka.
Red-headed he seemed. They’ve brought a whole cartload of things.”

And she dropped her eyes.

“Oh, how glad I am that I got leave from the cordon!” said Lukáshka,
moving closer to the girl and looking straight in her eyes all the
time.

“And have you come for long?” asked Maryánka, smiling slightly.

“Till the morning. Give me some sunflower seeds,” he said, holding out
his hand.

Maryánka now smiled outright and unfastened the neckband of her smock.

“Don’t take them all,” she said.

“Really I felt so dull all the time without you, I swear I did,” he
said in a calm, restrained whisper, helping himself to some seeds out
of the bosom of the girl’s smock, and stooping still closer over her he
continued with laughing eyes to talk to her in low tones.

“I won’t come, I tell you,” Maryánka suddenly said aloud, leaning away
from him.

“No really ... what I wanted to say to you, ...” whispered Lukáshka.
“By the Heavens! Do come!”

Maryánka shook her head, but did so with a smile.

“Nursey Maryánka! Hallo Nursey! Mammy is calling! Supper time!” shouted
Maryánka’s little brother, running towards the group.

“I’m coming,” replied the girl. “Go, my dear, go alone—I’ll come in a
minute.”

Lukáshka rose and raised his cap.

“I expect I had better go home too, that will be best,” he said, trying
to appear unconcerned but hardly able to repress a smile, and he
disappeared behind the corner of the house.

Meanwhile night had entirely enveloped the village. Bright stars were
scattered over the dark sky. The streets became dark and empty. Nazárka
remained with the women on the earth-bank and their laughter was still
heard, but Lukáshka, having slowly moved away from the girls, crouched
down like a cat and then suddenly started running lightly, holding his
dagger to steady it: not homeward, however, but towards the cornet’s
house. Having passed two streets he turned into a lane and lifting the
skirt of his coat sat down on the ground in the shadow of a fence. “A
regular cornet’s daughter!” he thought about Maryánka. “Won’t even have
a lark—the devil! But just wait a bit.”

The approaching footsteps of a woman attracted his attention. He began
listening, and laughed all by himself. Maryánka with bowed head,
striking the pales of the fences with a switch, was walking with rapid
regular strides straight towards him. Lukáshka rose. Maryánka started
and stopped.

“What an accursed devil! You frightened me! So you have not gone home?”
she said, and laughed aloud.

Lukáshka put one arm round her and with the other hand raised her face.
“What I wanted to tell you, by Heaven!” his voice trembled and broke.

“What are you talking of, at night time!” answered Maryánka. “Mother is
waiting for me, and you’d better go to your sweetheart.”

And freeing herself from his arms she ran away a few steps. When she
had reached the wattle fence of her home she stopped and turned to the
Cossack who was running beside her and still trying to persuade her to
stay a while with him.

“Well, what do you want to say, midnight-gadabout?” and she again began
laughing.

“Don’t laugh at me, Maryánka! By the Heaven! Well, what if I have a
sweetheart? May the devil take her! Only say the word and now I’ll love
you—I’ll do anything you wish. Here they are!” and he jingled the money
in his pocket. “Now we can live splendidly. Others have pleasures, and
I? I get no pleasure from you, Maryánka dear!”

The girl did not answer. She stood before him breaking her switch into
little bits with a rapid movement of her fingers.

Lukáshka suddenly clenched his teeth and fists.

“And why keep waiting and waiting? Don’t I love you, darling? You can
do what you like with me,” said he suddenly, frowning angrily and
seizing both her hands.

The calm expression of Maryánka’s face and voice did not change.

“Don’t bluster, Lukáshka, but listen to me,” she answered, not pulling
away her hands but holding the Cossack at arm’s length. “It’s true I am
a girl, but you listen to me! It does not depend on me, but if you love
me I’ll tell you this. Let go my hands, I’ll tell you without.—I’ll
marry you, but you’ll never get any nonsense from me,” said Maryánka
without turning her face.

“What, you’ll marry me? Marriage does not depend on us. Love me
yourself, Maryánka dear,” said Lukáshka, from sullen and furious
becoming again gentle, submissive, and tender, and smiling as he looked
closely into her eyes.

Maryánka clung to him and kissed him firmly on the lips.

“Brother dear!” she whispered, pressing him convulsively to her. Then,
suddenly tearing herself away, she ran into the gate of her house
without looking round.

In spite of the Cossack’s entreaties to wait another minute to hear
what he had to say, Maryánka did not stop.

“Go,” she cried, “you’ll be seen! I do believe that devil, our lodger,
is walking about the yard.”

“Cornet’s daughter,” thought Lukáshka. “She will marry me. Marriage is
all very well, but you just love me!”

He found Nazárka at Yámka’s house, and after having a spree with him
went to Dunáyka’s house, where, in spite of her not being faithful to
him, he spent the night.




 Chapter XIV


It was quite true that Olénin had been walking about the yard when
Maryánka entered the gate, and had heard her say, “That devil, our
lodger, is walking about.” He had spent that evening with Daddy Eróshka
in the porch of his new lodging. He had had a table, a samovar, wine,
and a candle brought out, and over a cup of tea and a cigar he listened
to the tales the old man told seated on the threshold at his feet.
Though the air was still, the candle dripped and flickered: now
lighting up the post of the porch, now the table and crockery, now the
cropped white head of the old man. Moths circled round the flame and,
shedding the dust of their wings, fluttered on the table and in the
glasses, flew into the candle flame, and disappeared in the black space
beyond. Olénin and Eróshka had emptied five bottles of _chikhir_.
Eróshka filled the glasses every time, offering one to Olénin, drinking
his health, and talking untiringly. He told of Cossack life in the old
days: of his father, “The Broad”, who alone had carried on his back a
boar’s carcass weighing three hundredweight, and drank two pails of
_chikhir_ at one sitting. He told of his own days and his chum Gírchik,
with whom during the plague he used to smuggle felt cloaks across the
Térek. He told how one morning he had killed two deer, and about his
“little soul” who used to run to him at the cordon at night. He told
all this so eloquently and picturesquely that Olénin did not notice how
time passed. “Ah yes, my dear fellow, you did not know me in my golden
days; then I’d have shown you things. Today it’s ‘Eróshka licks the
jug’, but then Eróshka was famous in the whole regiment. Whose was the
finest horse? Who had a Gurda sword? To whom should one go to get a
drink? With whom go on the spree? Who should be sent to the mountains
to kill Ahmet Khan? Why, always Eróshka! Whom did the girls love?
Always Eróshka had to answer for it. Because I was a real brave: a
drinker, a thief (I used to seize herds of horses in the mountains), a
singer; I was a master of every art! There are no Cossacks like that
nowadays. It’s disgusting to look at them. When they’re that high
(Eróshka held his hand three feet from the ground) they put on idiotic
boots and keep looking at them—that’s all the pleasure they know. Or
they’ll drink themselves foolish, not like men but all wrong. And who
was I? I was Eróshka, the thief; they knew me not only in this village
but up in the mountains. Tartar princes, my _kunaks_, used to come to
see me! I used to be everybody’s _kunak_. If he was a Tartar—with a
Tartar; an Armenian—with an Armenian; a soldier—with a soldier; an
officer—with an officer! I didn’t care as long as he was a drinker. He
says you should cleanse yourself from intercourse with the world, not
drink with soldiers, not eat with a Tartar.”

“Who says all that?” asked Olénin.

“Why, our teacher! But listen to a Mullah or a Tartar Cadi. He says,
‘You unbelieving Giaours, why do you eat pig?’ That shows that everyone
has his own law. But I think it’s all one. God has made everything for
the joy of man. There is no sin in any of it. Take example from an
animal. It lives in the Tartar’s reeds or in ours. Wherever it happens
to go, there is its home! Whatever God gives it, that it eats! But our
people say we have to lick red-hot plates in hell for that. And I think
it’s all a fraud,” he added after a pause.

“What is a fraud?” asked Olénin.

“Why, what the preachers say. We had an army captain in Chervlëna who
was my _kunak:_ a fine fellow just like me. He was killed in Chéchnya.
Well, he used to say that the preachers invent all that out of their
own heads. ‘When you die the grass will grow on your grave and that’s
all!’” The old man laughed. “He was a desperate fellow.”

“And how old are you?” asked Olénin.

“The Lord only knows! I must be about seventy. When a Tsaritsa reigned
in Russia I was no longer very small. So you can reckon it out. I must
be seventy.”

“Yes you must, but you are still a fine fellow.”

“Well, thank Heaven I am healthy, quite healthy, except that a woman, a
witch, has harmed me....”

“How?”

“Oh, just harmed me.”

“And so when you die the grass will grow?” repeated Olénin.

Eróshka evidently did not wish to express his thought clearly. He was
silent for a while.

“And what did you think? Drink!” he shouted suddenly, smiling and
handing Olénin some wine.




 Chapter XV


“Well, what was I saying?” he continued, trying to remember. “Yes,
that’s the sort of man I am. I am a hunter. There is no hunter to equal
me in the whole army. I will find and show you any animal and any bird,
and what and where. I know it all! I have dogs, and two guns, and nets,
and a screen and a hawk. I have everything, thank the Lord! If you are
not bragging but are a real sportsman, I’ll show you everything. Do you
know what a man I am? When I have found a track—I know the animal. I
know where he will lie down and where he’ll drink or wallow. I make
myself a perch and sit there all night watching. What’s the good of
staying at home? One only gets into mischief, gets drunk. And here
women come and chatter, and boys shout at me—enough to drive one mad

“It’s a different matter when you go out at nightfall, choose yourself
a place, press down the reeds and sit there and stay waiting, like a
jolly fellow. One knows everything that goes on in the woods. One looks
up at the sky: the stars move, you look at them and find out from them
how the time goes. One looks round—the wood is rustling; one goes on
waiting, now there comes a crackling—a boar comes to rub himself; one
listens to hear the young eaglets screech and then the cocks give voice
in the village, or the geese. When you hear the geese you know it is
not yet midnight. And I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired
somewhere far away, thoughts come to me. One thinks, who is that
firing? Is it another Cossack like myself who has been watching for
some animal? And has he killed it? Or only wounded it so that now the
poor thing goes through the reeds smearing them with its blood all for
nothing? I don’t like that! Oh, how I dislike it! Why injure a beast?
You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, ‘Maybe an _abrek_ has killed some
silly little Cossack.’ All this passes through one’s mind. And once as
I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle floating down. It was sound
except for one corner which was broken off. Thoughts did come that
time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a
Tartar village and seized the Chéchen women, and one of the devils has
killed the little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a
wall. Don’t they do such things? Sh! Men have no souls! And thoughts
came to me that filled me with pity. I thought: they’ve thrown away the
cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun and
come across to our side to rob us. One watches and thinks. And when one
hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something begins to knock
inside one. Dear one, come this way! ‘They’ll scent me,’ one thinks;
and one sits and does not stir while one’s heart goes dun! dun! dun!
and simply lifts you. Once this spring a fine litter came near me, I
saw something black. ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son,’ and I
was just about to fire when she grunts to her pigs: ‘Danger, children,’
she says, ‘there’s a man here,’ and off they all ran, breaking through
the bushes. And she had been so close I could almost have bitten her.”

“How could a sow tell her brood that a man was there?” asked Olénin.

“What do you think? You think the beast’s a fool? No, he is wiser than
a man though you do call him a pig! He knows everything. Take this for
instance. A man will pass along your track and not notice it; but a pig
as soon as it gets onto your track turns and runs at once: that shows
there is wisdom in him, since he scents your smell and you don’t. And
there is this to be said too: you wish to kill it and it wishes to go
about the woods alive. You have one law and it has another. It is a
pig, but it is no worse than you—it too is God’s creature. Ah, dear!
Man is foolish, foolish, foolish!” The old man repeated this several
times and then, letting his head drop, he sat thinking.

Olénin also became thoughtful, and descending from the porch with his
hands behind his back began pacing up and down the yard.

Eróshka, rousing himself, raised his head and began gazing intently at
the moths circling round the flickering flame of the candle and burning
themselves in it.

“Fool, fool!” he said. “Where are you flying to? Fool, fool!” He rose
and with his thick fingers began to drive away the moths.

“You’ll burn, little fool! Fly this way, there’s plenty of room.” He
spoke tenderly, trying to catch them delicately by their wings with his
thick fingers and then letting them fly again. “You are killing
yourself and I am sorry for you!”

He sat a long time chattering and sipping out of the bottle. Olénin
paced up and down the yard. Suddenly he was struck by the sound of
whispering outside the gate. Involuntarily holding his breath, he heard
a woman’s laughter, a man’s voice, and the sound of a kiss.
Intentionally rustling the grass under his feet he crossed to the
opposite side of the yard, but after a while the wattle fence creaked.
A Cossack in a dark Circassian coat and a white sheepskin cap passed
along the other side of the fence (it was Luke), and a tall woman with
a white kerchief on her head went past Olénin. “You and I have nothing
to do with one another” was what Maryánka’s firm step gave him to
understand. He followed her with his eyes to the porch of the hut, and
he even saw her through the window take off her kerchief and sit down.
And suddenly a feeling of lonely depression and some vague longings and
hopes, and envy of someone or other, overcame the young man’s soul.

The last lights had been put out in the huts. The last sounds had died
away in the village. The wattle fences and the cattle gleaming white in
the yards, the roofs of the houses and the stately poplars, all seemed
to be sleeping the labourers’ healthy peaceful sleep. Only the
incessant ringing voices of frogs from the damp distance reached the
young man. In the east the stars were growing fewer and fewer and
seemed to be melting in the increasing light, but overhead they were
denser and deeper than before. The old man was dozing with his head on
his hand. A cock crowed in the yard opposite, but Olénin still paced up
and down thinking of something. The sound of a song sung by several
voices reached him and he stepped up to the fence and listened. The
voices of several young Cossacks carolled a merry song, and one voice
was distinguishable among them all by its firm strength.

“Do you know who is singing there?” said the old man, rousing himself.
“It is the Brave, Lukáshka. He has killed a Chéchen and now he
rejoices. And what is there to rejoice at? ... The fool, the fool!”

“And have you ever killed people?” asked Olénin.

“You devil!” shouted the old man. “What are you asking? One must not
talk so. It is a serious thing to destroy a human being ... Ah, a very
serious thing! Good-bye, my dear fellow. I’ve eaten my fill and am
drunk,” he said rising. “Shall I come tomorrow to go shooting?”

“Yes, come!”

“Mind, get up early; if you oversleep you will be fined!”

“Never fear, I’ll be up before you,” answered Olénin.

The old man left. The song ceased, but one could hear footsteps and
merry talk. A little later the singing broke out again but farther
away, and Eróshka’s loud voice chimed in with the other. “What people,
what a life!” thought Olénin with a sigh as he returned alone to his
hut.




 Chapter XVI


Daddy Eróshka was a superannuated and solitary Cossack: twenty years
ago his wife had gone over to the Orthodox Church and run away from him
and married a Russian sergeant-major, and he had no children. He was
not bragging when he spoke of himself as having been the boldest
dare-devil in the village when he was young. Everybody in the regiment
knew of his old-time prowess. The death of more than one Russian, as
well as Chéchen, lay on his conscience. He used to go plundering in the
mountains, and robbed the Russians too; and he had twice been in
prison. The greater part of his life was spent in the forests, hunting.
There he lived for days on a crust of bread and drank nothing but
water. But on the other hand, when he was in the village he made merry
from morning to night. After leaving Olénin he slept for a couple of
hours and awoke before it was light. He lay on his bed thinking of the
man he had become acquainted with the evening before. Olénin’s
“simplicity” (simplicity in the sense of not grudging him a drink)
pleased him very much, and so did Olénin himself. He wondered why the
Russians were all “simple” and so rich, and why they were educated, and
yet knew nothing. He pondered on these questions and also considered
what he might get out of Olénin.

Daddy Eróshka’s hut was of a good size and not old, but the absence of
a woman was very noticeable in it. Contrary to the usual cleanliness of
the Cossacks, the whole of this hut was filthy and exceedingly untidy.
A blood-stained coat had been thrown on the table, half a dough-cake
lay beside a plucked and mangled crow with which to feed the hawk.
Sandals of raw hide, a gun, a dagger, a little bag, wet clothes, and
sundry rags lay scattered on the benches. In a corner stood a tub with
stinking water, in which another pair of sandals were being steeped,
and near by was a gun and a hunting-screen. On the floor a net had been
thrown down and several dead pheasants lay there, while a hen tied by
its leg was walking about near the table pecking among the dirt. In the
unheated oven stood a broken pot with some kind of milky liquid. On the
top of the oven a falcon was screeching and trying to break the cord by
which it was tied, and a moulting hawk sat quietly on the edge of the
oven, looking askance at the hen and occasionally bowing its head to
right and left. Daddy Eróshka himself, in his shirt, lay on his back on
a short bed rigged up between the wall and the oven, with his strong
legs raised and his feet on the oven. He was picking with his thick
fingers at the scratches left on his hands by the hawk, which he was
accustomed to carry without wearing gloves. The whole room, especially
near the old man, was filled with that strong but not unpleasant
mixture of smells that he always carried about with him.

“_Uyde-ma_, Daddy?” (Is Daddy in?) came through the window in a sharp
voice, which he at once recognized as Lukáshka’s.

“_Uyde, Uyde, Uyde_. I am in!” shouted the old man. “Come in, neighbour
Mark, Luke Mark. Come to see Daddy? On your way to the cordon?”

At the sound of his master’s shout the hawk flapped his wings and
pulled at his cord.

The old man was fond of Lukáshka, who was the only man he excepted from
his general contempt for the younger generation of Cossacks. Besides
that, Lukáshka and his mother, as near neighbours, often gave the old
man wine, clotted cream, and other home produce which Eróshka did not
possess. Daddy Eróshka, who all his life had allowed himself to get
carried away, always explained his infatuations from a practical point
of view. “Well, why not?” he used to say to himself. “I’ll give them
some fresh meat, or a bird, and they won’t forget Daddy: they’ll
sometimes bring a cake or a piece of pie.”

“Good morning, Mark! I am glad to see you,” shouted the old man
cheerfully, and quickly putting down his bare feet he jumped off his
bed and walked a step or two along the creaking floor, looked down at
his out-turned toes, and suddenly, amused by the appearance of his
feet, smiled, stamped with his bare heel on the ground, stamped again,
and then performed a funny dance-step. “That’s clever, eh?” he asked,
his small eyes glistening. Lukáshka smiled faintly. “Going back to the
cordon?” asked the old man.

“I have brought the _chikhir_ I promised you when we were at the
cordon.”

“May Christ save you!” said the old man, and he took up the extremely
wide trousers that were lying on the floor, and his _beshmet_, put them
on, fastened a strap round his waist, poured some water from an
earthenware pot over his hands, wiped them on the old trousers,
smoothed his beard with a bit of comb, and stopped in front of
Lukáshka. “Ready,” he said.

Lukáshka fetched a cup, wiped it and filled it with wine, and then
handed it to the old man.

“Your health! To the Father and the Son!” said the old man, accepting
the wine with solemnity. “May you have what you desire, may you always
be a hero, and obtain a cross.”

Lukáshka also drank a little after repeating a prayer, and then put the
wine on the table. The old man rose and brought out some dried fish
which he laid on the threshold, where he beat it with a stick to make
it tender; then, having put it with his horny hands on a blue plate
(his only one), he placed it on the table.

“I have all I want. I have victuals, thank God!” he said proudly.
“Well, and what of Mósev?” he added.

Lukáshka, evidently wishing to know the old man’s opinion, told him how
the officer had taken the gun from him.

“Never mind the gun,” said the old man. “If you don’t give the gun you
will get no reward.”

“But they say, Daddy, it’s little reward a fellow gets when he is not
yet a mounted Cossack; and the gun is a fine one, a Crimean, worth
eighty rubles.”

“Eh, let it go! I had a dispute like that with an officer, he wanted my
horse. ‘Give it me and you’ll be made a cornet,’ says he. I wouldn’t,
and I got nothing!”

“Yes, Daddy, but you see I have to buy a horse; and they say you can’t
get one the other side of the river under fifty rubles, and mother has
not yet sold our wine.”

“Eh, we didn’t bother,” said the old man; “when Daddy Eróshka was your
age he already stole herds of horses from the Nogáy folk and drove them
across the Térek. Sometimes we’d give a fine horse for a quart of vodka
or a cloak.”

“Why so cheap?” asked Lukáshka.

“You’re a fool, a fool, Mark,” said the old man contemptuously. “Why,
that’s what one steals for, so as not to be stingy! As for you, I
suppose you haven’t so much as seen how one drives off a herd of
horses? Why don’t you speak?”

“What’s one to say, Daddy?” replied Lukáshka. “It seems we are not the
same sort of men as you were.”

“You’re a fool, Mark, a fool! ‘Not the same sort of men!’” retorted the
old man, mimicking the Cossack lad. “I was not that sort of Cossack at
your age.”

“How’s that?” asked Lukáshka.

The old man shook his head contemptuously.

“Daddy Eróshka was _simple;_ he did not grudge anything! That’s why I
was _kunak_ with all Chéchnya. A _kunak_ would come to visit me and I’d
make him drunk with vodka and make him happy and put him to sleep with
me, and when I went to see him I’d take him a present—a dagger! That’s
the way it is done, and not as you do nowadays: the only amusement lads
have now is to crack seeds and spit out the shells!” the old man
finished contemptuously, imitating the present-day Cossacks cracking
seeds and spitting out the shells.

“Yes, I know,” said Lukáshka; “that’s so!”

“If you wish to be a fellow of the right sort, be a brave and not a
peasant! Because even a peasant can buy a horse—pay the money and take
the horse.”

They were silent for a while.

“Well, of course it’s dull both in the village and the cordon, Daddy:
but there’s nowhere one can go for a bit of sport. All our fellows are
so timid. Take Nazárka. The other day when we went to the Tartar
village, Giréy Khan asked us to come to Nogáy to take some horses, but
no one went, and how was I to go alone?”

“And what of Daddy? Do you think I am quite dried up? ... No, I’m not
dried up. Let me have a horse and I’ll be off to Nogáy at once.”

“What’s the good of talking nonsense!” said Luke. “You’d better tell me
what to do about Giréy Khan. He says, ‘Only bring horses to the Térek,
and then even if you bring a whole stud I’ll find a place for them.’
You see he’s also a shaven-headed Tartar—how’s one to believe him?”

“You may trust Giréy Khan, all his kin were good people. His father too
was a faithful _kunak_. But listen to Daddy and I won’t teach you
wrong: make him take an oath, then it will be all right. And if you go
with him, have your pistol ready all the same, especially when it comes
to dividing up the horses. I was nearly killed that way once by a
Chéchen. I wanted ten rubles from him for a horse. Trusting is all
right, but don’t go to sleep without a gun.” Lukáshka listened
attentively to the old man.

“I say, Daddy, have you any stone-break grass?” he asked after a pause.

“No, I haven’t any, but I’ll teach you how to get it. You’re a good lad
and won’t forget the old man.... Shall I tell you?”

“Tell me, Daddy.”

“You know a tortoise? She’s a devil, the tortoise is!”

“Of course I know!”

“Find her nest and fence it round so that she can’t get in. Well,
she’ll come, go round it, and then will go off to find the stone-break
grass and will bring some along and destroy the fence. Anyhow next
morning come in good time, and where the fence is broken there you’ll
find the stone-break grass lying. Take it wherever you like. No lock
and no bar will be able to stop you.”

“Have you tried it yourself, Daddy?”

“As for trying, I have not tried it, but I was told of it by good
people. I used only one charm: that was to repeat the Pilgrim rhyme
when mounting my horse; and no one ever killed me!”

“What is the Pilgrim rhyme, Daddy?”

“What, don’t you know it? Oh, what people! You’re right to ask Daddy.
Well, listen, and repeat after me:

“Hail! Ye, living in Sion,
This is your King,
Our steeds we shall sit on,
Sophonius is weeping.
Zacharias is speaking,
Father Pilgrim,
Mankind ever loving.”


“Kind ever loving,” the old man repeated. “Do you know it now? Try it.”

Lukáshka laughed.

“Come, Daddy, was it that that hindered their killing you? Maybe it
just happened so!”

“You’ve grown too clever! You learn it all, and say it. It will do you
no harm. Well, suppose you have sung ‘Pilgrim’, it’s all right,” and
the old man himself began laughing. “But just one thing, Luke, don’t
you go to Nogáy!”

“Why?”

“Times have changed. You are not the same men. You’ve become rubbishy
Cossacks! And see how many Russians have come down on us! You’d get to
prison. Really, give it up! Just as if you could! Now Gírchik and I, we
used...”

And the old man was about to begin one of his endless tales, but
Lukáshka glanced at the window and interrupted him.

“It is quite light. Daddy. It’s time to be off. Look us up some day.”

“May Christ save you! I’ll go to the officer; I promised to take him
out shooting. He seems a good fellow.”




 Chapter XVII


From Eróshka’s hut Lukáshka went home. As he returned, the dewy mists
were rising from the ground and enveloped the village. In various
places the cattle, though out of sight, could be heard beginning to
stir. The cocks called to one another with increasing frequency and
insistence. The air was becoming more transparent, and the villagers
were getting up. Not till he was close to it could Lukáshka discern the
fence of his yard, all wet with dew, the porch of the hut, and the open
shed. From the misty yard he heard the sound of an axe chopping wood.
Lukáshka entered the hut. His mother was up, and stood at the oven
throwing wood into it. His little sister was still lying in bed asleep.

“Well, Lukáshka, had enough holiday-making?” asked his mother softly.
“Where did you spend the night?”

“I was in the village,” replied her son reluctantly, reaching for his
musket, which he drew from its cover and examined carefully.

His mother swayed her head.

Lukáshka poured a little gunpowder onto the pan, took out a little bag
from which he drew some empty cartridge cases which he began filling,
carefully plugging each one with a ball wrapped in a rag. Then, having
tested the loaded cartridges with his teeth and examined them, he put
down the bag.

“I say, Mother, I told you the bags wanted mending; have they been
done?” he asked.

“Oh yes, our dumb girl was mending something last night. Why, is it
time for you to be going back to the cordon? I haven’t seen anything of
you!”

“Yes, as soon as I have got ready I shall have to go,” answered
Lukáshka, tying up the gunpowder. “And where is our dumb one? Outside?”

“Chopping wood, I expect. She kept fretting for you. ‘I shall not see
him at all!’ she said. She puts her hand to her face like this, and
clicks her tongue and presses her hands to her heart as much as to
say—‘sorry.’ Shall I call her in? She understood all about the
_abrek_.”

“Call her,” said Lukáshka. “And I had some tallow there; bring it: I
must grease my sword.”

The old woman went out, and a few minutes later Lukáshka’s dumb sister
came up the creaking steps and entered the hut. She was six years older
than her brother and would have been extremely like him had it not been
for the dull and coarsely changeable expression (common to all deaf and
dumb people) of her face. She wore a coarse smock all patched; her feet
were bare and muddy, and on her head she had an old blue kerchief. Her
neck, arms, and face were sinewy like a peasant’s. Her clothing and her
whole appearance indicated that she always did the hard work of a man.
She brought in a heap of logs which she threw down by the oven. Then
she went up to her brother, and with a joyful smile which made her
whole face pucker up, touched him on the shoulder and began making
rapid signs to him with her hands, her face, and whole body.

“That’s right, that’s right, Stëpka is a trump!” answered the brother,
nodding. “She’s fetched everything and mended everything, she’s a
trump! Here, take this for it!” He brought out two pieces of
gingerbread from his pocket and gave them to her.

The dumb woman’s face flushed with pleasure, and she began making a
weird noise for joy. Having seized the gingerbread she began to
gesticulate still more rapidly, frequently pointing in one direction
and passing her thick finger over her eyebrows and her face. Lukáshka
understood her and kept nodding, while he smiled slightly. She was
telling him to give the girls dainties, and that the girls liked him,
and that one girl, Maryánka—the best of them all—loved him. She
indicated Maryánka by rapidly pointing in the direction of Maryánka’s
home and to her own eyebrows and face, and by smacking her lips and
swaying her head. “Loves” she expressed by pressing her hands to her
breast, kissing her hand, and pretending to embrace someone. Their
mother returned to the hut, and seeing what her dumb daughter was
saying, smiled and shook her head. Her daughter showed her the
gingerbread and again made the noise which expressed joy.

“I told Ulítka the other day that I’d send a matchmaker to them,” said
the mother. “She took my words well.”

Lukáshka looked silently at his mother.

“But how about selling the wine, mother? I need a horse.”

“I’ll cart it when I have time. I must get the barrels ready,” said the
mother, evidently not wishing her son to meddle in domestic matters.
“When you go out you’ll find a bag in the passage. I borrowed from the
neighbours and got something for you to take back to the cordon; or
shall I put it in your saddle-bag?”

“All right,” answered Lukáshka. “And if Giréy Khan should come across
the river send him to me at the cordon, for I shan’t get leave again
for a long time now; I have some business with him.”

He began to get ready to start.

“I will send him on,” said the old woman. “It seems you have been
spreeing at Yámka’s all the time. I went out in the night to see the
cattle, and I think it was your voice I heard singing songs.”

Lukáshka did not reply, but went out into the passage, threw the bags
over his shoulder, tucked up the skirts of his coat, took his musket,
and then stopped for a moment on the threshold.

“Good-bye, mother!” he said as he closed the gate behind him. “Send me
a small barrel with Nazárka. I promised it to the lads, and he’ll call
for it.”

“May Christ keep you, Lukáshka. God be with you! I’ll send you some,
some from the new barrel,” said the old woman, going to the fence: “But
listen,” she added, leaning over the fence.

The Cossack stopped.

“You’ve been making merry here; well, that’s all right. Why should not
a young man amuse himself? God has sent you luck and that’s good. But
now look out and mind, my son. Don’t you go and get into mischief.
Above all, satisfy your superiors: one has to! And I will sell the wine
and find money for a horse and will arrange a match with the girl for
you.”

“All right, all right!” answered her son, frowning.

His deaf sister shouted to attract his attention. She pointed to her
head and the palm of her hand, to indicate the shaved head of a
Chéchen. Then she frowned, and pretending to aim with a gun, she
shrieked and began rapidly humming and shaking her head. This meant
that Lukáshka should kill another Chéchen.

Lukáshka understood. He smiled, and shifting the gun at his back under
his cloak stepped lightly and rapidly, and soon disappeared in the
thick mist.

The old woman, having stood a little while at the gate, returned
silently to the hut and immediately began working.




 Chapter XVIII


Lukasha returned to the cordon and at the same time Daddy Eróshka
whistled to his dogs and, climbing over his wattle fence, went to
Olénin’s lodging, passing by the back of the houses (he disliked
meeting women before going out hunting or shooting). He found Olénin
still asleep, and even Vanyúsha, though awake, was still in bed and
looking round the room considering whether it was not time to get up,
when Daddy Eróshka, gun on shoulder and in full hunter’s trappings,
opened the door.

“A cudgel!” he shouted in his deep voice. “An alarm! The Chéchens are
upon us! Iván! Get the samovar ready for your master, and get up
yourself—quick,” cried the old man. “That’s our way, my good man! Why
even the girls are already up! Look out of the window. See, she’s going
for water and you’re still sleeping!”

Olénin awoke and jumped up, feeling fresh and lighthearted at the sight
of the old man and at the sound of his voice.

“Quick, Vanyúsha, quick!” he cried.

“Is that the way you go hunting?” said the old man. “Others are having
their breakfast and you are asleep! Lyam! Here!” he called to his dog.
“Is your gun ready?” he shouted, as loud as if a whole crowd were in
the hut.

“Well, it’s true I’m guilty, but it can’t be helped! The powder,
Vanyúsha, and the wads!” said Olénin.

“A fine!” shouted the old man.

“_Du tay voulay vou?_” asked Vanyúsha, grinning.

“You’re not one of us—your gabble is not like our speech, you devil!”
the old man shouted at Vanyúsha, showing the stumps of his teeth.

“A first offence must be forgiven,” said Olénin playfully, drawing on
his high boots.

“The first offence shall be forgiven,” answered Eróshka, “but if you
oversleep another time you’ll be fined a pail of _chikhir_. When it
gets warmer you won’t find the deer.”

“And even if we do find him he is wiser than we are,” said Olénin,
repeating the words spoken by the old man the evening before, “and you
can’t deceive him!”

“Yes, laugh away! You kill one first, and then you may talk. Now then,
hurry up! Look, there’s the master himself coming to see you,” added
Eróshka, looking out of the window. “Just see how he’s got himself up.
He’s put on a new coat so that you should see that he’s an officer. Ah,
these people, these people!”

Sure enough Vanyúsha came in and announced that the master of the house
wished to see Olénin.

“_L’arjan!_” he remarked profoundly, to forewarn his master of the
meaning of this visitation. Following him, the master of the house in a
new Circassian coat with an officer’s stripes on the shoulders and with
polished boots (quite exceptional among Cossacks) entered the room,
swaying from side to side, and congratulated his lodger on his safe
arrival.

The cornet, Elias Vasílich, was an _educated_ Cossack. He had been to
Russia proper, was a regimental schoolteacher, and above all he was
noble. He wished to appear noble, but one could not help feeling
beneath his grotesque pretence of polish, his affectation, his
self-confidence, and his absurd way of speaking, he was just the same
as Daddy Eróshka. This could also be clearly seen by his sunburnt face
and his hands and his red nose. Olénin asked him to sit down.

“Good morning, Father Elias Vasílich,” said Eróshka, rising with (or so
it seemed to Olénin) an ironically low bow.

“Good morning. Daddy. So you’re here already,” said the cornet, with a
careless nod.

The cornet was a man of about forty, with a grey pointed beard, skinny
and lean, but handsome and very fresh-looking for his age. Having come
to see Olénin he was evidently afraid of being taken for an ordinary
Cossack, and wanted to let Olénin feel his importance from the first.

“That’s our Egyptian Nimrod,” he remarked, addressing Olénin and
pointing to the old man with a self-satisfied smile. “A mighty hunter
before the Lord! He’s our foremost man on every hand. You’ve already
been pleased to get acquainted with him.”

Daddy Eróshka gazed at his feet in their shoes of wet raw hide and
shook his head thoughtfully at the cornet’s ability and learning, and
muttered to himself: “Gyptian Nimvrod! What things he invents!”

“Yes, you see we mean to go hunting,” answered Olénin.

“Yes, sir, exactly,” said the cornet, “but I have a small business with
you.”

“What do you want?”

“Seeing that you are a gentleman,” began the cornet, “and as I may
understand myself to be in the rank of an officer too, and therefore we
may always progressively negotiate, as gentlemen do.” (He stopped and
looked with a smile at Olénin and at the old man.) “But if you have the
desire with my consent, then, as my wife is a foolish woman of our
class, she could not quite comprehend your words of yesterday’s date.
Therefore my quarters might be let for six rubles to the Regimental
Adjutant, without the stables; but I can always avert that from myself
free of charge. But, as you desire, therefore I, being myself of an
officer’s rank, can come to an agreement with you in everything
personally, as an inhabitant of this district, not according to our
customs, but can maintain the conditions in every way....”

“Speaks clearly!” muttered the old man.

The cornet continued in the same strain for a long time. At last, not
without difficulty, Olénin gathered that the cornet wished to let his
rooms to him, Olénin, for six rubles a month. The latter gladly agreed
to this, and offered his visitor a glass of tea. The cornet declined
it.

“According to our silly custom we consider it a sort of sin to drink
out of a ‘worldly’ tumbler,” he said. “Though, of course, with my
education I may understand, but my wife from her human weakness...”

“Well then, will you have some tea?”

“If you will permit me, I will bring my own particular glass,” answered
the cornet, and stepped out into the porch.

“Bring me my glass!” he cried.

In a few minutes the door opened and a young sunburnt arm in a print
sleeve thrust itself in, holding a tumbler in the hand. The cornet went
up, took it, and whispered something to his daughter. Olénin poured tea
for the cornet into the latter’s own “particular” glass, and for
Eróshka into a “worldly” glass.

“However, I do not desire to detain you,” said the cornet, scalding his
lips and emptying his tumbler. “I too have a great liking for fishing,
and I am here, so to say, only on leave of absence for recreation from
my duties. I too have the desire to tempt fortune and see whether some
_Gifts of the Térek_ may not fall to my share. I hope you too will come
and see us and have a drink of our wine, according to the custom of our
village,” he added.

The cornet bowed, shook hands with Olénin, and went out. While Olénin
was getting ready, he heard the cornet giving orders to his family in
an authoritative and sensible tone, and a few minutes later he saw him
pass by the window in a tattered coat with his trousers rolled up to
his knees and a fishing net over his shoulder.

“A rascal!” said Daddy Eróshka, emptying his “worldly” tumbler. “And
will you really pay him six rubles? Was such a thing ever heard of?
They would let you the best hut in the village for two rubles. What a
beast! Why, I’d let you have mine for three!”

“No, I’ll remain here,” said Olénin.

“Six rubles!... Clearly it’s a fool’s money. Eh, eh, eh!” answered the
old man. “Let’s have some _chikhir_, Iván!”

Having had a snack and a drink of vodka to prepare themselves for the
road, Olénin and the old man went out together before eight o’clock.

At the gate they came up against a wagon to which a pair of oxen were
harnessed. With a white kerchief tied round her head down to her eyes,
a coat over her smock, and wearing high boots, Maryánka with a long
switch in her hand was dragging the oxen by a cord tied to their horns.

“Mammy,” said the old man, pretending that he was going to seize her.

Maryánka flourished her switch at him and glanced merrily at them both
with her beautiful eyes.

Olénin felt still more light-hearted.

“Now then, come on, come on,” he said, throwing his gun on his shoulder
and conscious of the girl’s eyes upon him.

“Gee up!” sounded Maryánka’s voice behind them, followed by the creak
of the moving wagon.

As long as their road lay through the pastures at the back of the
village Eróshka went on talking. He could not forget the cornet and
kept on abusing him.

“Why are you so angry with him?” asked Olénin.

“He’s stingy. I don’t like it,” answered the old man. “He’ll leave it
all behind when he dies! Then who’s he saving up for? He’s built two
houses, and he’s got a second garden from his brother by a law-suit.
And in the matter of papers what a dog he is! They come to him from
other villages to fill up documents. As he writes it out, exactly so it
happens. He gets it quite exact. But who is he saving for? He’s only
got one boy and the girl; when she’s married who’ll be left?”

“Well then, he’s saving up for her dowry,” said Olénin.

“What dowry? The girl is sought after, she’s a fine girl. But he’s such
a devil that he must yet marry her to a rich fellow. He wants to get a
big price for her. There’s Luke, a Cossack, a neighbour and a nephew of
mine, a fine lad. It’s he who killed the Chéchen—he has been wooing her
for a long time, but he hasn’t let him have her. He’s given one excuse,
and another, and a third. ‘The girl’s too young,’ he says. But I know
what he is thinking. He wants to keep them bowing to him. He’s been
acting shamefully about that girl. Still, they will get her for
Lukáshka, because he is the best Cossack in the village, a brave, who
has killed an _abrek_ and will be rewarded with a cross.”

“But how about this? When I was walking up and down the yard last
night, I saw my landlord’s daughter and some Cossack kissing,” said
Olénin.

“You’re pretending!” cried the old man, stopping.

“On my word,” said Olénin.

“Women are the devil,” said Eróshka pondering. “But what Cossack was
it?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“Well, what sort of a cap had he, a white one?”

“Yes.”

“And a red coat? About your height?”

“No, a bit taller.”

“It’s he!” and Eróshka burst out laughing. “It’s himself, it’s Mark. He
is Luke, but I call him Mark for a joke. His very self! I love him. I
was just such a one myself. What’s the good of minding them? My
sweetheart used to sleep with her mother and her sister-in-law, but I
managed to get in. She used to sleep upstairs; that witch her mother
was a regular demon; it’s awful how she hated me. Well, I used to come
with a chum, Gírchik his name was. We’d come under her window and I’d
climb on his shoulders, push up the window and begin groping about. She
used to sleep just there on a bench. Once I woke her up and she nearly
called out. She hadn’t recognized me. ‘Who is there?’ she said, and I
could not answer. Her mother was even beginning to stir, but I took off
my cap and shoved it over her mouth; and she at once knew it by a seam
in it, and ran out to me. I used not to want anything then. She’d bring
along clotted cream and grapes and everything,” added Eróshka (who
always explained things practically), “and she wasn’t the only one. It
was a life!”

“And what now?”

“Now we’ll follow the dog, get a pheasant to settle on a tree, and then
you may fire.”

“Would you have made up to Maryánka?”

“Attend to the dogs. I’ll tell you tonight,” said the old man, pointing
to his favourite dog, Lyam.

After a pause they continued talking, while they went about a hundred
paces. Then the old man stopped again and pointed to a twig that lay
across the path.

“What do you think of that?” he said. “You think it’s nothing? It’s bad
that this stick is lying so.”

“Why is it bad?”

He smiled.

“Ah, you don’t know anything. Just listen to me. When a stick lies like
that don’t you step across it, but go round it or throw it off the path
this way, and say ‘Father and Son and Holy Ghost,’ and then go on with
God’s blessing. Nothing will happen to you. That’s what the old men
used to teach me.”

“Come, what rubbish!” said Olénin. “You’d better tell me more about
Maryánka. Does she carry on with Lukáshka?”

“Hush ... be quiet now!” the old man again interrupted in a whisper:
“just listen, we’ll go round through the forest.”

And the old man, stepping quietly in his soft shoes, led the way by a
narrow path leading into the dense, wild, overgrown forest. Now and
again with a frown he turned to look at Olénin, who rustled and
clattered with his heavy boots and, carrying his gun carelessly,
several times caught the twigs of trees that grew across the path.

“Don’t make a noise. Step softly, soldier!” the old man whispered
angrily.

There was a feeling in the air that the sun had risen. The mist was
dissolving but it still enveloped the tops of the trees. The forest
looked terribly high. At every step the aspect changed: what had
appeared like a tree proved to be a bush, and a reed looked like a
tree.




 Chapter XIX


The mist had partly lifted, showing the wet reed thatches, and was now
turning into dew that moistened the road and the grass beside the
fence. Smoke rose everywhere in clouds from the chimneys. The people
were going out of the village, some to their work, some to the river,
and some to the cordon. The hunters walked together along the damp,
grass-grown path. The dogs, wagging their tails and looking at their
masters, ran on both sides of them. Myriads of gnats hovered in the air
and pursued the hunters, covering their backs, eyes, and hands. The air
was fragrant with the grass and with the dampness of the forest. Olénin
continually looked round at the ox-cart in which Maryánka sat urging on
the oxen with a long switch.

It was calm. The sounds from the village, audible at first, now no
longer reached the sportsmen. Only the brambles cracked as the dogs ran
under them, and now and then birds called to one another. Olénin knew
that danger lurked in the forest, that _abreks_ always hid in such
places. But he knew too that in the forest, for a man on foot, a gun is
a great protection. Not that he was afraid, but he felt that another in
his place might be; and looking into the damp misty forest and
listening to the rare and faint sounds with strained attention, he
changed his hold on his gun and experienced a pleasant feeling that was
new to him. Daddy Eróshka went in front, stopping and carefully
scanning every puddle where an animal had left a double track, and
pointing it out to Olénin. He hardly spoke at all and only occasionally
made remarks in a whisper. The track they were following had once been
made by wagons, but the grass had long overgrown it. The elm and
plane-tree forest on both sides of them was so dense and overgrown with
creepers that it was impossible to see anything through it. Nearly
every tree was enveloped from top to bottom with wild grape vines, and
dark bramble bushes covered the ground thickly. Every little glade was
overgrown with blackberry bushes and grey feathery reeds. In places,
large hoof-prints and small funnel-shaped pheasant-trails led from the
path into the thicket. The vigour of the growth of this forest,
untrampled by cattle, struck Olénin at every turn, for he had never
seen anything like it. This forest, the danger, the old man and his
mysterious whispering, Maryánka with her virile upright bearing, and
the mountains—all this seemed to him like a dream.

“A pheasant has settled,” whispered the old man, looking round and
pulling his cap over his face—“Cover your mug! A pheasant!” he waved
his arm angrily at Olénin and pushed forward almost on all fours. “He
don’t like a man’s mug.”

Olénin was still behind him when the old man stopped and began
examining a tree. A cock-pheasant on the tree clucked at the dog that
was barking at it, and Olénin saw the pheasant; but at that moment a
report, as of a cannon, came from Eróshka’s enormous gun, the bird
fluttered up and, losing some feathers, fell to the ground. Coming up
to the old man Olénin disturbed another, and raising his gun he aimed
and fired. The pheasant flew swiftly up and then, catching at the
branches as he fell, dropped like a stone to the ground.

“Good man!” the old man (who could not hit a flying bird) shouted,
laughing.

Having picked up the pheasants they went on. Olénin, excited by the
exercise and the praise, kept addressing remarks to the old man.

“Stop! Come this way,” the old man interrupted. “I noticed the track of
deer here yesterday.”

After they had turned into the thicket and gone some three hundred
paces they scrambled through into a glade overgrown with reeds and
partly under water. Olénin failed to keep up with the old huntsman and
presently Daddy Eróshka, some twenty paces in front, stooped down,
nodding and beckoning with his arm. On coming up with him Olénin saw a
man’s footprint to which the old man was pointing.

“D’you see?”

“Yes, well?” said Olénin, trying to speak as calmly as he could. “A
man’s footstep!”

Involuntarily a thought of Cooper’s _Pathfinder_ and of _abreks_
flashed through Olénin’s mind, but noticing the mysterious manner with
which the old man moved on, he hesitated to question him and remained
in doubt whether this mysteriousness was caused by fear of danger or by
the sport.

“No, it’s my own footprint,” the old man said quietly, and pointed to
some grass under which the track of an animal was just perceptible.

The old man went on, and Olénin kept up with him. Descending to lower
ground some twenty paces farther on they came upon a spreading
pear-tree, under which, on the black earth, lay the fresh dung of some
animal.

The spot, all covered over with wild vines, was like a cosy arbour,
dark and cool.

“He’s been here this morning,” said the old man with a sigh; “the lair
is still damp, quite fresh.”

Suddenly they heard a terrible crash in the forest some ten paces from
where they stood. They both started and seized their guns, but they
could see nothing and only heard the branches breaking. The rhythmical
rapid thud of galloping was heard for a moment and then changed into a
hollow rumble which resounded farther and farther off, re-echoing in
wider and wider circles through the forest. Olénin felt as though
something had snapped in his heart. He peered carefully but vainly into
the green thicket and then turned to the old man. Daddy Eróshka with
his gun pressed to his breast stood motionless; his cap was thrust
backwards, his eyes gleamed with an unwonted glow, and his open mouth,
with its worn yellow teeth, seemed to have stiffened in that position.

“A horned stag!” he muttered, and throwing down his gun in despair he
began pulling at his grey beard, “Here it stood. We should have come
round by the path.... Fool! fool!” and he gave his beard an angry tug.
“Fool! Pig!” he repeated, pulling painfully at his own beard. Through
the forest something seemed to fly away in the mist, and ever farther
and farther off was heard the sound of the flight of the stag.

It was already dusk when, hungry, tired, but full of vigour, Olénin
returned with the old man. Dinner was ready. He ate and drank with the
old man till he felt warm and merry. Olénin then went out into the
porch. Again, to the west, the mountains rose before his eyes. Again
the old man told his endless stories of hunting, of _abreks_, of
sweethearts, and of all that free and reckless life. Again the fair
Maryánka went in and out and across the yard, her beautiful powerful
form outlined by her smock.




 Chapter XX


The next day Olénin went alone to the spot where he and the old man
startled the stag. Instead of passing round through the gate he climbed
over the prickly hedge, as everybody else did, and before he had had
time to pull out the thorns that had caught in his coat, his dog, which
had run on in front, started two pheasants. He had hardly stepped among
the briers when the pheasants began to rise at every step (the old man
had not shown him that place the day before as he meant to keep it for
shooting from behind the screen). Olénin fired twelve times and killed
five pheasants, but clambering after them through the briers he got so
fatigued that he was drenched with perspiration. He called off his dog,
uncocked his gun, put in a bullet above the small shot, and brushing
away the mosquitoes with the wide sleeve of his Circassian coat he went
slowly to the spot where they had been the day before. It was however
impossible to keep back the dog, who found trails on the very path, and
Olénin killed two more pheasants, so that after being detained by this
it was getting towards noon before he began to find the place he was
looking for.

The day was perfectly clear, calm, and hot. The morning moisture had
dried up even in the forest, and myriads of mosquitoes literally
covered his face, his back, and his arms. His dog had turned from black
to grey, its back being covered with mosquitoes, and so had Olénin’s
coat through which the insects thrust their stings. Olénin was ready to
run away from them and it seemed to him that it was impossible to live
in this country in the summer. He was about to go home, but remembering
that other people managed to endure such pain he resolved to bear it
and gave himself up to be devoured. And strange to say, by noontime the
feeling became actually pleasant. He even felt that without this
mosquito-filled atmosphere around him, and that mosquito-paste mingled
with perspiration which his hand smeared over his face, and that
unceasing irritation all over his body, the forest would lose for him
some of its character and charm. These myriads of insects were so well
suited to that monstrously lavish wild vegetation, these multitudes of
birds and beasts which filled the forest, this dark foliage, this hot
scented air, these runlets filled with turbid water which everywhere
soaked through from the Térek and gurgled here and there under the
overhanging leaves, that the very thing which had at first seemed to
him dreadful and intolerable now seemed pleasant. After going round the
place where yesterday they had found the animal and not finding
anything, he felt inclined to rest. The sun stood right above the
forest and poured its perpendicular rays down on his back and head
whenever he came out into a glade or onto the road. The seven heavy
pheasants dragged painfully at his waist. Having found the traces of
yesterday’s stag he crept under a bush into the thicket just where the
stag had lain, and lay down in its lair. He examined the dark foliage
around him, the place marked by the stag’s perspiration and yesterday’s
dung, the imprint of the stag’s knees, the bit of black earth it had
kicked up, and his own footprints of the day before. He felt cool and
comfortable and did not think of or wish for anything. And suddenly he
was overcome by such a strange feeling of causeless joy and of love for
everything, that from an old habit of his childhood he began crossing
himself and thanking someone. Suddenly, with extraordinary clearness,
he thought: “Here am I, Dmítri Olénin, a being quite distinct from
every other being, now lying all alone Heaven only knows where—where a
stag used to live—an old stag, a beautiful stag who perhaps had never
seen a man, and in a place where no human being has ever sat or thought
these thoughts. Here I sit, and around me stand old and young trees,
one of them festooned with wild grape vines, and pheasants are
fluttering, driving one another about and perhaps scenting their
murdered brothers.” He felt his pheasants, examined them, and wiped the
warm blood off his hand onto his coat. “Perhaps the jackals scent them
and with dissatisfied faces go off in another direction: above me,
flying in among the leaves which to them seem enormous islands,
mosquitoes hang in the air and buzz: one, two, three, four, a hundred,
a thousand, a million mosquitoes, and all of them buzz something or
other and each one of them is separate from all else and is just such a
separate Dmítri Olénin as I am myself.” He vividly imagined what the
mosquitoes buzzed: “This way, this way, lads! Here’s some one we can
eat!” They buzzed and stuck to him. And it was clear to him that he was
not a Russian nobleman, a member of Moscow society, the friend and
relation of so-and-so and so-and-so, but just such a mosquito, or
pheasant, or deer, as those that were now living all around him. “Just
as they, just as Daddy Eróshka, I shall live awhile and die, and as he
says truly: ‘grass will grow and nothing more’.”

“But what though the grass does grow?” he continued thinking. “Still I
must live and be happy, because happiness is all I desire. Never mind
what I am—an animal like all the rest, above whom the grass will grow
and nothing more; or a frame in which a bit of the one God has been
set,—still I must live in the very best way. How then must I live to be
happy, and why was I not happy before?” And he began to recall his
former life and he felt disgusted with himself. He appeared to himself
to have been terribly exacting and selfish, though he now saw that all
the while he really needed nothing for himself. And he looked round at
the foliage with the light shining through it, at the setting sun and
the clear sky, and he felt just as happy as before. “Why am I happy,
and what used I to live for?” thought he. “How much I exacted for
myself; how I schemed and did not manage to gain anything but shame and
sorrow! and, there now, I require nothing to be happy;” and suddenly a
new light seemed to reveal itself to him. “Happiness is this!” he said
to himself. “Happiness lies in living for others. That is evident. The
desire for happiness is innate in every man; therefore it is
legitimate. When trying to satisfy it selfishly—that is, by seeking for
oneself riches, fame, comforts, or love—it may happen that
circumstances arise which make it impossible to satisfy these desires.
It follows that it is these desires that are illegitimate, but not the
need for happiness. But what desires can always be satisfied despite
external circumstances? What are they? Love, self-sacrifice.” He was so
glad and excited when he had discovered this, as it seemed to him, new
truth, that he jumped up and began impatiently seeking some one to
sacrifice himself for, to do good to and to love. “Since one wants
nothing for oneself,” he kept thinking, “why not live for others?” He
took up his gun with the intention of returning home quickly to think
this out and to find an opportunity of doing good. He made his way out
of the thicket. When he had come out into the glade he looked around
him; the sun was no longer visible above the tree-tops. It had grown
cooler and the place seemed to him quite strange and not like the
country round the village. Everything seemed changed—the weather and
the character of the forest; the sky was wrapped in clouds, the wind
was rustling in the tree-tops, and all around nothing was visible but
reeds and dying broken-down trees. He called to his dog who had run
away to follow some animal, and his voice came back as in a desert. And
suddenly he was seized with a terrible sense of weirdness. He grew
frightened. He remembered the _abreks_ and the murders he had been told
about, and he expected every moment that an _abrek_ would spring from
behind every bush and he would have to defend his life and die, or be a
coward. He thought of God and of the future life as for long he had not
thought about them. And all around was that same gloomy stern wild
nature. “And is it worth while living for oneself,” thought he, “when
at any moment you may die, and die without having done any good, and so
that no one will know of it?” He went in the direction where he fancied
the village lay. Of his shooting he had no further thought; but he felt
tired to death and peered round at every bush and tree with particular
attention and almost with terror, expecting every moment to be called
to account for his life. After having wandered about for a considerable
time he came upon a ditch down which was flowing cold sandy water from
the Térek, and, not to go astray any longer, he decided to follow it.
He went on without knowing where the ditch would lead him. Suddenly the
reeds behind him crackled. He shuddered and seized his gun, and then
felt ashamed of himself: the over-excited dog, panting hard, had thrown
itself into the cold water of the ditch and was lapping it!

He too had a drink, and then followed the dog in the direction it
wished to go, thinking it would lead him to the village. But despite
the dog’s company everything around him seemed still more dreary. The
forest grew darker and the wind grew stronger and stronger in the tops
of the broken old trees. Some large birds circled screeching round
their nests in those trees. The vegetation grew poorer and he came
oftener and oftener upon rustling reeds and bare sandy spaces covered
with animal footprints. To the howling of the wind was added another
kind of cheerless monotonous roar. Altogether his spirits became
gloomy. Putting his hand behind him he felt his pheasants, and found
one missing. It had broken off and was lost, and only the bleeding head
and beak remained sticking in his belt. He felt more frightened than he
had ever done before. He began to pray to God, and feared above all
that he might die without having done anything good or kind; and he so
wanted to live, and to live so as to perform a feat of self-sacrifice.




 Chapter XXI


Suddenly it was as though the sun had shone into his soul. He heard
Russian being spoken, and also heard the rapid smooth flow of the
Térek, and a few steps farther in front of him saw the brown moving
surface of the river, with the dim-coloured wet sand of its banks and
shallows, the distant steppe, the cordon watch-tower outlined above the
water, a saddled and hobbled horse among the brambles, and then the
mountains opening out before him. The red sun appeared for an instant
from under a cloud and its last rays glittered brightly along the river
over the reeds, on the watch-tower, and on a group of Cossacks, among
whom Lukáshka’s vigorous figure attracted Olénin’s involuntary
attention.

Olénin felt that he was again, without any apparent cause, perfectly
happy. He had come upon the Nízhni-Protótsk post on the Térek, opposite
a pro-Russian Tartar village on the other side of the river. He
accosted the Cossacks, but not finding as yet any excuse for doing
anyone a kindness, he entered the hut; nor in the hut did he find any
such opportunity. The Cossacks received him coldly. On entering the mud
hut he lit a cigarette. The Cossacks paid little attention to him,
first because he was smoking a cigarette, and secondly because they had
something else to divert them that evening. Some hostile Chéchens,
relatives of the _abrek_ who had been killed, had come from the hills
with a scout to ransom the body; and the Cossacks were waiting for
their Commanding Officer’s arrival from the village. The dead man’s
brother, tall and well shaped with a short cropped beard which was dyed
red, despite his very tattered coat and cap was calm and majestic as a
king. His face was very like that of the dead _abrek_. He did not deign
to look at anyone, and never once glanced at the dead body, but sitting
on his heels in the shade he spat as he smoked his short pipe, and
occasionally uttered some few guttural sounds of command, which were
respectfully listened to by his companion. He was evidently a brave who
had met Russians more than once before in quite other circumstances,
and nothing about them could astonish or even interest him. Olénin was
about to approach the dead body and had begun to look at it when the
brother, looking up at him from under his brows with calm contempt,
said something sharply and angrily. The scout hastened to cover the
dead man’s face with his coat. Olénin was struck by the dignified and
stern expression of the brave’s face. He began to speak to him, asking
from what village he came, but the Chéchen, scarcely giving him a
glance, spat contemptuously and turned away. Olénin was so surprised at
the Chéchen not being interested in him that he could only put it down
to the man’s stupidity or ignorance of Russian; so he turned to the
scout, who also acted as interpreter. The scout was as ragged as the
other, but instead of being red-haired he was black-haired, restless,
with extremely white gleaming teeth and sparkling black eyes. The scout
willingly entered into conversation and asked for a cigarette.

“There were five brothers,” began the scout in his broken Russian.
“This is the third brother the Russians have killed, only two are left.
He is a brave, a great brave!” he said, pointing to the Chéchen. “When
they killed Ahmet Khan (the dead brave) this one was sitting on the
opposite bank among the reeds. He saw it all. Saw him laid in the skiff
and brought to the bank. He sat there till the night and wished to kill
the old man, but the others would not let him.”

Lukáshka went up to the speaker, and sat down. “Of what village?” asked
he.

“From there in the hills,” replied the scout, pointing to the misty
bluish gorge beyond the Térek. “Do you know Suuk-su? It is about eight
miles beyond that.”

“Do you know Giréy Khan in Suuk-su?” asked Lukáshka, evidently proud of
the acquaintance. “He is my _kunak_.”

“He is my neighbour,” answered the scout.

“He’s a trump!” and Lukáshka, evidently much interested, began talking
to the scout in Tartar.

Presently a Cossack captain, with the head of the village, arrived on
horseback with a suite of two Cossacks. The captain—one of the new type
of Cossack officers—wished the Cossacks “Good health,” but no one
shouted in reply, “Hail! Good health to your honour,” as is customary
in the Russian Army, and only a few replied with a bow. Some, and among
them Lukáshka, rose and stood erect. The corporal replied that all was
well at the outposts. All this seemed ridiculous: it was as if these
Cossacks were playing at being soldiers. But these formalities soon
gave place to ordinary ways of behaviour, and the captain, who was a
smart Cossack just like the others, began speaking fluently in Tartar
to the interpreter. They filled in some document, gave it to the scout,
and received from him some money. Then they approached the body.

“Which of you is Luke Gavrílov?” asked the captain.

Lukáshka took off his cap and came forward.

“I have reported your exploit to the Commander. I don’t know what will
come of it. I have recommended you for a cross; you’re too young to be
made a sergeant. Can you read?”

“I can’t.”

“But what a fine fellow to look at!” said the captain, again playing
the commander. “Put on your cap. Which of the Gavrílovs does he come
of? ... the Broad, eh?”

“His nephew,” replied the corporal.

“I know, I know. Well, lend a hand, help them,” he said, turning to the
Cossacks.

Lukáshka’s face shone with joy and seemed handsomer than usual. He
moved away from the corporal, and having put on his cap sat down beside
Olénin.

When the body had been carried to the skiff the brother Chéchen
descended to the bank. The Cossacks involuntarily stepped aside to let
him pass. He jumped into the boat and pushed off from the bank with his
powerful leg, and now, as Olénin noticed, for the first time threw a
rapid glance at all the Cossacks and then abruptly asked his companion
a question. The latter answered something and pointed to Lukáshka. The
Chéchen looked at him and, turning slowly away, gazed at the opposite
bank. That look expressed not hatred but cold contempt. He again made
some remark.

“What is he saying?” Olénin asked of the fidgety scout.

“Yours kill ours, ours slay yours. It’s always the same,” replied the
scout, evidently inventing, and he smiled, showing his white teeth, as
he jumped into the skiff.

The dead man’s brother sat motionless, gazing at the opposite bank. He
was so full of hatred and contempt that there was nothing on this side
of the river that moved his curiosity. The scout, standing up at one
end of the skiff and dipping his paddle now on one side now on the
other, steered skilfully while talking incessantly. The skiff became
smaller and smaller as it moved obliquely across the stream, the voices
became scarcely audible, and at last, still within sight, they landed
on the opposite bank where their horses stood waiting. There they
lifted out the corpse and (though the horse shied) laid it across one
of the saddles, mounted, and rode at a foot-pace along the road past a
Tartar village from which a crowd came out to look at them. The
Cossacks on the Russian side of the river were highly satisfied and
jovial. Laughter and jokes were heard on all sides. The captain and the
head of the village entered the mud hut to regale themselves. Lukáshka,
vainly striving to impart a sedate expression to his merry face, sat
down with his elbows on his knees beside Olénin and whittled away at a
stick.

“Why do you smoke?” he said with assumed curiosity. “Is it good?”

He evidently spoke because he noticed Olénin felt ill at ease and
isolated among the Cossacks.

“It’s just a habit,” answered Olénin. “Why?”

“H’m, if one of us were to smoke there would be a row! Look there now,
the mountains are not far off,” continued Lukáshka, “yet you can’t get
there! How will you get back alone? It’s getting dark. I’ll take you,
if you like. You ask the corporal to give me leave.”

“What a fine fellow!” thought Olénin, looking at the Cossack’s bright
face. He remembered Maryánka and the kiss he had heard by the gate, and
he was sorry for Lukáshka and his want of culture. “What confusion it
is,” he thought. “A man kills another and is happy and satisfied with
himself as if he had done something excellent. Can it be that nothing
tells him that it is not a reason for any rejoicing, and that happiness
lies not in killing, but in sacrificing oneself?”

“Well, you had better not meet him again now, mate!” said one of the
Cossacks who had seen the skiff off, addressing Lukáshka. “Did you hear
him asking about you?”

Lukáshka raised his head.

“My godson?” said Lukáshka, meaning by that word the dead Chéchen.

“Your godson won’t rise, but the red one is the godson’s brother!”

“Let him thank God that he got off whole himself,” replied Lukáshka.

“What are you glad about?” asked Olénin. “Supposing your brother had
been killed; would you be glad?”

The Cossack looked at Olénin with laughing eyes. He seemed to have
understood all that Olénin wished to say to him, but to be above such
considerations.

“Well, that happens too! Don’t our fellows get killed sometimes?”




 Chapter XXII


The Captain and the head of the village rode away, and Olénin, to
please Lukáshka as well as to avoid going back alone through the dark
forest, asked the corporal to give Lukáshka leave, and the corporal did
so. Olénin thought that Lukáshka wanted to see Maryánka and he was also
glad of the companionship of such a pleasant-looking and sociable
Cossack. Lukáshka and Maryánka he involuntarily united in his mind, and
he found pleasure in thinking about them. “He loves Maryánka,” thought
Olénin, “and I could love her,” and a new and powerful emotion of
tenderness overcame him as they walked homewards together through the
dark forest. Lukáshka too felt happy; something akin to love made
itself felt between these two very different young men. Every time they
glanced at one another they wanted to laugh.

“By which gate do you enter?” asked Olénin.

“By the middle one. But I’ll see you as far as the marsh. After that
you have nothing to fear.”

Olénin laughed.

“Do you think I am afraid? Go back, and thank you. I can get on alone.”

“It’s all right! What have I to do? And how can you help being afraid?
Even we are afraid,” said Lukáshka to set Olénin’s self-esteem at rest,
and he laughed too.

“Then come in with me. We’ll have a talk and a drink and in the morning
you can go back.”

“Couldn’t I find a place to spend the night?” laughed Lukáshka. “But
the corporal asked me to go back.”

“I heard you singing last night, and also saw you.”

“Every one...” and Luke swayed his head.

“Is it true you are getting married?” asked Olénin.

“Mother wants me to marry. But I have not got a horse yet.”

“Aren’t you in the regular service?”

“Oh dear no! I’ve only just joined, and have not got a horse yet, and
don’t know how to get one. That’s why the marriage does not come off.”

“And what would a horse cost?”

“We were bargaining for one beyond the river the other day and they
would not take sixty rubles for it, though it is a Nogáy horse.”

“Will you come and be my drabánt?” (A drabánt was a kind of orderly
attached to an officer when campaigning.) “I’ll get it arranged and
will give you a horse,” said Olénin suddenly. “Really now, I have two
and I don’t want both.”

“How—don’t want it?” Lukáshka said, laughing. “Why should you make me a
present? We’ll get on by ourselves by God’s help.”

“No, really! Or don’t you want to be a drabánt?” said Olénin, glad that
it had entered his head to give a horse to Lukáshka, though, without
knowing why, he felt uncomfortable and confused and did not know what
to say when he tried to speak.

Lukáshka was the first to break the silence.

“Have you a house of your own in Russia?” he asked.

Olénin could not refrain from replying that he had not only one, but
several houses.

“A good house? Bigger than ours?” asked Lukáshka good-naturedly.

“Much bigger; ten times as big and three storeys high,” replied Olénin.

“And have you horses such as ours?”

“I have a hundred horses, worth three or four hundred rubles each, but
they are not like yours. They are trotters, you know.... But still, I
like the horses here best.”

“Well, and did you come here of your own free will, or were you sent?”
said Lukáshka, laughing at him. “Look! that’s where you lost your way,”
he added, “you should have turned to the right.”

“I came by my own wish,” replied Olénin. “I wanted to see your parts
and to join some expeditions.”

“I would go on an expedition any day,” said Lukáshka. “D’you hear the
jackals howling?” he added, listening.

“I say, don’t you feel any horror at having killed a man?” asked
Olénin.

“What’s there to be frightened about? But I should like to join an
expedition,” Lukáshka repeated. “How I want to! How I want to!”

“Perhaps we may be going together. Our company is going before the
holidays, and your ‘hundred’ too.”

“And what did you want to come here for? You’ve a house and horses and
serfs. In your place I’d do nothing but make merry! And what is your
rank?”

“I am a cadet, but have been recommended for a commission.”

“Well, if you’re not bragging about your home, if I were you I’d never
have left it! Yes, I’d never have gone away anywhere. Do you find it
pleasant living among us?”

“Yes, very pleasant,” answered Olénin.

It had grown quite dark before, talking in this way, they approached
the village. They were still surrounded by the deep gloom of the
forest. The wind howled through the tree-tops. The jackals suddenly
seemed to be crying close beside them, howling, chuckling, and sobbing;
but ahead of them in the village the sounds of women’s voices and the
barking of dogs could already be heard; the outlines of the huts were
clearly to be seen; lights gleamed and the air was filled with the
peculiar smell of _kisyak_ smoke. Olénin felt keenly, that night
especially, that here in this village was his home, his family, all his
happiness, and that he never had and never would live so happily
anywhere as he did in this Cossack village. He was so fond of everybody
and especially of Lukáshka that night. On reaching home, to Lukáshka’s
great surprise, Olénin with his own hands led out of the shed a horse
he had bought in Gróznoe—it was not the one he usually rode but
another—not a bad horse though no longer young, and gave it to
Lukáshka.

“Why should you give me a present?” said Lukáshka, “I have not yet done
anything for you.”

“Really it is nothing,” answered Olénin. “Take it, and you will give me
a present, and we’ll go on an expedition against the enemy together.”

Lukáshka became confused.

“But what d’you mean by it? As if a horse were of little value,” he
said without looking at the horse.

“Take it, take it! If you don’t you will offend me. Vanyúsha! Take the
grey horse to his house.”

Lukáshka took hold of the halter.

“Well then, thank you! This is something unexpected, undreamt of.”

Olénin was as happy as a boy of twelve.

“Tie it up here. It’s a good horse. I bought it in Gróznoe; it gallops
splendidly! Vanyúsha, bring us some _chikhir_. Come into the hut.”

The wine was brought. Lukáshka sat down and took the wine-bowl.

“God willing I’ll find a way to repay you,” he said, finishing his
wine. “How are you called?”

“Dmítri Andréich.”

“Well, ’Mitry Andréich, God bless you. We will be _kunaks_. Now you
must come to see us. Though we are not rich people still we can treat a
_kunak_, and I will tell mother in case you need anything—clotted cream
or grapes—and if you come to the cordon I’m your servant to go hunting
or to go across the river, anywhere you like! There now, only the other
day, what a boar I killed, and I divided it among the Cossacks, but if
I had only known, I’d have given it to you.”

“That’s all right, thank you! But don’t harness the horse, it has never
been in harness.”

“Why harness the horse? And there is something else I’ll tell you if
you like,” said Lukáshka, bending his head. “I have a _kunak_, Giréy
Khan. He asked me to lie in ambush by the road where they come down
from the mountains. Shall we go together? I’ll not betray you. I’ll be
your _murid_.”

“Yes, we’ll go; we’ll go some day.”

Lukáshka seemed quite to have quieted down and to have understood
Olénin’s attitude towards him. His calmness and the ease of his
behaviour surprised Olénin, and he did not even quite like it. They
talked long, and it was late when Lukáshka, not tipsy (he never was
tipsy) but having drunk a good deal, left Olénin after shaking hands.

Olénin looked out of the window to see what he would do. Lukáshka went
out, hanging his head. Then, having led the horse out of the gate, he
suddenly shook his head, threw the reins of the halter over its head,
sprang onto its back like a cat, gave a wild shout, and galloped down
the street. Olénin expected that Lukáshka would go to share his joy
with Maryánka, but though he did not do so Olénin still felt his soul
more at ease than ever before in his life. He was as delighted as a
boy, and could not refrain from telling Vanyúsha not only that he had
given Lukáshka the horse, but also why he had done it, as well as his
new theory of happiness.

Vanyúsha did not approve of his theory, and announced that “_l’argent
il n’y a pas!_” and that therefore it was all nonsense.

Lukáshka rode home, jumped off the horse, and handed it over to his
mother, telling her to let it out with the communal Cossack herd. He
himself had to return to the cordon that same night. His deaf sister
undertook to take the horse, and explained by signs that when she saw
the man who had given the horse, she would bow down at his feet. The
old woman only shook her head at her son’s story, and decided in her
own mind that he had stolen it. She therefore told the deaf girl to
take it to the herd before daybreak.

Lukáshka went back alone to the cordon pondering over Olénin’s action.
Though he did not consider the horse a good one, yet it was worth at
least forty rubles and Lukáshka was very glad to have the present. But
why it had been given him he could not at all understand, and therefore
he did not experience the least feeling of gratitude. On the contrary,
vague suspicions that the cadet had some evil intentions filled his
mind. What those intentions were he could not decide, but neither could
he admit the idea that a stranger would give him a horse worth forty
rubles for nothing, just out of kindness; it seemed impossible. Had he
been drunk one might understand it! He might have wished to show off.
But the cadet had been sober, and therefore must have wished to bribe
him to do something wrong. “Eh, humbug!” thought Lukáshka. “Haven’t I
got the horse and we’ll see later on. I’m not a fool myself and we
shall see who’ll get the better of the other,” he thought, feeling the
necessity of being on his guard, and therefore arousing in himself
unfriendly feelings towards Olénin. He told no one how he had got the
horse. To some he said he had bought it, to others he replied
evasively. However, the truth soon got about in the village, and
Lukáshka’s mother and Maryánka, as well as Elias Vasílich and other
Cossacks, when they heard of Olénin’s unnecessary gift, were perplexed,
and began to be on their guard against the cadet. But despite their
fears his action aroused in them a great respect for his simplicity and
wealth.

“Have you heard,” said one, “that the cadet quartered on Elias Vasílich
has thrown a fifty-ruble horse at Lukáshka? He’s rich! ...”

“Yes, I heard of it,” replied another profoundly, “he must have done
him some great service. We shall see what will come of this cadet. Eh!
what luck that Snatcher has!”

“Those cadets are crafty, awfully crafty,” said a third. “See if he
don’t go setting fire to a building, or doing something!”




 Chapter XXIII


Olénin’s life went on with monotonous regularity. He had little
intercourse with the commanding officers or with his equals. The
position of a rich cadet in the Caucasus was peculiarly advantageous in
this respect. He was not sent out to work, or for training. As a reward
for going on an expedition he was recommended for a commission, and
meanwhile he was left in peace. The officers regarded him as an
aristocrat and behaved towards him with dignity. Cardplaying and the
officers’ carousals accompanied by the soldier-singers, of which he had
had experience when he was with the detachment, did not seem to him
attractive, and he also avoided the society and life of the officers in
the village. The life of officers stationed in a Cossack village has
long had its own definite form. Just as every cadet or officer when in
a fort regularly drinks porter, plays cards, and discusses the rewards
given for taking part in the expeditions, so in the Cossack villages he
regularly drinks _chikhir_ with his hosts, treats the girls to
sweet-meats and honey, dangles after the Cossack women, and falls in
love, and occasionally marries there. Olénin always took his own path
and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks. And here, too,
he did not follow the ruts of a Caucasian officer’s life.

It came quite naturally to him to wake up at daybreak. After drinking
tea and admiring from his porch the mountains, the morning, and
Maryánka, he would put on a tattered ox-hide coat, sandals of soaked
raw hide, buckle on a dagger, take a gun, put cigarettes and some lunch
in a little bag, call his dog, and soon after five o’clock would start
for the forest beyond the village. Towards seven in the evening he
would return tired and hungry with five or six pheasants hanging from
his belt (sometimes with some other animal) and with his bag of food
and cigarettes untouched. If the thoughts in his head had lain like the
lunch and cigarettes in the bag, one might have seen that during all
those fourteen hours not a single thought had moved in it. He returned
morally fresh, strong, and perfectly happy, and he could not tell what
he had been thinking about all the time. Were they ideas, memories, or
dreams that had been flitting through his mind? They were frequently
all three. He would rouse himself and ask what he had been thinking
about; and would see himself as a Cossack working in a vineyard with
his Cossack wife, or an _abrek_ in the mountains, or a boar running
away from himself. And all the time he kept peering and watching for a
pheasant, a boar, or a deer.

In the evening Daddy Eróshka would be sure to be sitting with him.
Vanyúsha would bring a jug of _chikhir_, and they would converse
quietly, drink, and separate to go quite contentedly to bed. The next
day he would again go shooting, again be healthily weary, again they
would sit conversing and drink their fill, and again be happy.
Sometimes on a holiday or day of rest Olénin spent the whole day at
home. Then his chief occupation was watching Maryánka, whose every
movement, without realizing it himself, he followed greedily from his
window or his porch. He regarded Maryánka and loved her (so he thought)
just as he loved the beauty of the mountains and the sky, and he had no
thought of entering into any relations with her. It seemed to him that
between him and her such relations as there were between her and the
Cossack Lukáshka could not exist, and still less such as often existed
between rich officers and other Cossack girls. It seemed to him that if
he tried to do as his fellow officers did, he would exchange his
complete enjoyment of contemplation for an abyss of suffering,
disillusionment, and remorse. Besides, he had already achieved a
triumph of self-sacrifice in connexion with her which had given him
great pleasure, and above all he was in a way afraid of Maryánka and
would not for anything have ventured to utter a word of love to her
lightly.

Once during the summer, when Olénin had not gone out shooting but was
sitting at home, quite unexpectedly a Moscow acquaintance, a very young
man whom he had met in society, came in.

“Ah, _mon cher_, my dear fellow, how glad I was when I heard that you
were here!” he began in his Moscow French, and he went on intermingling
French words in his remarks. “They said, ‘Olénin’. What Olénin? and I
was so pleased.... Fancy fate bringing us together here! Well, and how
are you? How? Why?” and Prince Belétski told his whole story: how he
had temporarily entered the regiment, how the Commander-in-Chief had
offered to take him as an adjutant, and how he would take up the post
after this campaign although personally he felt quite indifferent about
it.

“Living here in this hole one must at least make a career—get a
cross—or a rank—be transferred to the Guards. That is quite
indispensable, not for myself but for the sake of my relations and
friends. The prince received me very well; he is a very decent fellow,”
said Belétski, and went on unceasingly. “I have been recommended for
the St. Anna Cross for the expedition. Now I shall stay here a bit
until we start on the campaign. It’s capital here. What women! Well,
and how are you getting on? I was told by our captain, Stártsev you
know, a kind-hearted stupid creature.... Well, he said you were living
like an awful savage, seeing no one! I quite understand you don’t want
to be mixed up with the set of officers we have here. I am so glad now
you and I will be able to see something of one another. I have put up
at the Cossack corporal’s house. There is such a girl there. Ústenka! I
tell you she’s just charming.”

And more and more French and Russian words came pouring forth from that
world which Olénin thought he had left for ever. The general opinion
about Belétski was that he was a nice, good-natured fellow. Perhaps he
really was; but in spite of his pretty, good-natured face, Olénin
thought him extremely unpleasant. He seemed just to exhale that
filthiness which Olénin had forsworn. What vexed him most was that he
could not—had not the strength—abruptly to repulse this man who came
from that world: as if that old world he used to belong to had an
irresistible claim on him. Olénin felt angry with Belétski and with
himself, yet against his wish he introduced French phrases into his own
conversation, was interested in the Commander-in-Chief and in their
Moscow acquaintances, and because in this Cossack village he and
Belétski both spoke French, he spoke contemptuously of their fellow
officers and of the Cossacks, and was friendly with Belétski, promising
to visit him and inviting him to drop in to see him. Olénin however did
not himself go to see Belétski. Vanyúsha for his part approved of
Belétski, remarking that he was a real gentleman.

Belétski at once adopted the customary life of a rich officer in a
Cossack village. Before Olénin’s eyes, in one month he came to be like
an old resident of the village; he made the old men drunk, arranged
evening parties, and himself went to parties arranged by the
girls—bragged of his conquests, and even got so far that, for some
unknown reason, the women and girls began calling him grandad, and the
Cossacks, to whom a man who loved wine and women was clearly
understandable, got used to him and even liked him better than they did
Olénin, who was a puzzle to them.




 Chapter XXIV


It was five in the morning. Vanyúsha was in the porch heating the
samovar, and using the leg of a long boot instead of bellows. Olénin
had already ridden off to bathe in the Térek. (He had recently invented
a new amusement: to swim his horse in the river.) His landlady was in
her outhouse, and the dense smoke of the kindling fire rose from the
chimney. The girl was milking the buffalo cow in the shed. “Can’t keep
quiet, the damned thing!” came her impatient voice, followed by the
rhythmical sound of milking.

From the street in front of the house horses’ hoofs were heard
clattering briskly, and Olénin, riding bareback on a handsome dark-grey
horse which was still wet and shining, rode up to the gate. Maryánka’s
handsome head, tied round with a red kerchief, appeared from the shed
and again disappeared. Olénin was wearing a red silk shirt, a white
Circassian coat girdled with a strap which carried a dagger, and a tall
cap. He sat his well-fed wet horse with a slightly conscious elegance
and, holding his gun at his back, stooped to open the gate. His hair
was still wet, and his face shone with youth and health. He thought
himself handsome, agile, and like a brave; but he was mistaken. To any
experienced Caucasian he was still only a soldier. When he noticed that
the girl had put out her head he stooped with particular smartness,
threw open the gate and, tightening the reins, swished his whip and
entered the yard. “Is tea ready, Vanyúsha?” he cried gaily, not looking
at the door of the shed. He felt with pleasure how his fine horse,
pressing down its flanks, pulling at the bridle and with every muscle
quivering and with each foot ready to leap over the fence, pranced on
the hard clay of the yard. _“C’est prêt_,” answered Vanyúsha. Olénin
felt as if Maryánka’s beautiful head was still looking out of the shed
but he did not turn to look at her. As he jumped down from his horse he
made an awkward movement and caught his gun against the porch, and
turned a frightened look towards the shed, where there was no one to be
seen and whence the sound of milking could still be heard.

Soon after he had entered the hut he came out again and sat down with
his pipe and a book on the side of the porch which was not yet exposed
to the rays of the sun. He meant not to go anywhere before dinner that
day, and to write some long-postponed letters; but somehow he felt
disinclined to leave his place in the porch, and he was as reluctant to
go back into the hut as if it had been a prison. The housewife had
heated her oven, and the girl, having driven the cattle, had come back
and was collecting _kisyak_ and heaping it up along the fence. Olénin
went on reading, but did not understand a word of what was written in
the book that lay open before him. He kept lifting his eyes from it and
looking at the powerful young woman who was moving about. Whether she
stepped into the moist morning shadow thrown by the house, or went out
into the middle of the yard lit up by the joyous young light, so that
the whole of her stately figure in its bright coloured garment gleamed
in the sunshine and cast a black shadow—he always feared to lose any
one of her movements. It delighted him to see how freely and gracefully
her figure bent: into what folds her only garment, a pink smock, draped
itself on her bosom and along her shapely legs; how she drew herself up
and her tight-drawn smock showed the outline of her heaving bosom, how
the soles of her narrow feet in her worn red slippers rested on the
ground without altering their shape; how her strong arms with the
sleeves rolled up, exerting the muscles, used the spade almost as if in
anger, and how her deep dark eyes sometimes glanced at him. Though the
delicate brows frowned, yet her eyes expressed pleasure and a knowledge
of her own beauty.

“I say, Olénin, have you been up long?” said Belétski as he entered the
yard dressed in the coat of a Caucasian officer.

“Ah, Belétski,” replied Olénin, holding out his hand. “How is it you
are out so early?”

“I had to. I was driven out; we are having a ball tonight. Maryánka, of
course you’ll come to Ústenka’s?” he added, turning to the girl.

Olénin felt surprised that Belétski could address this woman so easily.
But Maryánka, as though she had not heard him, bent her head, and
throwing the spade across her shoulder went with her firm masculine
tread towards the outhouse.

“She’s shy, the wench is shy,” Belétski called after her. “Shy of you,”
he added as, smiling gaily, he ran up the steps of the porch.

“How is it you are having a ball and have been driven out?”

“It’s at Ústenka’s, at my landlady’s, that the ball is, and you two are
invited. A ball consists of a pie and a gathering of girls.”

“What should we do there?”

Belétski smiled knowingly and winked, jerking his head in the direction
of the outhouse into which Maryánka had disappeared.

Olénin shrugged his shoulders and blushed.

“Well, really you are a strange fellow!” said he.

“Come now, don’t pretend”

Olénin frowned, and Belétski noticing this smiled insinuatingly. “Oh,
come, what do you mean?” he said, “living in the same house—and such a
fine girl, a splendid girl, a perfect beauty—”

“Wonderfully beautiful! I never saw such a woman before,” replied
Olénin.

“Well then?” said Belétski, quite unable to understand the situation.

“It may be strange,” replied Olénin, “but why should I not say what is
true? Since I have lived here women don’t seem to exist for me. And it
is so good, really! Now what can there be in common between us and
women like these? Eróshka—that’s a different matter! He and I have a
passion in common—sport.”

“There now! In common! And what have I in common with Amália Ivánovna?
It’s the same thing! You may say they’re not very clean—that’s another
matter... _À la guerre, comme à la guerre!_...”

“But I have never known any Amália Ivánovas, and have never known how
to behave with women of that sort,” replied Olénin. “One cannot respect
them, but these I do respect.”

“Well go on respecting them! Who wants to prevent you?”

Olénin did not reply. He evidently wanted to complete what he had begun
to say. It was very near his heart.

“I know I am an exception...” He was visibly confused. “But my life has
so shaped itself that I not only see no necessity to renounce my rules,
but I could not live here, let alone live as happily as I am doing,
were I to live as you do. Therefore I look for something quite
different from what you look for.”

Belétski raised his eyebrows incredulously. “Anyhow, come to me this
evening; Maryánka will be there and I will make you acquainted. Do
come, please! If you feel dull you can go away. Will you come?”

“I would come, but to speak frankly I am afraid of being seriously
carried away.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” shouted Belétski. “Only come, and I’ll see that you
aren’t. Will you? On your word?”

“I would come, but really I don’t understand what we shall do; what
part we shall play!”

“Please, I beg of you. You will come?”

“Yes, perhaps I’ll come,” said Olénin.

“Really now! Charming women such as one sees nowhere else, and to live
like a monk! What an idea! Why spoil your life and not make use of what
is at hand? Have you heard that our company is ordered to
Vozdvízhensk?”

“Hardly. I was told the 8th Company would be sent there,” said Olénin.

“No. I have had a letter from the adjutant there. He writes that the
Prince himself will take part in the campaign. I am very glad I shall
see something of him. I’m beginning to get tired of this place.”

“I hear we shall start on a raid soon.”

“I have not heard of it; but I have heard that Krinovítsin has received
the Order of St. Anna for a raid. He expected a lieutenancy,” said
Belétski laughing. “He was let in! He has set off for headquarters.”

It was growing dusk and Olénin began thinking about the party. The
invitation he had received worried him. He felt inclined to go, but
what might take place there seemed strange, absurd, and even rather
alarming. He knew that neither Cossack men nor older women, nor anyone
besides the girls, were to be there. What was going to happen? How was
he to behave? What would they talk about? What connexion was there
between him and those wild Cossack girls? Belétski had told him of such
curious, cynical, and yet rigid relations. It seemed strange to think
that he would be there in the same hut with Maryánka and perhaps might
have to talk to her. It seemed to him impossible when he remembered her
majestic bearing. But Belétski spoke of it as if it were all perfectly
simple. “Is it possible that Belétski will treat Maryánka in the same
way? That is interesting,” thought he. “No, better not go. It’s all so
horrid, so vulgar, and above all—it leads to nothing!” But again he was
worried by the question of what would take place; and besides he felt
as if bound by a promise. He went out without having made up his mind
one way or the other, but he walked as far as Belétski’s, and went in
there.

The hut in which Belétski lived was like Olénin’s. It was raised nearly
five feet from the ground on wooden piles, and had two rooms. In the
first (which Olénin entered by the steep flight of steps) feather beds,
rugs, blankets, and cushions were tastefully and handsomely arranged,
Cossack fashion, along the main wall. On the side wall hung brass
basins and weapons, while on the floor, under a bench, lay watermelons
and pumpkins. In the second room there was a big brick oven, a table,
and sectarian icons. It was here that Belétski was quartered, with his
camp-bed and his pack and trunks. His weapons hung on the wall with a
little rug behind them, and on the table were his toilet appliances and
some portraits. A silk dressing-gown had been thrown on the bench.
Belétski himself, clean and good-looking, lay on the bed in his
underclothing, reading _Les Trois Mousquetaires_.

He jumped up.

“There, you see how I have arranged things. Fine! Well, it’s good that
you have come. They are working furiously. Do you know what the pie is
made of? Dough with a stuffing of pork and grapes. But that’s not the
point. You just look at the commotion out there!”

And really, on looking out of the window they saw an unusual bustle
going on in the hut. Girls ran in and out, now for one thing and now
for another.

“Will it soon be ready?” cried Belétski.

“Very soon! Why? Is Grandad hungry?” and from the hut came the sound of
ringing laughter.

Ústenka, plump, small, rosy, and pretty, with her sleeves turned up,
ran into Belétski’s hut to fetch some plates.

“Get away or I shall smash the plates!” she squeaked, escaping from
Belétski. “You’d better come and help,” she shouted to Olénin,
laughing. “And don’t forget to get some refreshments for the girls.”
(“Refreshments” meaning spicebread and sweets.)

“And has Maryánka come?”

“Of course! She brought some dough.”

“Do you know,” said Belétski, “if one were to dress Ústenka up and
clean and polish her up a bit, she’d be better than all our beauties.
Have you ever seen that Cossack woman who married a colonel; she was
charming! Bórsheva? What dignity! Where do they get it...”

“I have not seen Bórsheva, but I think nothing could be better than the
costume they wear here.”

“Ah, I’m first-rate at fitting into any kind of life,” said Belétski
with a sigh of pleasure. “I’ll go and see what they are up to.”

He threw his dressing-gown over his shoulders and ran out, shouting,
“And you look after the ‘refreshments’.”

Olénin sent Belétski’s orderly to buy spice-bread and honey; but it
suddenly seemed to him so disgusting to give money (as if he were
bribing someone) that he gave no definite reply to the orderly’s
question: “How much spice-bread with peppermint, and how much with
honey?”

“Just as you please.”

“Shall I spend all the money,” asked the old soldier impressively. “The
peppermint is dearer. It’s sixteen kopeks.”

“Yes, yes, spend it all,” answered Olénin and sat down by the window,
surprised that his heart was thumping as if he were preparing himself
for something serious and wicked.

He heard screaming and shrieking in the girls’ hut when Belétski went
there, and a few moments later saw how he jumped out and ran down the
steps, accompanied by shrieks, bustle, and laughter.

“Turned out,” he said.

A little later Ústenka entered and solemnly invited her visitors to
come in: announcing that all was ready.

When they came into the room they saw that everything was really ready.
Ústenka was rearranging the cushions along the wall. On the table,
which was covered by a disproportionately small cloth, was a decanter
of _chikhir_ and some dried fish. The room smelt of dough and grapes.
Some half dozen girls in smart tunics, with their heads not covered as
usual with kerchiefs, were huddled together in a corner behind the
oven, whispering, giggling, and spluttering with laughter.

“I humbly beg you to do honour to my patron saint,” said Ústenka,
inviting her guests to the table.

Olénin noticed Maryánka among the group of girls, who without exception
were all handsome, and he felt vexed and hurt that he met her in such
vulgar and awkward circumstances. He felt stupid and awkward, and made
up his mind to do what Belétski did. Belétski stepped to the table
somewhat solemnly yet with confidence and ease, drank a glass of wine
to Ústenka’s health, and invited the others to do the same. Ústenka
announced that girls don’t drink.

“We might with a little honey,” exclaimed a voice from among the group
of girls.

The orderly, who had just returned with the honey and spice-cakes, was
called in. He looked askance (whether with envy or with contempt) at
the gentlemen, who in his opinion were on the spree; and carefully and
conscientiously handed over to them a piece of honeycomb and the cakes
wrapped up in a piece of greyish paper, and began explaining
circumstantially all about the price and the change, but Belétski sent
him away.

Having mixed honey with wine in the glasses, and having lavishly
scattered the three pounds of spice-cakes on the table, Belétski
dragged the girls from their corners by force, made them sit down at
the table, and began distributing the cakes among them. Olénin
involuntarily noticed how Maryánka’s sunburnt but small hand closed on
two round peppermint nuts and one brown one, and that she did not know
what to do with them. The conversation was halting and constrained, in
spite of Ústenka’s and Belétski’s free and easy manner and their wish
to enliven the company. Olénin faltered, and tried to think of
something to say, feeling that he was exciting curiosity and perhaps
provoking ridicule and infecting the others with his shyness. He
blushed, and it seemed to him that Maryánka in particular was feeling
uncomfortable. “Most likely they are expecting us to give them some
money,” thought he. “How are we to do it? And how can we manage
quickest to give it and get away?”




 Chapter XXV


“How is it you don’t know your own lodger?” said Belétski, addressing
Maryánka.

“How is one to know him if he never comes to see us?” answered
Maryánka, with a look at Olénin.

Olénin felt frightened, he did not know of what. He flushed and, hardly
knowing what he was saying, remarked: “I’m afraid of your mother. She
gave me such a scolding the first time I went in.”

Maryánka burst out laughing. “And so you were frightened?” she said,
and glanced at him and turned away.

It was the first time Olénin had seen the whole of her beautiful face.
Till then he had seen her with her kerchief covering her to the eyes.
It was not for nothing that she was reckoned the beauty of the village.
Ústenka was a pretty girl, small, plump, rosy, with merry brown eyes,
and red lips which were perpetually smiling and chattering. Maryánka on
the contrary was certainly not pretty but beautiful. Her features might
have been considered too masculine and almost harsh had it not been for
her tall stately figure, her powerful chest and shoulders, and
especially the severe yet tender expression of her long dark eyes which
were darkly shadowed beneath their black brows, and for the gentle
expression of her mouth and smile. She rarely smiled, but her smile was
always striking. She seemed to radiate virginal strength and health.
All the girls were good-looking, but they themselves and Belétski, and
the orderly when he brought in the spice-cakes, all involuntarily gazed
at Maryánka, and anyone addressing the girls was sure to address her.
She seemed a proud and happy queen among them.

Belétski, trying to keep up the spirit of the party, chattered
incessantly, made the girls hand round _chikhir_, fooled about with
them, and kept making improper remarks in French about Maryánka’s
beauty to Olénin, calling her “yours” (_la vôtre_), and advising him to
behave as he did himself. Olénin felt more and more uncomfortable. He
was devising an excuse to get out and run away when Belétski announced
that Ústenka, whose saint’s day it was, must offer _chikhir_ to
everybody with a kiss. She consented on condition that they should put
money on her plate, as is the custom at weddings.

“What fiend brought me to this disgusting feast?” thought Olénin,
rising to go away.

“Where are you off to?”

“I’ll fetch some tobacco,” he said, meaning to escape, but Belétski
seized his hand.

“I have some money,” he said to him in French.

“One can’t go away, one has to pay here,” thought Olénin bitterly,
vexed at his own awkwardness. “Can’t I really behave like Belétski? I
ought not to have come, but once I am here I must not spoil their fun.
I must drink like a Cossack,” and taking the wooden bowl (holding about
eight tumblers) he almost filled it with _chikhir_ and drank it almost
all. The girls looked at him, surprised and almost frightened, as he
drank. It seemed to them strange and not right. Ústenka brought them
another glass each, and kissed them both. “There girls, now we’ll have
some fun,” she said, clinking on the plate the four rubles the men had
put there.

Olénin no longer felt awkward, but became talkative.

“Now, Maryánka, it’s your turn to offer us wine and a kiss,” said
Belétski, seizing her hand.

“Yes, I’ll give you such a kiss!” she said playfully, preparing to
strike at him.

“One can kiss Grandad without payment,” said another girl.

“There’s a sensible girl,” said Belétski, kissing the struggling girl.
“No, you must offer it,” he insisted, addressing Maryánka. “Offer a
glass to your lodger.”

And taking her by the hand he led her to the bench and sat her down
beside Olénin.

“What a beauty,” he said, turning her head to see it in profile.

Maryánka did not resist but proudly smiling turned her long eyes
towards Olénin.

“A beautiful girl,” repeated Belétski.

“Yes, see what a beauty I am,” Maryánka’s look seemed to endorse.
Without considering what he was doing Olénin embraced Maryánka and was
going to kiss her, but she suddenly extricated herself, upsetting
Belétski and pushing the top off the table, and sprang away towards the
oven. There was much shouting and laughter. Then Belétski whispered
something to the girls and suddenly they all ran out into the passage
and locked the door behind them.

“Why did you kiss Belétski and won’t kiss me?” asked Olénin.

“Oh, just so. I don’t want to, that’s all!” she answered, pouting and
frowning. “He’s Grandad,” she added with a smile. She went to the door
and began to bang at it. “Why have you locked the door, you devils?”

“Well, let them be there and us here,” said Olénin, drawing closer to
her.

She frowned, and sternly pushed him away with her hand. And again she
appeared so majestically handsome to Olénin that he came to his senses
and felt ashamed of what he was doing. He went to the door and began
pulling at it himself.

“Belétski! Open the door! What a stupid joke!”

Maryánka again gave a bright happy laugh. “Ah, you’re afraid of me?”
she said.

“Yes, you know you’re as cross as your mother.”

“Spend more of your time with Eróshka; that will make the girls love
you!” And she smiled, looking straight and close into his eyes.

He did not know what to reply. “And if I were to come to see you—” he
let fall.

“That would be a different matter,” she replied, tossing her head.

At that moment Belétski pushed the door open, and Maryánka sprang away
from Olénin and in doing so her thigh struck his leg.

“It’s all nonsense what I have been thinking about—love and
self-sacrifice and Lukáshka. Happiness is the one thing. He who is
happy is right,” flashed through Olénin’s mind, and with a strength
unexpected to himself he seized and kissed the beautiful Maryánka on
her temple and her cheek. Maryánka was not angry, but only burst into a
loud laugh and ran out to the other girls.

That was the end of the party. Ústenka’s mother, returned from her
work, gave all the girls a scolding, and turned them all out.




 Chapter XXVI


“Yes,” thought Olénin, as he walked home. “I need only slacken the
reins a bit and I might fall desperately in love with this Cossack
girl.” He went to bed with these thoughts, but expected it all to blow
over and that he would continue to live as before.

But the old life did not return. His relations to Maryánka were
changed. The wall that had separated them was broken down. Olénin now
greeted her every time they met.

The master of the house having returned to collect the rent, on hearing
of Olénin’s wealth and generosity invited him to his hut. The old woman
received him kindly, and from the day of the party onwards Olénin often
went in of an evening and sat with them till late at night. He seemed
to be living in the village just as he used to, but within him
everything had changed. He spent his days in the forest, and towards
eight o’clock, when it began to grow dusk, he would go to see his
hosts, alone or with Daddy Eróshka. They grew so used to him that they
were surprised when he stayed away. He paid well for his wine and was a
quiet fellow. Vanyúsha would bring him his tea and he would sit down in
a corner near the oven. The old woman did not mind him but went on with
her work, and over their tea or their _chikhir_ they talked about
Cossack affairs, about the neighbours, or about Russia: Olénin relating
and the others inquiring. Sometimes he brought a book and read to
himself. Maryánka crouched like a wild goat with her feet drawn up
under her, sometimes on the top of the oven, sometimes in a dark
corner. She did not take part in the conversations, but Olénin saw her
eyes and face and heard her moving or cracking sunflower seeds, and he
felt that she listened with her whole being when he spoke, and was
aware of his presence while he silently read to himself. Sometimes he
thought her eyes were fixed on him, and meeting their radiance he
involuntarily became silent and gazed at her. Then she would instantly
hide her face and he would pretend to be deep in conversation with the
old woman, while he listened all the time to her breathing and to her
every movement and waited for her to look at him again. In the presence
of others she was generally bright and friendly with him, but when they
were alone together she was shy and rough. Sometimes he came in before
Maryánka had returned home. Suddenly he would hear her firm footsteps
and catch a glimmer of her blue cotton smock at the open door. Then she
would step into the middle of the hut, catch sight of him, and her eyes
would give a scarcely perceptible kindly smile, and he would feel happy
and frightened.

He neither sought for nor wished for anything from her, but every day
her presence became more and more necessary to him.

Olénin had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully that
his past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future, especially a
future outside the world in which he was now living, it did not
interest him at all. When he received letters from home, from relatives
and friends, he was offended by the evident distress with which they
regarded him as a lost man, while he in his village considered those as
lost who did not live as he was living. He felt sure he would never
repent of having broken away from his former surroundings and of having
settled down in this village to such a solitary and original life. When
out on expeditions, and when quartered at one of the forts, he felt
happy too; but it was here, from under Daddy Eróshka’s wing, from the
forest and from his hut at the end of the village, and especially when
he thought of Maryánka and Lukáshka, that he seemed to see the
falseness of his former life. That falseness used to rouse his
indignation even before, but now it seemed inexpressibly vile and
ridiculous. Here he felt freer and freer every day and more and more of
a man. The Caucasus now appeared entirely different to what his
imagination had painted it. He had found nothing at all like his
dreams, nor like the descriptions of the Caucasus he had heard and
read. “There are none of all those chestnut steeds, precipices, Amalet
Beks, heroes or villains,” thought he. “The people live as nature
lives: they die, are born, unite, and more are born—they fight, eat and
drink, rejoice and die, without any restrictions but those that nature
imposes on sun and grass, on animal and tree. They have no other laws.”
Therefore these people, compared to himself, appeared to him beautiful,
strong, and free, and the sight of them made him feel ashamed and sorry
for himself. Often it seriously occurred to him to throw up everything,
to get registered as a Cossack, to buy a hut and cattle and marry a
Cossack woman (only not Maryánka, whom he conceded to Lukáshka), and to
live with Daddy Eróshka and go shooting and fishing with him, and go
with the Cossacks on their expeditions. “Why ever don’t I do it? What
am I waiting for?” he asked himself, and he egged himself on and shamed
himself. “Am I afraid of doing what I hold to be reasonable and right?
Is the wish to be a simple Cossack, to live close to nature, not to
injure anyone but even to do good to others, more stupid than my former
dreams, such as those of becoming a minister of state or a colonel?”
but a voice seemed to say that he should wait, and not take any
decision. He was held back by a dim consciousness that he could not
live altogether like Eróshka and Lukáshka because he had a different
idea of happiness—he was held back by the thought that happiness lies
in self-sacrifice. What he had done for Lukáshka continued to give him
joy. He kept looking for occasions to sacrifice himself for others, but
did not meet with them. Sometimes he forgot this newly discovered
recipe for happiness and considered himself capable of identifying his
life with Daddy Eróshka’s, but then he quickly bethought himself and
promptly clutched at the idea of conscious self-sacrifice, and from
that basis looked calmly and proudly at all men and at their happiness.




 Chapter XXVII


Just before the vintage Lukáshka came on horseback to see Olénin. He
looked more dashing than ever.

“Well? Are you getting married?” asked Olénin, greeting him merrily.

Lukáshka gave no direct reply.

“There, I’ve exchanged your horse across the river. This _is_ a horse!
A Kabardá horse from the Lov stud. I know horses.”

They examined the new horse and made him caracole about the yard. The
horse really was an exceptionally fine one, a broad and long gelding,
with glossy coat, thick silky tail, and the soft fine mane and crest of
a thoroughbred. He was so well fed that “you might go to sleep on his
back” as Lukáshka expressed it. His hoofs, eyes, teeth, were
exquisitely shaped and sharply outlined, as one only finds them in very
pure-bred horses. Olénin could not help admiring the horse, he had not
yet met with such a beauty in the Caucasus.

“And how it goes!” said Lukáshka, patting its neck. “What a step! And
so clever—he simply runs after his master.”

“Did you have to add much to make the exchange?” asked Olénin.

“I did not count it,” answered Lukáshka with a smile. “I got him from a
_kunak_.”

“A wonderfully beautiful horse! What would you take for it?” asked
Olénin.

“I have been offered a hundred and fifty rubles for it, but I’ll give
it you for nothing,” said Lukáshka, merrily. “Only say the word and
it’s yours. I’ll unsaddle it and you may take it. Only give me some
sort of a horse for my duties.”

“No, on no account.”

“Well then, here is a dagger I’ve brought you,” said Lukáshka,
unfastening his girdle and taking out one of the two daggers which hung
from it. “I got it from across the river.”

“Oh, thank you!”

“And mother has promised to bring you some grapes herself.”

“That’s quite unnecessary. We’ll balance up some day. You see I don’t
offer you any money for the dagger!”

“How could you? We are _kunaks_. It’s just the same as when Giréy Khan
across the river took me into his home and said, ‘Choose what you
like!’ So I took this sword. It’s our custom.”

They went into the hut and had a drink.

“Are you staying here awhile?” asked Olénin.

“No, I have come to say good-bye. They are sending me from the cordon
to a company beyond the Térek. I am going tonight with my comrade
Nazárka.”

“And when is the wedding to be?”

“I shall be coming back for the betrothal, and then I shall return to
the company again,” Lukáshka replied reluctantly.

“What, and see nothing of your betrothed?”

“Just so—what is the good of looking at her? When you go on campaign
ask in our company for Lukáshka the Broad. But what a lot of boars
there are in our parts! I’ve killed two. I’ll take you.”

“Well, good-bye! Christ save you.”

Lukáshka mounted his horse, and without calling on Maryánka, rode
caracoling down the street, where Nazárka was already awaiting him.

“I say, shan’t we call round?” asked Nazárka, winking in the direction
of Yámka’s house.

“That’s a good one!” said Lukáshka. “Here, take my horse to her and if
I don’t come soon give him some hay. I shall reach the company by the
morning anyway.”

“Hasn’t the cadet given you anything more?”

“I am thankful to have paid him back with a dagger—he was going to ask
for the horse,” said Lukáshka, dismounting and handing over the horse
to Nazárka.

He darted into the yard past Olénin’s very window, and came up to the
window of the cornet’s hut. It was already quite dark. Maryánka,
wearing only her smock, was combing her hair preparing for bed.

“It’s I—” whispered the Cossack.

Maryánka’s look was severely indifferent, but her face suddenly
brightened up when she heard her name. She opened the window and leant
out, frightened and joyous.

“What—what do you want?” she said.

“Open!” uttered Lukáshka. “Let me in for a minute. I am so sick of
waiting! It’s awful!”

He took hold of her head through the window and kissed her.

“Really, do open!”

“Why do you talk nonsense? I’ve told you I won’t! Have you come for
long?”

He did not answer but went on kissing her, and she did not ask again.

“There, through the window one can’t even hug you properly,” said
Lukáshka.

“Maryánka dear!” came the voice of her mother, “who is that with you?”

Lukáshka took off his cap, which might have been seen, and crouched
down by the window.

“Go, be quick!” whispered Maryánka.

“Lukáshka called round,” she answered; “he was asking for Daddy.”

“Well then send him here!”

“He’s gone; said he was in a hurry.”

In fact, Lukáshka, stooping, as with big strides he passed under the
windows, ran out through the yard and towards Yámka’s house unseen by
anyone but Olénin. After drinking two bowls of _chikhir_ he and Nazárka
rode away to the outpost. The night was warm, dark, and calm. They rode
in silence, only the footfall of their horses was heard. Lukáshka
started a song about the Cossack, Mingál, but stopped before he had
finished the first verse, and after a pause, turning to Nazárka, said:

“I say, she wouldn’t let me in!”

“Oh?” rejoined Nazárka. “I knew she wouldn’t. D’you know what Yámka
told me? The cadet has begun going to their house. Daddy Eróshka brags
that he got a gun from the cadet for getting him Maryánka.”

“He lies, the old devil!” said Lukáshka, angrily. “She’s not such a
girl. If he does not look out I’ll wallop that old devil’s sides,” and
he began his favourite song:

“From the village of Izmáylov,
From the master’s favourite garden,
Once escaped a keen-eyed falcon.
Soon after him a huntsman came a-riding,
And he beckoned to the falcon that had strayed,
But the bright-eyed bird thus answered:
‘In gold cage you could not keep me,
On your hand you could not hold me,
So now I fly to blue seas far away.
There a white swan I will kill,
Of sweet swan-flesh have my fill.’”




 Chapter XXVIII


The betrothal was taking place in the cornet’s hut. Lukáshka had
returned to the village, but had not been to see Olénin, and Olénin had
not gone to the betrothal though he had been invited. He was sad as he
had never been since he settled in this Cossack village. He had seen
Lukáshka earlier in the evening and was worried by the question why
Lukáshka was so cold towards him. Olénin shut himself up in his hut and
began writing in his diary as follows:

“Many things have I pondered over lately and much have I changed,”
wrote he, “and I have come back to the copybook maxim: The one way to
be happy is to love, to love self-denyingly, to love everybody and
everything; to spread a web of love on all sides and to take all who
come into it. In this way I caught Vanyúsha, Daddy Eróshka, Lukáshka,
and Maryánka.”

As Olénin was finishing this sentence Daddy Eróshka entered the room.

Eróshka was in the happiest frame of mind. A few evenings before this,
Olénin had gone to see him and had found him with a proud and happy
face deftly skinning the carcass of a boar with a small knife in the
yard. The dogs (Lyam his pet among them) were lying close by watching
what he was doing and gently wagging their tails. The little boys were
respectfully looking at him through the fence and not even teasing him
as was their wont. His women neighbours, who were as a rule not too
gracious towards him, greeted him and brought him, one a jug of
_chikhir_, another some clotted cream, and a third a little flour. The
next day Eróshka sat in his store-room all covered with blood, and
distributed pounds of boar-flesh, taking in payment money from some and
wine from others. His face clearly expressed, “God has sent me luck. I
have killed a boar, so now I am wanted.” Consequently, he naturally
began to drink, and had gone on for four days never leaving the
village. Besides which he had had something to drink at the betrothal.

He came to Olénin quite drunk: his face red, his beard tangled, but
wearing a new _beshmet_ trimmed with gold braid; and he brought with
him a _balaláyka_ which he had obtained beyond the river. He had long
promised Olénin this treat, and felt in the mood for it, so that he was
sorry to find Olénin writing.

“Write on, write on, my lad,” he whispered, as if he thought that a
spirit sat between him and the paper and must not be frightened away,
and he softly and silently sat down on the floor. When Daddy Eróshka
was drunk his favourite position was on the floor. Olénin looked round,
ordered some wine to be brought, and continued to write. Eróshka found
it dull to drink by himself and he wished to talk.

“I’ve been to the betrothal at the cornet’s. But there! They’re
shwine!—Don’t want them!—Have come to you.”

“And where did you get your _balaláyka?_” asked Olénin, still writing.

“I’ve been beyond the river and got it there, brother mine,” he
answered, also very quietly. “I’m a master at it. Tartar or Cossack,
squire or soldiers’ songs, any kind you please.”

Olénin looked at him again, smiled, and went on writing.

That smile emboldened the old man.

“Come, leave off, my lad, leave off!” he said with sudden firmness.

“Well, perhaps I will.”

“Come, people have injured you but leave them alone, spit at them!
Come, what’s the use of writing and writing, what’s the good?”

And he tried to mimic Olénin by tapping the floor with his thick
fingers, and then twisted his big face to express contempt.

“What’s the good of writing quibbles. Better have a spree and show
you’re a man!”

No other conception of writing found place in his head except that of
legal chicanery.

Olénin burst out laughing and so did Eróshka. Then, jumping up from the
floor, the latter began to show off his skill on the _balaláyka_ and to
sing Tartar songs.

“Why write, my good fellow! You’d better listen to what I’ll sing to
you. When you’re dead you won’t hear any more songs. Make merry now!”

First he sang a song of his own composing accompanied by a dance:

“Ah, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim,
Say where did they last see him?
In a booth, at the fair,
He was selling pins, there.”


Then he sang a song he had learnt from his former sergeant-major:

“Deep I fell in love on Monday,
Tuesday nothing did but sigh,
Wednesday I popped the question,
Thursday waited her reply.
Friday, late, it came at last,
Then all hope for me was past!
Saturday my life to take
I determined like a man,
But for my salvation’s sake
Sunday morning changed my plan!”


Then he sang again:

“Oh dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dim,
Say where did they last see him?”


And after that, winking, twitching his shoulders, and footing it to the
tune, he sang:

“I will kiss you and embrace,
Ribbons red twine round you;
And I’ll call you little Grace.
Oh, you little Grace now do
Tell me, do you love me true?”


And he became so excited that with a sudden dashing movement he started
dancing around the room accompanying himself the while.

Songs like “Dee, dee, dee”—“gentlemen’s songs”—he sang for Olénin’s
benefit, but after drinking three more tumblers of _chikhir_ he
remembered old times and began singing real Cossack and Tartar songs.
In the midst of one of his favourite songs his voice suddenly trembled
and he ceased singing, and only continued strumming on the _balaláyka_.

“Oh, my dear friend!” he said.

The peculiar sound of his voice made Olénin look round.

The old man was weeping. Tears stood in his eyes and one tear was
running down his cheek.

“You are gone, my young days, and will never come back!” he said,
blubbering and halting. “Drink, why don’t you drink!” he suddenly
shouted with a deafening roar, without wiping away his tears.

There was one Tartar song that specially moved him. It had few words,
but its charm lay in the sad refrain. “Ay day, dalalay!” Eróshka
translated the words of the song: “A youth drove his sheep from the
_aoul_ to the mountains: the Russians came and burnt the _aoul_, they
killed all the men and took all the women into bondage. The youth
returned from the mountains. Where the _aoul_ had stood was an empty
space; his mother not there, nor his brothers, nor his house; one tree
alone was left standing. The youth sat beneath the tree and wept.
‘Alone like thee, alone am I left,’” and Eróshka began singing: “Ay
day, dalalay!” and the old man repeated several times this wailing,
heart-rending refrain.

When he had finished the refrain Eróshka suddenly seized a gun that
hung on the wall, rushed hurriedly out into the yard and fired off both
barrels into the air. Then again he began, more dolefully, his “Ay day,
dalalay—ah, ah,” and ceased.

Olénin followed him into the porch and looked up into the starry sky in
the direction where the shots had flashed. In the cornet’s house there
were lights and the sound of voices. In the yard girls were crowding
round the porch and the windows, and running backwards and forwards
between the hut and the outhouse. Some Cossacks rushed out of the hut
and could not refrain from shouting, re-echoing the refrain of Daddy
Eróshka’s song and his shots.

“Why are you not at the betrothal?” asked Olénin.

“Never mind them! Never mind them!” muttered the old man, who had
evidently been offended by something there. “Don’t like them, I don’t.
Oh, those people! Come back into the hut! Let them make merry by
themselves and we’ll make merry by ourselves.”

Olénin went in.

“And Lukáshka, is he happy? Won’t he come to see me?” he asked.

“What, Lukáshka? They’ve lied to him and said I am getting his girl for
you,” whispered the old man. “But what’s the girl? She will be ours if
we want her. Give enough money—and she’s ours. I’ll fix it up for you.
Really!”

“No, Daddy, money can do nothing if she does not love me. You’d better
not talk like that!”

“We are not loved, you and I. We are forlorn,” said Daddy Eróshka
suddenly, and again he began to cry.

Listening to the old man’s talk Olénin had drunk more than usual. “So
now my Lukáshka is happy,” thought he; yet he felt sad. The old man had
drunk so much that evening that he fell down on the floor and Vanyúsha
had to call soldiers in to help, and spat as they dragged the old man
out. He was so angry with the old man for his bad behaviour that he did
not even say a single French word.




 Chapter XXIX


It was August. For days the sky had been cloudless, the sun scorched
unbearably and from early morning the warm wind raised a whirl of hot
sand from the sand-drifts and from the road, and bore it in the air
through the reeds, the trees, and the village. The grass and the leaves
on the trees were covered with dust, the roads and dried-up salt
marshes were baked so hard that they rang when trodden on. The water
had long since subsided in the Térek and rapidly vanished and dried up
in the ditches. The slimy banks of the pond near the village were
trodden bare by the cattle and all day long you could hear the
splashing of water and the shouting of girls and boys bathing. The
sand-drifts and the reeds were already drying up in the steppes, and
the cattle, lowing, ran into the fields in the day-time. The boars
migrated into the distant reed-beds and to the hills beyond the Térek.
Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed in thick clouds over the low lands and
villages. The snow-peaks were hidden in grey mist. The air was rarefied
and smoky. It was said that _abreks_ had crossed the now shallow river
and were prowling on this side of it. Every night the sun set in a
glowing red blaze. It was the busiest time of the year. The villagers
all swarmed in the melon-fields and the vineyards. The vineyards
thickly overgrown with twining verdure lay in cool, deep shade.
Everywhere between the broad translucent leaves, ripe, heavy, black
clusters peeped out. Along the dusty road from the vineyards the
creaking carts moved slowly, heaped up with black grapes. Clusters of
them, crushed by the wheels, lay in the dirt. Boys and girls in smocks
stained with grape-juice, with grapes in their hands and mouths, ran
after their mothers. On the road you continually came across tattered
labourers with baskets of grapes on their powerful shoulders; Cossack
maidens, veiled with kerchiefs to their eyes, drove bullocks harnessed
to carts laden high with grapes. Soldiers who happened to meet these
carts asked for grapes, and the maidens, clambering up without stopping
their carts, would take an armful of grapes and drop them into the
skirts of the soldiers’ coats. In some homesteads they had already
begun pressing the grapes; and the smell of the emptied skins filled
the air. One saw the blood-red troughs in the pent-houses in the yards
and Nogáy labourers with their trousers rolled up and their legs
stained with the juice. Grunting pigs gorged themselves with the empty
skins and rolled about in them. The flat roofs of the outhouses were
all spread over with the dark amber clusters drying in the sun. Daws
and magpies crowded round the roofs, picking the seeds and fluttering
from one place to another.

The fruits of the year’s labour were being merrily gathered in, and
this year the fruit was unusually fine and plentiful.

In the shady green vineyards amid a sea of vines, laughter, songs,
merriment, and the voices of women were to be heard on all sides, and
glimpses of their bright-coloured garments could be seen.

Just at noon Maryánka was sitting in their vineyard in the shade of a
peach-tree, getting out the family dinner from under an unharnessed
cart. Opposite her, on a spread-out horse-cloth, sat the cornet (who
had returned from the school) washing his hands by pouring water on
them from a little jug. Her little brother, who had just come straight
out of the pond, stood wiping his face with his wide sleeves, and gazed
anxiously at his sister and his mother and breathed deeply, awaiting
his dinner. The old mother, with her sleeves rolled up over her strong
sunburnt arms, was arranging grapes, dried fish, and clotted cream on a
little low, circular Tartar table. The cornet wiped his hands, took off
his cap, crossed himself, and moved nearer to the table. The boy seized
the jug and eagerly began to drink. The mother and daughter crossed
their legs under them and sat down by the table. Even in the shade it
was intolerably hot. The air above the vineyard smelt unpleasant: the
strong warm wind passing amid the branches brought no coolness, but
only monotonously bent the tops of the pear, peach, and mulberry trees
with which the vineyard was sprinkled. The cornet, having crossed
himself once more, took a little jug of _chikhir_ that stood behind him
covered with a vine-leaf, and having had a drink from the mouth of the
jug passed it to the old woman. He had nothing on over his shirt, which
was unfastened at the neck and showed his shaggy muscular chest. His
fine-featured cunning face looked cheerful; neither in his attitude nor
in his words was his usual wiliness to be seen; he was cheerful and
natural.

“Shall we finish the bit beyond the shed tonight?” he asked, wiping his
wet beard.

“We’ll manage it,” replied his wife, “if only the weather does not
hinder us. The Dëmkins have not half finished yet,” she added. “Only
Ústenka is at work there, wearing herself out.”

“What can you expect of them?” said the old man proudly.

“Here, have a drink, Maryánka dear!” said the old woman, passing the
jug to the girl. “God willing we’ll have enough to pay for the wedding
feast,” she added.

“That’s not yet awhile,” said the cornet with a slight frown.

The girl hung her head.

“Why shouldn’t we mention it?” said the old woman. “The affair is
settled, and the time is drawing near too.”

“Don’t make plans beforehand,” said the cornet. “Now we have the
harvest to get in.”

“Have you seen Lukáshka’s new horse?” asked the old woman. “That which
Dmítri Andréich Olénin gave him is gone — he’s exchanged it.”

“No, I have not; but I spoke with the servant today,” said the cornet,
“and he said his master has again received a thousand rubles.”

“Rolling in riches, in short,” said the old woman.

The whole family felt cheerful and contented.

The work was progressing successfully. The grapes were more abundant
and finer than they had expected. After dinner Maryánka threw some
grass to the oxen, folded her _beshmet_ for a pillow, and lay down
under the wagon on the juicy down-trodden grass. She had on only a red
kerchief over her head and a faded blue print smock, yet she felt
unbearably hot. Her face was burning, and she did not know where to put
her feet, her eyes were moist with sleepiness and weariness, her lips
parted involuntarily, and her chest heaved heavily and deeply.

The busy time of year had begun a fortnight ago and the continuous
heavy labour had filled the girl’s life. At dawn she jumped up, washed
her face with cold water, wrapped herself in a shawl, and ran out
barefoot to see to the cattle. Then she hurriedly put on her shoes and
her _beshmet_ and, taking a small bundle of bread, she harnessed the
bullocks and drove away to the vineyards for the whole day. There she
cut the grapes and carried the baskets with only an hour’s interval for
rest, and in the evening she returned to the village, bright and not
tired, dragging the bullocks by a rope or driving them with a long
stick. After attending to the cattle, she took some sunflower seeds in
the wide sleeve of her smock and went to the corner of the street to
crack them and have some fun with the other girls. But as soon as it
was dusk she returned home, and after having supper with her parents
and her brother in the dark outhouse, she went into the hut, healthy
and free from care, and climbed onto the oven, where half drowsing she
listened to their lodger’s conversation. As soon as he went away she
would throw herself down on her bed and sleep soundly and quietly till
morning. And so it went on day after day. She had not seen Lukáshka
since the day of their betrothal, but calmly awaited the wedding. She
had got used to their lodger and felt his intent looks with pleasure.




 Chapter XXX


Although there was no escape from the heat and the mosquitoes swarmed
in the cool shadow of the wagons, and her little brother tossing about
beside her kept pushing her, Maryánka having drawn her kerchief over
her head was just falling asleep, when suddenly their neighbour Ústenka
came running towards her and, diving under the wagon, lay down beside
her.

“Sleep, girls, sleep!” said Ústenka, making herself comfortable under
the wagon. “Wait a bit,” she exclaimed, “this won’t do!”

She jumped up, plucked some green branches, and stuck them through the
wheels on both sides of the wagon and hung her _beshmet_ over them.

“Let me in,” she shouted to the little boy as she again crept under the
wagon. “Is this the place for a Cossack—with the girls? Go away!”

When alone under the wagon with her friend, Ústenka suddenly put both
her arms round her, and clinging close to her began kissing her cheeks
and neck.

“Darling, sweetheart,” she kept repeating, between bursts of shrill,
clear laughter.

“Why, you’ve learnt it from Grandad,” said Maryánka, struggling. “Stop
it!”

And they both broke into such peals of laughter that Maryánka’s mother
shouted to them to be quiet.

“Are you jealous?” asked Ústenka in a whisper.

“What humbug! Let me sleep. What have you come for?”

But Ústenka kept on, “I say! But I wanted to tell you such a thing.”

Maryánka raised herself on her elbow and arranged the kerchief which
had slipped off.

“Well, what is it?”

“I know something about your lodger!”

“There’s nothing to know,” said Maryánka.

“Oh, you rogue of a girl!” said Ústenka, nudging her with her elbow and
laughing. “Won’t tell anything. Does he come to you?”

“He does. What of that?” said Maryánka with a sudden blush.

“Now I’m a simple lass. I tell everybody. Why should I pretend?” said
Ústenka, and her bright rosy face suddenly became pensive. “Whom do I
hurt? I love him, that’s all about it.”

“Grandad, do you mean?”

“Well, yes!”

“And the sin?”

“Ah, Maryánka! When is one to have a good time if not while one’s still
free? When I marry a Cossack I shall bear children and shall have
cares. There now, when you get married to Lukáshka not even a thought
of joy will enter your head: children will come, and work!”

“Well? Some who are married live happily. It makes no difference!”
Maryánka replied quietly.

“Do tell me just this once what has passed between you and Lukáshka?”

“What has passed? A match was proposed. Father put it off for a year,
but now it’s been settled and they’ll marry us in autumn.”

“But what did he say to you?”

Maryánka smiled.

“What should he say? He said he loved me. He kept asking me to come to
the vineyards with him.”

“Just see what pitch! But you didn’t go, did you? And what a dare-devil
he has become: the first among the braves. He makes merry out there in
the army too! The other day our Kírka came home; he says: ‘What a horse
Lukáshka’s got in exchange!’ But all the same I expect he frets after
you. And what else did he say?”

“Must you know everything?” said Maryánka laughing. “One night he came
to my window tipsy, and asked me to let him in.”

“And you didn’t let him?”

“Let him, indeed! Once I have said a thing I keep to it firm as a
rock,” answered Maryánka seriously.

“A fine fellow! If he wanted her, no girl would refuse him.”

“Well, let him go to the others,” replied Maryánka proudly.

“You don’t pity him?”

“I do pity him, but I’ll have no nonsense. It is wrong.”

Ústenka suddenly dropped her head on her friend’s breast, seized hold
of her, and shook with smothered laughter. “You silly fool!” she
exclaimed, quite out of breath. “You don’t want to be happy,” and she
began tickling Maryánka.

“Oh, leave off!” said Maryánka, screaming and laughing. “You’ve crushed
Lazútka.”

“Hark at those young devils! Quite frisky! Not tired yet!” came the old
woman’s sleepy voice from the wagon.

“Don’t want happiness,” repeated Ústenka in a whisper, insistently.
“But you are lucky, that you are! How they love you! You are so crusty,
and yet they love you. Ah, if I were in your place I’d soon turn the
lodger’s head! I noticed him when you were at our house. He was ready
to eat you with his eyes. What things Grandad has given me! And yours
they say is the richest of the Russians. His orderly says they have
serfs of their own.”

Maryánka raised herself, and after thinking a moment, smiled.

“Do you know what he once told me: the lodger I mean?” she said, biting
a bit of grass. “He said, ‘I’d like to be Lukáshka the Cossack, or your
brother Lazútka—.’ What do you think he meant?”

“Oh, just chattering what came into his head,” answered Ústenka. “What
does mine not say! Just as if he was possessed!”

Maryánka dropped her hand on her folded _beshmet_, threw her arm over
Ústenka’s shoulder, and shut her eyes.

“He wanted to come and work in the vineyard today: father invited him,”
she said, and after a short silence she fell asleep.




 Chapter XXXI


The sun had come out from behind the pear-tree that had shaded the
wagon, and even through the branches that Ústenka had fixed up it
scorched the faces of the sleeping girls. Maryánka woke up and began
arranging the kerchief on her head. Looking about her, beyond the
pear-tree she noticed their lodger, who with his gun on his shoulder
stood talking to her father. She nudged Ústenka and smilingly pointed
him out to her.

“I went yesterday and didn’t find a single one,” Olénin was saying as
he looked about uneasily, not seeing Maryánka through the branches.

“Ah, you should go out there in that direction, go right as by
compasses, there in a disused vineyard denominated as the Waste, hares
are always to be found,” said the cornet, having at once changed his
manner of speech.

“A fine thing to go looking for hares in these busy times! You had
better come and help us, and do some work with the girls,” the old
woman said merrily. “Now then, girls, up with you!” she cried.

Maryánka and Ústenka under the cart were whispering and could hardly
restrain their laughter.

Since it had become known that Olénin had given a horse worth fifty
rubles to Lukáshka, his hosts had become more amiable and the cornet in
particular saw with pleasure his daughter’s growing intimacy with
Olénin.

“But I don’t know how to do the work,” replied Olénin, trying not to
look through the green branches under the wagon where he had now
noticed Maryánka’s blue smock and red kerchief.

“Come, I’ll give you some peaches,” said the old woman.

“It’s only according to the ancient Cossack hospitality. It’s her old
woman’s silliness,” said the cornet, explaining and apparently
correcting his wife’s words. “In Russia, I expect, it’s not so much
peaches as pineapple jam and preserves you have been accustomed to eat
at your pleasure.”

“So you say hares are to be found in the disused vineyard?” asked
Olénin. “I will go there,” and throwing a hasty glance through the
green branches he raised his cap and disappeared between the regular
rows of green vines.

The sun had already sunk behind the fence of the vineyards, and its
broken rays glittered through the translucent leaves when Olénin
returned to his host’s vineyard. The wind was falling and a cool
freshness was beginning to spread around. By some instinct Olénin
recognized from afar Maryánka’s blue smock among the rows of vine, and,
picking grapes on his way, he approached her. His highly excited dog
also now and then seized a low-hanging cluster of grapes in his
slobbering mouth. Maryánka, her face flushed, her sleeves rolled up,
and her kerchief down below her chin, was rapidly cutting the heavy
clusters and laying them in a basket. Without letting go of the vine
she had hold of, she stopped to smile pleasantly at him and resumed her
work. Olénin drew near and threw his gun behind his back to have his
hands free. “Where are your people? May God aid you! Are you alone?” he
meant to say but did not say, and only raised his cap in silence.

He was ill at ease alone with Maryánka, but as if purposely to torment
himself he went up to her.

“You’ll be shooting the women with your gun like that,” said Maryánka.

“No, I shan’t shoot them.”

They were both silent.

Then after a pause she said: “You should help me.”

He took out his knife and began silently to cut off the clusters. He
reached from under the leaves low down a thick bunch weighing about
three pounds, the grapes of which grew so close that they flattened
each other for want of space. He showed it to Maryánka.

“Must they all be cut? Isn’t this one too green?”

“Give it here.”

Their hands touched. Olénin took her hand, and she looked at him
smiling.

“Are you going to be married soon?” he asked.

She did not answer, but turned away with a stern look.

“Do you love Lukáshka?”

“What’s that to you?”

“I envy him!”

“Very likely!”

“No really. You are so beautiful!”

And he suddenly felt terribly ashamed of having said it, so commonplace
did the words seem to him. He flushed, lost control of himself, and
seized both her hands.

“Whatever I am, I’m not for you. Why do you make fun of me?” replied
Maryánka, but her look showed how certainly she knew he was not making
fun.

“Making fun? If you only knew how I—”

The words sounded still more commonplace, they accorded still less with
what he felt, but yet he continued, “I don’t know what I would not do
for you—”

“Leave me alone, you pitch!”

But her face, her shining eyes, her swelling bosom, her shapely legs,
said something quite different. It seemed to him that she understood
how petty were all things he had said, but that she was superior to
such considerations. It seemed to him she had long known all he wished
and was not able to tell her, but wanted to hear how he would say it.
“And how can she help knowing,” he thought, “since I only want to tell
her all that she herself is? But she does not wish to understand, does
not wish to reply.”

“Hullo!” suddenly came Ústenka’s high voice from behind the vine at no
great distance, followed by her shrill laugh. “Come and help me, Dmítri
Andréich. I am all alone,” she cried, thrusting her round, naïve little
face through the vines.

Olénin did not answer nor move from his place.

Maryánka went on cutting and continually looked up at Olénin. He was
about to say something, but stopped, shrugged his shoulders and, having
jerked up his gun, walked out of the vineyard with rapid strides.




 Chapter XXXII


He stopped once or twice, listening to the ringing laughter of Maryánka
and Ústenka who, having come together, were shouting something. Olénin
spent the whole evening hunting in the forest and returned home at dusk
without having killed anything. When crossing the road he noticed her
open the door of the outhouse, and her blue smock showed through it. He
called to Vanyúsha very loud so as to let her know that he was back,
and then sat down in the porch in his usual place. His hosts now
returned from the vineyard; they came out of the outhouse and into
their hut, but did not ask him in. Maryánka went twice out of the gate.
Once in the twilight it seemed to him that she was looking at him. He
eagerly followed her every movement, but could not make up his mind to
approach her. When she disappeared into the hut he left the porch and
began pacing up and down the yard, but Maryánka did not come out again.
Olénin spent the whole sleepless night out in the yard listening to
every sound in his hosts’ hut. He heard them talking early in the
evening, heard them having their supper and pulling out their cushions,
and going to bed; he heard Maryánka laughing at something, and then
heard everything growing gradually quiet.

The cornet and his wife talked a while in whispers, and someone was
breathing. Olénin re-entered his hut. Vanyúsha lay asleep in his
clothes. Olénin envied him, and again went out to pace the yard, always
expecting something, but no one came, no one moved, and he only heard
the regular breathing of three people. He knew Maryánka’s breathing and
listened to it and to the beating of his own heart. In the village
everything was quiet. The waning moon rose late, and the deep-breathing
cattle in the yard became more visible as they lay down and slowly
rose. Olénin angrily asked himself, “What is it I want?” but could not
tear himself away from the enchantment of the night. Suddenly he
thought he distinctly heard the floor creak and the sound of footsteps
in his hosts’ hut. He rushed to the door, but all was silent again
except for the sound of regular breathing, and in the yard the
buffalo-cow, after a deep sigh, again moved, rose on her foreknees and
then on her feet, swished her tail, and something splashed steadily on
the dry clay ground; then she lay down again in the dim moonlight. He
asked himself: “What am I to do?” and definitely decided to go to bed,
but again he heard a sound, and in his imagination there arose the
image of Maryánka coming out into this moonlit misty night, and again
he rushed to her window and again heard the sound of footsteps. Not
till just before dawn did he go up to her window and push at the
shutter and then run to the door, and this time he really heard
Maryánka’s deep breathing and her footsteps. He took hold of the latch
and knocked. The floor hardly creaked under the bare cautious footsteps
which approached the door. The latch clicked, the door creaked, and he
noticed a faint smell of marjoram and pumpkin, and Maryánka’s whole
figure appeared in the doorway. He saw her only for an instant in the
moonlight. She slammed the door and, muttering something, ran lightly
back again. Olénin began rapping softly but nothing responded. He ran
to the window and listened. Suddenly he was startled by a shrill,
squeaky man’s voice.

“Fine!” exclaimed a rather small young Cossack in a white cap, coming
across the yard close to Olénin. “I saw ... fine!”

Olénin recognized Nazárka, and was silent, not knowing what to do or
say.

“Fine! I’ll go and tell them at the office, and I’ll tell her father!
That’s a fine cornet’s daughter! One’s not enough for her.”

“What do you want of me, what are you after?” uttered Olénin.

“Nothing; only I’ll tell them at the office.”

Nazárka spoke very loud, and evidently did so intentionally, adding:
“Just see what a clever cadet!”

Olénin trembled and grew pale.

“Come here, here!” He seized the Cossack firmly by the arm and drew him
towards his hut.

“Nothing happened, she did not let me in, and I too mean no harm. She
is an honest girl—”

“Eh, discuss—”

“Yes, but all the same I’ll give you something now. Wait a bit!”

Nazárka said nothing. Olénin ran into his hut and brought out ten
rubles, which he gave to the Cossack.

“Nothing happened, but still I was to blame, so I give this!—Only for
God’s sake don’t let anyone know, for nothing happened...”

“I wish you joy,” said Nazárka laughing, and went away.

Nazárka had come to the village that night at Lukáshka’s bidding to
find a place to hide a stolen horse, and now, passing by on his way
home, had heard the sound of footsteps. When he returned next morning
to his company he bragged to his chum, and told him how cleverly he had
got ten rubles. Next morning Olénin met his hosts and they knew nothing
about the events of the night. He did not speak to Maryánka, and she
only laughed a little when she looked at him. Next night he also passed
without sleep, vainly wandering about the yard. The day after he
purposely spent shooting, and in the evening he went to see Belétski to
escape from his own thoughts. He was afraid of himself, and promised
himself not to go to his hosts’ hut any more.

That night he was roused by the sergeant-major. His company was ordered
to start at once on a raid. Olénin was glad this had happened, and
thought he would not again return to the village.

The raid lasted four days. The commander, who was a relative of
Olénin’s, wished to see him and offered to let him remain with the
staff, but this Olénin declined. He found that he could not live away
from the village, and asked to be allowed to return to it. For having
taken part in the raid he received a soldier’s cross, which he had
formerly greatly desired. Now he was quite indifferent about it, and
even more indifferent about his promotion, the order for which had
still not arrived. Accompanied by Vanyúsha he rode back to the cordon
without any accident several hours in advance of the rest of the
company. He spent the whole evening in his porch watching Maryánka, and
he again walked about the yard, without aim or thought, all night.




 Chapter XXXIII


It was late when he awoke the next day. His hosts were no longer in. He
did not go shooting, but now took up a book, and now went out into the
porch, and now again re-entered the hut and lay down on the bed.
Vanyúsha thought he was ill.

Towards evening Olénin got up, resolutely began writing, and wrote on
till late at night. He wrote a letter, but did not post it because he
felt that no one would have understood what he wanted to say, and
besides it was not necessary that anyone but himself should understand
it.

This is what he wrote:

“I receive letters of condolence from Russia. They are afraid that I
shall perish, buried in these wilds. They say about me: ‘He will become
coarse; he will be behind the times in everything; he will take to
drink, and who knows but that he may marry a Cossack girl.’ It was not
for nothing, they say, that Ermólov declared: ‘Anyone serving in the
Caucasus for ten years either becomes a confirmed drunkard or marries a
loose woman.’ How terrible! Indeed it won’t do for me to ruin myself
when I might have the great happiness of even becoming the Countess
B——’s husband, or a Court chamberlain, or a _Maréchal de noblesse_ of
my district. Oh, how repulsive and pitiable you all seem to me! You do
not know what happiness is and what life is! One must taste life once
in all its natural beauty, must see and understand what I see every day
before me—those eternally unapproachable snowy peaks, and a majestic
woman in that primitive beauty in which the first woman must have come
from her creator’s hands—and then it becomes clear who is ruining
himself and who is living truly or falsely—you or I. If you only knew
how despicable and pitiable you, in your delusions, seem to me! When I
picture to myself—in place of my hut, my forests, and my love—those
drawing-rooms, those women with their pomatum-greased hair eked out
with false curls, those unnaturally grimacing lips, those hidden,
feeble, distorted limbs, and that chatter of obligatory drawing-room
conversation which has no right to the name—I feel unendurably
revolted. I then see before me those obtuse faces, those rich eligible
girls whose looks seem to say: ‘It’s all right, you may come near
though I am rich and eligible’—and that arranging and rearranging of
seats, that shameless match-making and that eternal tittle-tattle and
pretence; those rules—with whom to shake hands, to whom only to nod,
with whom to converse (and all this done deliberately with a conviction
of its inevitability), that continual ennui in the blood passing on
from generation to generation. Try to understand or believe just this
one thing: you need only see and comprehend what truth and beauty are,
and all that you now say and think and all your wishes for me and for
yourselves will fly to atoms!

“Happiness is being with nature, seeing her, and conversing with her.
‘He may even (God forbid) marry a common Cossack girl, and be quite
lost socially’ I can imagine them saying of me with sincere pity! Yet
the one thing I desire is to be quite ‘lost’ in your sense of the word.
I wish to marry a Cossack girl, and dare not because it would be a
height of happiness of which I am unworthy.

“Three months have passed since I first saw the Cossack girl, Maryánka.
The views and prejudices of the world I had left were still fresh in
me. I did not then believe that I could love that woman. I delighted in
her beauty just as I delighted in the beauty of the mountains and the
sky, nor could I help delighting in her, for she is as beautiful as
they. I found that the sight of her beauty had become a necessity of my
life and I began asking myself whether I did not love her. But I could
find nothing within myself at all like love as I had imagined it to be.
Mine was not the restlessness of loneliness and desire for marriage,
nor was it platonic, still less a carnal love such as I have
experienced. I needed only to see her, to hear her, to know that she
was near—and if I was not happy, I was at peace.

“After an evening gathering at which I met her and touched her, I felt
that between that woman and myself there existed an indissoluble though
unacknowledged bond against which I could not struggle, yet I did
struggle. I asked myself: ‘Is it possible to love a woman who will
never understand the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possible
to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?’
But I was already in love with her, though I did not yet trust to my
feelings.

“After that evening when I first spoke to her our relations changed.
Before that she had been to me an extraneous but majestic object of
external nature: but since then she has become a human being. I began
to meet her, to talk to her, and sometimes to go to work for her father
and to spend whole evenings with them, and in this intimate intercourse
she remained still in my eyes just as pure, inaccessible, and majestic.
She always responded with equal calm, pride, and cheerful equanimity.
Sometimes she was friendly, but generally her every look, every word,
and every movement expressed equanimity—not contemptuous, but crushing
and bewitching. Every day with a feigned smile on my lips I tried to
play a part, and with torments of passion and desire in my heart I
spoke banteringly to her. She saw that I was dissembling, but looked
straight at me cheerfully and simply. This position became unbearable.
I wished not to deceive her but to tell her all I thought and felt. I
was extremely agitated. We were in the vineyard when I began to tell
her of my love, in words I am now ashamed to remember. I am ashamed
because I ought not to have dared to speak so to her because she stood
far above such words and above the feeling they were meant to express.
I said no more, but from that day my position has been intolerable. I
did not wish to demean myself by continuing our former flippant
relations, and at the same time I felt that I had not yet reached the
level of straight and simple relations with her. I asked myself
despairingly, ‘What am I to do?’ In foolish dreams I imagined her now
as my mistress and now as my wife, but rejected both ideas with
disgust. To make her a wanton woman would be dreadful. It would be
murder. To turn her into a fine lady, the wife of Dmítri Andréich
Olénin, like a Cossack woman here who is married to one of our
officers, would be still worse. Now could I turn Cossack like Lukáshka,
and steal horses, get drunk on _chikhir_, sing rollicking songs, kill
people, and when drunk climb in at her window for the night without a
thought of who and what I am, it would be different: then we might
understand one another and I might be happy.

“I tried to throw myself into that kind of life but was still more
conscious of my own weakness and artificiality. I cannot forget myself
and my complex, distorted past, and my future appears to me still more
hopeless. Every day I have before me the distant snowy mountains and
this majestic, happy woman. But not for me is the only happiness
possible in the world; I cannot have this woman! What is most terrible
and yet sweetest in my condition is that I feel that I understand her
but that she will never understand me; not because she is inferior: on
the contrary she ought not to understand me. She is happy, she is like
nature: consistent, calm, and self-contained; and I, a weak distorted
being, want her to understand my deformity and my torments! I have not
slept at night, but have aimlessly passed under her windows not
rendering account to myself of what was happening to me. On the 18th
our company started on a raid, and I spent three days away from the
village. I was sad and apathetic, the usual songs, cards,
drinking-bouts, and talk of rewards in the regiment, were more
repulsive to me than usual. Yesterday I returned home and saw her, my
hut. Daddy Eróshka, and the snowy mountains, from my porch, and was
seized by such a strong, new feeling of joy that I understood it all. I
love this woman; I feel real love for the first and only time in my
life. I know what has befallen me. I do not fear to be degraded by this
feeling, I am not ashamed of my love, I am proud of it. It is not my
fault that I love. It has come about against my will. I tried to escape
from my love by self-renunciation, and tried to devise a joy in the
Cossack Lukáshka’s and Maryánka’s love, but thereby only stirred up my
own love and jealousy. This is not the ideal, the so-called exalted
love which I have known before; not that sort of attachment in which
you admire your own love and feel that the source of your emotion is
within yourself and do everything yourself. I have felt that too. It is
still less a desire for enjoyment: it is something different. Perhaps
in her I love nature: the personification of all that is beautiful in
nature; but yet I am not acting by my own will, but some elemental
force loves through me; the whole of God’s world, all nature, presses
this love into my soul and says, ‘Love her.’ I love her not with my
mind or my imagination, but with my whole being. Loving her I feel
myself to be an integral part of all God’s joyous world. I wrote before
about the new convictions to which my solitary life had brought me, but
no one knows with what labour they shaped themselves within me and with
what joy I realized them and saw a new way of life opening out before
me; nothing was dearer to me than those convictions... Well! ... love
has come and neither they nor any regrets for them remain! It is even
difficult for me to believe that I could prize such a one-sided, cold,
and abstract state of mind. Beauty came and scattered to the winds all
that laborious inward toil, and no regret remains for what has
vanished! Self-renunciation is all nonsense and absurdity! That is
pride, a refuge from well-merited unhappiness, and salvation from the
envy of others’ happiness: ‘Live for others, and do good!’—Why? when in
my soul there is only love for myself and the desire to love her and to
live her life with her? Not for others, not for Lukáshka, I now desire
happiness. I do not now love those others. Formerly I should have told
myself that this is wrong. I should have tormented myself with the
questions: What will become of her, of me, and of Lukáshka? Now I don’t
care. I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me
which directs me. I suffer; but formerly I was dead and only now do I
live. Today I will go to their house and tell her everything.”




 Chapter XXXIV


Late that evening, after writing this letter, Olénin went to his hosts’
hut. The old woman was sitting on a bench behind the oven unwinding
cocoons. Maryánka with her head uncovered sat sewing by the light of a
candle. On seeing Olénin she jumped up, took her kerchief and stepped
to the oven.

“Maryánka dear,” said her mother, “won’t you sit here with me a bit?”

“No, I’m bareheaded,” she replied, and sprang up on the oven.

Olénin could only see a knee, and one of her shapely legs hanging down
from the oven. He treated the old woman to tea. She treated her guest
to clotted cream which she sent Maryánka to fetch. But having put a
plateful on the table Maryánka again sprang on the oven from whence
Olénin felt her eyes upon him. They talked about household matters.
Granny Ulítka became animated and went into raptures of hospitality.
She brought Olénin preserved grapes and a grape tart and some of her
best wine, and pressed him to eat and drink with the rough yet proud
hospitality of country folk, only found among those who produce their
bread by the labour of their own hands.

The old woman, who had at first struck Olénin so much by her rudeness,
now often touched him by her simple tenderness towards her daughter.

“Yes, we need not offend the Lord by grumbling! We have enough of
everything, thank God. We have pressed sufficient _chikhir_ and have
preserved and shall sell three or four barrels of grapes and have
enough left to drink. Don’t be in a hurry to leave us. We will make
merry together at the wedding.”

“And when is the wedding to be?” asked Olénin, feeling his blood
suddenly rush to his face while his heart beat irregularly and
painfully.

He heard a movement on the oven and the sound of seeds being cracked.

“Well, you know, it ought to be next week. We are quite ready,” replied
the old woman, as simply and quietly as though Olénin did not exist. “I
have prepared and have procured everything for Maryánka. We will give
her away properly. Only there’s one thing not quite right. Our Lukáshka
has been running rather wild. He has been too much on the spree! He’s
up to tricks! The other day a Cossack came here from his company and
said he had been to Nogáy.”

“He must mind he does not get caught,” said Olénin.

“Yes, that’s what I tell him. ‘Mind, Lukáshka, don’t you get into
mischief. Well, of course, a young fellow naturally wants to cut a
dash. But there’s a time for everything. Well, you’ve captured or
stolen something and killed an _abrek!_ Well, you’re a fine fellow! But
now you should live quietly for a bit, or else there’ll be trouble.’”

“Yes, I saw him a time or two in the division, he was always
merry-making. He has sold another horse,” said Olénin, and glanced
towards the oven. A pair of large, dark, and hostile eyes glittered as
they gazed severely at him.

He became ashamed of what he had said. “What of it? He does no one any
harm,” suddenly remarked Maryánka. “He makes merry with his own money,”
and lowering her legs she jumped down from the oven and went out
banging the door.

Olénin followed her with his eyes as long as she was in the hut, and
then looked at the door and waited, understanding nothing of what
Granny Ulítka was telling him.

A few minutes later some visitors arrived: an old man, Granny Ulítka’s
brother, with Daddy Eróshka, and following them came Maryánka and
Ústenka.

“Good evening,” squeaked Ústenka. “Still on holiday?” she added,
turning to Olénin.

“Yes, still on holiday,” he replied, and felt, he did not know why,
ashamed and ill at ease.

He wished to go away but could not. It also seemed to him impossible to
remain silent. The old man helped him by asking for a drink, and they
had a drink. Olénin drank with Eróshka, with the other Cossack, and
again with Eróshka, and the more he drank the heavier was his heart.
But the two old men grew merry. The girls climbed onto the oven, where
they sat whispering and looking at the men, who drank till it was late.
Olénin did not talk, but drank more than the others. The Cossacks were
shouting. The old woman would not let them have any more _chikhir_, and
at last turned them out. The girls laughed at Daddy Eróshka, and it was
past ten when they all went out into the porch. The old men invited
themselves to finish their merry-making at Olénin’s. Ústenka ran off
home and Eróshka led the old Cossack to Vanyúsha. The old woman went
out to tidy up the shed. Maryánka remained alone in the hut. Olénin
felt fresh and joyous, as if he had only just woke up. He noticed
everything, and having let the old men pass ahead he turned back to the
hut where Maryánka was preparing for bed. He went up to her and wished
to say something, but his voice broke. She moved away from him, sat
down cross-legged on her bed in the corner, and looked at him silently
with wild and frightened eyes. She was evidently afraid of him. Olénin
felt this. He felt sorry and ashamed of himself, and at the same time
proud and pleased that he aroused even that feeling in her.

“Maryánka!” he said. “Will you never take pity on me? I can’t tell you
how I love you.”

She moved still farther away.

“Just hear how the wine is speaking! ... You’ll get nothing from me!”

“No, it is not the wine. Don’t marry Lukáshka. I will marry you.”
(“What am I saying,” he thought as he uttered these words. “Shall I be
able to say the same tomorrow?” “Yes, I shall, I am sure I shall, and I
will repeat them now,” replied an inner voice.)

“Will you marry me?”

She looked at him seriously and her fear seemed to have passed.

“Maryánka, I shall go out of my mind! I am not myself. I will do
whatever you command,” and madly tender words came from his lips of
their own accord.

“Now then, what are you drivelling about?” she interrupted, suddenly
seizing the arm he was stretching towards her. She did not push his arm
away but pressed it firmly with her strong hard fingers. “Do gentlemen
marry Cossack girls? Go away!”

“But will you? Everything...”

“And what shall we do with Lukáshka?” said she, laughing.

He snatched away the arm she was holding and firmly embraced her young
body, but she sprang away like a fawn and ran barefoot into the porch:
Olénin came to his senses and was terrified at himself. He again felt
himself inexpressibly vile compared to her, yet not repenting for an
instant of what he had said he went home, and without even glancing at
the old men who were drinking in his room he lay down and fell asleep
more soundly than he had done for a long time.




 Chapter XXXV


The next day was a holiday. In the evening all the villagers, their
holiday clothes shining in the sunset, were out in the street. That
season more wine than usual had been produced, and the people were now
free from their labours. In a month the Cossacks were to start on a
campaign and in many families preparations were being made for
weddings.

Most of the people were standing in the square in front of the Cossack
Government Office and near the two shops, in one of which cakes and
pumpkin seeds were sold, in the other kerchiefs and cotton prints. On
the earth-embankment of the office-building sat or stood the old men in
sober grey, or black coats without gold trimmings or any kind of
ornament. They conversed among themselves quietly in measured tones,
about the harvest, about the young folk, about village affairs, and
about old times, looking with dignified equanimity at the younger
generation. Passing by them, the women and girls stopped and bent their
heads. The young Cossacks respectfully slackened their pace and raised
their caps, holding them for a while over their heads. The old men then
stopped speaking. Some of them watched the passers-by severely, others
kindly, and in their turn slowly took off their caps and put them on
again.

The Cossack girls had not yet started dancing their _khorovóds_, but
having gathered in groups, in their bright coloured _beshmets_ with
white kerchiefs on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat
either on the ground or on the earth-banks about the huts sheltered
from the oblique rays of the sun, and laughed and chattered in their
ringing voices. Little boys and girls playing in the square sent their
balls high up into the clear sky, and ran about squealing and shouting.
The half-grown girls had started dancing their _khorovóds_, and were
timidly singing in their thin shrill voices. Clerks, lads not in the
service, or home for the holiday, bright-faced and wearing smart white
or new red Circassian gold-trimmed coats, went about arm in arm in twos
or threes from one group of women or girls to another, and stopped to
joke and chat with the Cossack girls. The Armenian shopkeeper, in a
gold-trimmed coat of fine blue cloth, stood at the open door through
which piles of folded bright-coloured kerchiefs were visible and,
conscious of his own importance and with the pride of an Oriental
tradesman, waited for customers. Two red-bearded, barefooted Chéchens,
who had come from beyond the Térek to see the fête, sat on their heels
outside the house of a friend, negligently smoking their little pipes
and occasionally spitting, watching the villagers and exchanging
remarks with one another in their rapid guttural speech. Occasionally a
workaday-looking soldier in an old overcoat passed across the square
among the bright-clad girls. Here and there the songs of tipsy Cossacks
who were merry-making could already be heard. All the huts were closed;
the porches had been scrubbed clean the day before. Even the old women
were out in the street, which was everywhere sprinkled with pumpkin and
melon seed-shells. The air was warm and still, the sky deep and clear.
Beyond the roofs the dead-white mountain range, which seemed very near,
was turning rosy in the glow of the evening sun. Now and then from the
other side of the river came the distant roar of a cannon, but above
the village, mingling with one another, floated all sorts of merry
holiday sounds.

Olénin had been pacing the yard all that morning hoping to see
Maryánka. But she, having put on holiday clothes, went to Mass at the
chapel and afterwards sat with the other girls on an earth-embankment
cracking seeds; sometimes again, together with her companions, she ran
home, and each time gave the lodger a bright and kindly look. Olénin
felt afraid to address her playfully or in the presence of others. He
wished to finish telling her what he had begun to say the night before,
and to get her to give him a definite answer. He waited for another
moment like that of yesterday evening, but the moment did not come, and
he felt that he could not remain any longer in this uncertainty. She
went out into the street again, and after waiting awhile he too went
out and without knowing where he was going he followed her. He passed
by the corner where she was sitting in her shining blue satin
_beshmet_, and with an aching heart he heard behind him the girls
laughing.

Belétski’s hut looked out onto the square. As Olénin was passing it he
heard Belétski’s voice calling to him, “Come in,” and in he went.

After a short talk they both sat down by the window and were soon
joined by Eróshka, who entered dressed in a new _beshmet_ and sat down
on the floor beside them.

“There, that’s the aristocratic party,” said Belétski, pointing with
his cigarette to a brightly coloured group at the corner. “Mine is
there too. Do you see her? in red. That’s a new _beshmet_. Why don’t
you start the _khorovód?_” he shouted, leaning out of the window. “Wait
a bit, and then when it grows dark let us go too. Then we will invite
them to Ústenka’s. We must arrange a ball for them!”

“And I will come to Ústenka’s,” said Olénin in a decided tone. “Will
Maryánka be there?”

“Yes, she’ll be there. Do come!” said Belétski, without the least
surprise. “But isn’t it a pretty picture?” he added, pointing to the
motley crowds.

“Yes, very!” Olénin assented, trying to appear indifferent.

“Holidays of this kind,” he added, “always make me wonder why all these
people should suddenly be contented and jolly. Today for instance, just
because it happens to be the fifteenth of the month, everything is
festive. Eyes and faces and voices and movements and garments, and the
air and the sun, are all in a holiday mood. And we no longer have any
holidays!”

“Yes,” said Belétski, who did not like such reflections.

“And why are you not drinking, old fellow?” he said, turning to
Eróshka.

Eróshka winked at Olénin, pointing to Belétski. “Eh, he’s a proud one
that _kunak_ of yours,” he said.

Belétski raised his glass.

“_Allah birdy!_” he said, emptying it. (_Allah birdy_, “God has
given!”—the usual greeting of Caucasians when drinking together.)

“_Sau bul_” (“Your health”), answered Eróshka smiling, and emptied his
glass.

“Speaking of holidays!” he said, turning to Olénin as he rose and
looked out of the window, “What sort of holiday is that! You should
have seen them make merry in the old days! The women used to come out
in their gold-trimmed _sarafáns_. Two rows of gold coins hanging round
their necks and gold-cloth diadems on their heads, and when they passed
they made a noise, ‘flu, flu,’ with their dresses. Every woman looked
like a princess. Sometimes they’d come out, a whole herd of them, and
begin singing songs so that the air seemed to rumble, and they went on
making merry all night. And the Cossacks would roll out a barrel into
the yards and sit down and drink till break of day, or they would go
hand-in-hand sweeping the village. Whoever they met they seized and
took along with them, and went from house to house. Sometimes they used
to make merry for three days on end. Father used to come home—I still
remember it—quite red and swollen, without a cap, having lost
everything: he’d come and lie down. Mother knew what to do: she would
bring him some fresh caviar and a little _chikhir_ to sober him up, and
would herself run about in the village looking for his cap. Then he’d
sleep for two days! That’s the sort of fellows they were then! But now
what are they?”

“Well, and the girls in the _sarafáns_, did they make merry all by
themselves?” asked Belétski.

“Yes, they did! Sometimes Cossacks would come on foot or on horse and
say, ‘Let’s break up the _khorovóds_,’ and they’d go, but the girls
would take up cudgels. Carnival week, some young fellow would come
galloping up, and they’d cudgel his horse and cudgel him too. But he’d
break through, seize the one he loved, and carry her off. And his
sweetheart would love him to his heart’s content! Yes, the girls in
those days, they were regular queens!”




 Chapter XXXVI


Just then two men rode out of the side street into the square. One of
them was Nazárka. The other, Lukáshka, sat slightly sideways on his
well-fed bay Kabardá horse which stepped lightly over the hard road
jerking its beautiful head with its fine glossy mane. The well-adjusted
gun in its cover, the pistol at his back, and the cloak rolled up
behind his saddle showed that Lukáshka had not come from a peaceful
place or from one near by. The smart way in which he sat a little
sideways on his horse, the careless motion with which he touched the
horse under its belly with his whip, and especially his half-closed
black eyes, glistening as he looked proudly around him, all expressed
the conscious strength and self-confidence of youth. “Ever seen as fine
a lad?” his eyes, looking from side to side, seemed to say. The elegant
horse with its silver ornaments and trappings, the weapons, and the
handsome Cossack himself attracted the attention of everyone in the
square. Nazárka, lean and short, was much less well dressed. As he rode
past the old men, Lukáshka paused and raised his curly white sheepskin
cap above his closely cropped black head.

“Well, have you carried off many Nogáy horses?” asked a lean old man
with a frowning, lowering look.

“Have you counted them, Grandad, that you ask?” replied Lukáshka,
turning away.

“That’s all very well, but you need not take my lad along with you,”
the old man muttered with a still darker frown.

“Just see the old devil, he knows everything,” muttered Lukáshka to
himself, and a worried expression came over his face; but then,
noticing a corner where a number of Cossack girls were standing, he
turned his horse towards them.

“Good evening, girls!” he shouted in his powerful, resonant voice,
suddenly checking his horse. “You’ve grown old without me, you
witches!” and he laughed.

“Good evening, Lukáshka! Good evening, laddie!” the merry voices
answered. “Have you brought much money? Buy some sweets for the
girls!... Have you come for long? True enough, it’s long since we saw
you....”

“Nazárka and I have just flown across to make a night of it,” replied
Lukáshka, raising his whip and riding straight at the girls.

“Why, Maryánka has quite forgotten you,” said Ústenka, nudging Maryánka
with her elbow and breaking into a shrill laugh.

Maryánka moved away from the horse and throwing back her head calmly
looked at the Cossack with her large sparkling eyes.

“True enough, you have not been home for a long time! Why are you
trampling us under your horse?” she remarked dryly, and turned away.

Lukáshka had appeared particularly merry. His face shone with audacity
and joy. Obviously staggered by Maryánka’s cold reply he suddenly
knitted his brow.

“Step up on my stirrup and I’ll carry you away to the mountains.
Mammy!” he suddenly exclaimed, and as if to disperse his dark thoughts
he caracoled among the girls. Stooping down towards Maryánka, he said,
“I’ll kiss, oh, how I’ll kiss you! ...”

Maryánka’s eyes met his and she suddenly blushed and stepped back.

“Oh, bother you! you’ll crush my feet,” she said, and bending her head
looked at her well-shaped feet in their tightly fitting light blue
stockings with clocks and her new red slippers trimmed with narrow
silver braid.

Lukáshka turned towards Ústenka, and Maryánka sat down next to a woman
with a baby in her arms. The baby stretched his plump little hands
towards the girl and seized a necklace string that hung down onto her
blue _beshmet_. Maryánka bent towards the child and glanced at Lukáshka
from the corner of her eyes. Lukáshka just then was getting out from
under his coat, from the pocket of his black _beshmet_, a bundle of
sweetmeats and seeds.

“There, I give them to all of you,” he said, handing the bundle to
Ústenka and smiling at Maryánka.

A confused expression again appeared on the girl’s face. It was as
though a mist gathered over her beautiful eyes. She drew her kerchief
down below her lips, and leaning her head over the fair-skinned face of
the baby that still held her by her coin necklace she suddenly began to
kiss it greedily. The baby pressed his little hands against the girl’s
high breasts, and opening his toothless mouth screamed loudly.

“You’re smothering the boy!” said the little one’s mother, taking him
away; and she unfastened her _beshmet_ to give him the breast. “You’d
better have a chat with the young fellow.”

“I’ll only go and put up my horse and then Nazárka and I will come
back; we’ll make merry all night,” said Lukáshka, touching his horse
with his whip and riding away from the girls.

Turning into a side street, he and Nazárka rode up to two huts that
stood side by side.

“Here we are all right, old fellow! Be quick and come soon!” called
Lukáshka to his comrade, dismounting in front of one of the huts; then
he carefully led his horse in at the gate of the wattle fence of his
own home.

“How d’you do, Stëpka?” he said to his dumb sister, who, smartly
dressed like the others, came in from the street to take his horse; and
he made signs to her to take the horse to the hay, but not to unsaddle
it.

The dumb girl made her usual humming noise, smacked her lips as she
pointed to the horse and kissed it on the nose, as much as to say that
she loved it and that it was a fine horse.

“How d’you do, Mother? How is it that you have not gone out yet?”
shouted Lukáshka, holding his gun in place as he mounted the steps of
the porch.

His old mother opened the door.

“Dear me! I never expected, never thought, you’d come,” said the old
woman. “Why, Kírka said you wouldn’t be here.”

“Go and bring some _chikhir_, Mother. Nazárka is coming here and we
will celebrate the feast day.”

“Directly, Lukáshka, directly!” answered the old woman. “Our women are
making merry. I expect our dumb one has gone too.”

She took her keys and hurriedly went to the outhouse. Nazárka, after
putting up his horse and taking the gun off his shoulder, returned to
Lukáshka’s house and went in.




 Chapter XXXVII


“Your health!” said Lukáshka, taking from his mother’s hands a cup
filled to the brim with _chikhir_ and carefully raising it to his bowed
head.

“A bad business!” said Nazárka. “You heard how Daddy Burlák said, ‘Have
you stolen many horses?’ He seems to know!”

“A regular wizard!” Lukáshka replied shortly. “But what of it!” he
added, tossing his head. “They are across the river by now. Go and find
them!”

“Still it’s a bad lookout.”

“What’s a bad lookout? Go and take some _chikhir_ to him tomorrow and
nothing will come of it. Now let’s make merry. Drink!” shouted
Lukáshka, just in the tone in which old Eróshka uttered the word.
“We’ll go out into the street and make merry with the girls. You go and
get some honey; or no, I’ll send our dumb wench. We’ll make merry till
morning.”

Nazárka smiled.

“Are we stopping here long?” he asked.

“Till we’ve had a bit of fun. Run and get some vodka. Here’s the
money.”

Nazárka ran off obediently to get the vodka from Yámka’s.

Daddy Eróshka and Ergushóv, like birds of prey, scenting where the
merry-making was going on, tumbled into the hut one after the other,
both tipsy.

“Bring us another half-pail,” shouted Lukáshka to his mother, by way of
reply to their greeting.

“Now then, tell us where did you steal them, you devil?” shouted
Eróshka. “Fine fellow, I’m fond of you!”

“Fond indeed...” answered Lukáshka laughing, “carrying sweets from
cadets to lasses! Eh, you old...”

“That’s not true, not true! ... Oh, Mark,” and the old man burst out
laughing. “And how that devil begged me. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘and arrange
it.’ He offered me a gun! But no. I’d have managed it, but I feel for
you. Now tell us where have you been?” And the old man began speaking
in Tartar.

Lukáshka answered him promptly.

Ergushóv, who did not know much Tartar, only occasionally put in a word
in Russian: “What I say is he’s driven away the horses. I know it for a
fact,” he chimed in.

“Giréy and I went together.” (His speaking of Giréy Khan as “Giréy”
was, to the Cossack mind, evidence of his boldness.) “Just beyond the
river he kept bragging that he knew the whole of the steppe and would
lead the way straight, but we rode on and the night was dark, and my
Giréy lost his way and began wandering in a circle without getting
anywhere: couldn’t find the village, and there we were. We must have
gone too much to the right. I believe we wandered about well-nigh till
midnight. Then, thank goodness, we heard dogs howling.”

“Fools!” said Daddy Eróshka. “There now, we too used to lose our way in
the steppe. (Who the devil can follow it?) But I used to ride up a
hillock and start howling like the wolves, like this!” He placed his
hands before his mouth, and howled like a pack of wolves, all on one
note. “The dogs would answer at once ... Well, go on—so you found
them?”

“We soon led them away! Nazárka was nearly caught by some Nogáy women,
he was!”

“Caught indeed,” Nazárka, who had just come back, said in an injured
tone.

“We rode off again, and again Giréy lost his way and almost landed us
among the sand-drifts. We thought we were just getting to the Térek but
we were riding away from it all the time!”

“You should have steered by the stars,” said Daddy Eróshka.

“That’s what I say,” interjected Ergushóv.

“Yes, steer when all is black; I tried and tried all about... and at
last I put the bridle on one of the mares and let my own horse go
free—thinking he’ll lead us out, and what do you think! he just gave a
snort or two with his nose to the ground, galloped ahead, and led us
straight to our village. Thank goodness! It was getting quite light. We
barely had time to hide them in the forest. Nagím came across the river
and took them away.”

Ergushóv shook his head. “It’s just what I said. Smart. Did you get
much for them?”

“It’s all here,” said Lukáshka, slapping his pocket.

Just then his mother came into the room, and Lukáshka did not finish
what he was saying.

“Drink!” he shouted.

“We too, Gírich and I, rode out late one night...” began Eróshka.

“Oh bother, we’ll never hear the end of you!” said Lukáshka. “I am
going.” And having emptied his cup and tightened the strap of his belt
he went out.




 Chapter XXXVIII


It was already dark when Lukáshka went out into the street. The autumn
night was fresh and calm. The full golden moon floated up behind the
tall dark poplars that grew on one side of the square. From the
chimneys of the outhouses smoke rose and spread above the village,
mingling with the mist. Here and there lights shone through the
windows, and the air was laden with the smell of _kisyak_, grape-pulp,
and mist. The sounds of voices, laughter, songs, and the cracking of
seeds mingled just as they had done in the daytime, but were now more
distinct. Clusters of white kerchiefs and caps gleamed through the
darkness near the houses and by the fences.

In the square, before the shop door which was lit up and open, the
black and white figures of Cossack men and maids showed through the
darkness, and one heard from afar their loud songs and laughter and
talk. The girls, hand in hand, went round and round in a circle
stepping lightly in the dusty square. A skinny girl, the plainest of
them all, set the tune:

“From beyond the wood, from the forest dark,
From the garden green and the shady park,
There came out one day two young lads so gay.
Young bachelors, hey! brave and smart were they!
And they walked and walked, then stood still, each man,
And they talked and soon to dispute began!
Then a maid came out; as she came along,
Said, ‘To one of you I shall soon belong!’
’Twas the fair-faced lad got the maiden fair,
Yes, the fair-faced lad with the golden hair!
Her right hand so white in his own took he,
And he led her round for his mates to see!
And said, ‘Have you ever in all your life,
Met a lass as fair as my sweet little wife?’”


The old women stood round listening to the songs. The little boys and
girls ran about chasing one another in the dark. The men stood by,
catching at the girls as the latter moved round, and sometimes breaking
the ring and entering it. On the dark side of the doorway stood
Belétski and Olénin, in their Circassian coats and sheepskin caps, and
talked together in a style of speech unlike that of the Cossacks, in
low but distinct tones, conscious that they were attracting attention.

Next to one another in the _khorovód_ circle moved plump little Ústenka
in her red _beshmet_ and the stately Maryánka in her new smock and
_beshmet_. Olénin and Belétski were discussing how to snatch Ústenka
and Maryánka out of the ring. Belétski thought that Olénin wished only
to amuse himself, but Olénin was expecting his fate to be decided. He
wanted at any cost to see Maryánka alone that very day and to tell her
everything, and ask her whether she could and would be his wife.
Although that question had long been answered in the negative in his
own mind, he hoped he would be able to tell her all he felt, and that
she would understand him.

“Why did you not tell me sooner?” said Belétski. “I would have got
Ústenka to arrange it for you. You are such a queer fellow! ...”

“What’s to be done! ... Some day, very soon, I’ll tell you all about
it. Only now, for Heaven’s sake, arrange so that she should come to
Ústenka’s.”

“All right, that’s easily done! Well, Maryánka, will you belong to the
‘fair-faced lad’, and not to Lukáshka?” said Belétski, speaking to
Maryánka first for propriety’s sake, but having received no reply he
went up to Ústenka and begged her to bring Maryánka home with her. He
had hardly time to finish what he was saying before the leader began
another song and the girls started pulling each other round in the ring
by the hand.

They sang:

Past the garden, by the garden,
A young man came strolling down,
Up the street and through the town.
And the first time as he passed
He did wave his strong right hand.
As the second time he passed
Waved his hat with silken band.
But the third time as he went
He stood still: before her bent.

How is it that thou, my dear,
My reproaches dost not fear?
In the park don’t come to walk
That we there might have a talk?
Come now, answer me, my dear,
Dost thou hold me in contempt?
Later on, thou knowest, dear,
Thou’lt get sober and repent.
Soon to woo thee I will come,
And when we shall married be
Thou wilt weep because of me!

Though I knew what to reply,
Yet I dared not him deny,
No, I dared not him deny!
So into the park went I,
In the park my lad to meet,
There my dear one I did greet.

Maiden dear, I bow to thee!
Take this handkerchief from me.
In thy white hand take it, see!
Say I am beloved by thee.
I don’t know at all, I fear,
What I am to give thee, dear!
To my dear I think I will
Of a shawl a present make—
And five kisses for it take.


Lukáshka and Nazárka broke into the ring and started walking about
among the girls. Lukáshka joined in the singing, taking seconds in his
clear voice as he walked in the middle of the ring swinging his arms.
“Well, come in, one of you!” he said. The other girls pushed Maryánka,
but she would not enter the ring. The sound of shrill laughter, slaps,
kisses, and whispers mingled with the singing.

As he went past Olénin, Lukáshka gave a friendly nod.

“Dmítri Andréich! Have you too come to have a look?” he said.

“Yes,” answered Olénin dryly.

Belétski stooped and whispered something into Ústenka’s ear. She had
not time to reply till she came round again, when she said:

“All right, we’ll come.”

“And Maryánka too?”

Olénin stooped towards Maryánka. “You’ll come? Please do, if only for a
minute. I must speak to you.”

“If the other girls come, I will.”

“Will you answer my question?” said he, bending towards her. “You are
in good spirits today.”

She had already moved past him. He went after her.

“Will you answer?”

“Answer what?”

“The question I asked you the other day,” said Olénin, stooping to her
ear. “Will you marry me?”

Maryánka thought for a moment.

“I’ll tell you,” said she, “I’ll tell you tonight.”

And through the darkness her eyes gleamed brightly and kindly at the
young man.

He still followed her. He enjoyed stooping closer to her. But Lukáshka,
without ceasing to sing, suddenly seized her firmly by the hand and
pulled her from her place in the ring of girls into the middle. Olénin
had only time to say, “Come to Ústenka’s,” and stepped back to his
companion.

The song came to an end. Lukáshka wiped his lips, Maryánka did the
same, and they kissed. “No, no, kisses five!” said Lukáshka. Chatter,
laughter, and running about, succeeded to the rhythmic movements and
sound. Lukáshka, who seemed to have drunk a great deal, began to
distribute sweetmeats to the girls.

“I offer them to everyone!” he said with proud, comically pathetic
self-admiration. “But anyone who goes after soldiers goes out of the
ring!” he suddenly added, with an angry glance at Olénin.

The girls grabbed his sweetmeats from him, and, laughing, struggled for
them among themselves. Belétski and Olénin stepped aside.

Lukáshka, as if ashamed of his generosity, took off his cap and wiping
his forehead with his sleeve came up to Maryánka and Ústenka.

“Answer me, my dear, dost thou hold me in contempt?” he said in the
words of the song they had just been singing, and turning to Maryánka
he angrily repeated the words: “Dost thou hold me in contempt? When we
shall married be thou wilt weep because of me!” he added, embracing
Ústenka and Maryánka both together.

Ústenka tore herself away, and swinging her arm gave him such a blow on
the back that she hurt her hand.

“Well, are you going to have another turn?” he asked.

“The other girls may if they like,” answered Ústenka, “but I am going
home and Maryánka was coming to our house too.”

With his arm still round her, Lukáshka led Maryánka away from the crowd
to the darker corner of a house.

“Don’t go, Maryánka,” he said, “let’s have some fun for the last time.
Go home and I will come to you!”

“What am I to do at home? Holidays are meant for merrymaking. I am
going to Ústenka’s,” replied Maryánka.

“I’ll marry you all the same, you know!”

“All right,” said Maryánka, “we shall see when the time comes.”

“So you are going,” said Lukáshka sternly, and, pressing her close, he
kissed her on the cheek.

“There, leave off! Don’t bother,” and Maryánka, wrenching herself from
his arms, moved away.

“Ah my girl, it will turn out badly,” said Lukáshka reproachfully and
stood still, shaking his head. “Thou wilt weep because of me...” and
turning away from her he shouted to the other girls:

“Now then! Play away!”

What he had said seemed to have frightened and vexed Maryánka. She
stopped, “What will turn out badly?”

“Why, that!”

“That what?”

“Why, that you keep company with a soldier-lodger and no longer care
for me!”

“I’ll care just as long as I choose. You’re not my father, nor my
mother. What do you want? I’ll care for whom I like!”

“Well, all right...” said Lukáshka, “but remember!” He moved towards
the shop. “Girls!” he shouted, “why have you stopped? Go on dancing.
Nazárka, fetch some more _chikhir_.”

“Well, will they come?” asked Olénin, addressing Belétski.

“They’ll come directly,” replied Belétski. “Come along, we must prepare
the ball.”




 Chapter XXXIX


It was already late in the night when Olénin came out of Belétski’s hut
following Maryánka and Ústenka. He saw in the dark street before him
the gleam of the girl’s white kerchief. The golden moon was descending
towards the steppe. A silvery mist hung over the village. All was
still; there were no lights anywhere and one heard only the receding
footsteps of the young women. Olénin’s heart beat fast. The fresh moist
atmosphere cooled his burning face. He glanced at the sky and turned to
look at the hut he had just come out of: the candle was already out.
Then he again peered through the darkness at the girls’ retreating
shadows. The white kerchief disappeared in the mist. He was afraid to
remain alone, he was so happy. He jumped down from the porch and ran
after the girls.

“Bother you, someone may see...” said Ústenka.

“Never mind!”

Olénin ran up to Maryánka and embraced her.

Maryánka did not resist.

“Haven’t you kissed enough yet?” said Ústenka. “Marry and then kiss,
but now you’d better wait.”

“Good-night, Maryánka. Tomorrow I will come to see your father and tell
him. Don’t you say anything.”

“Why should I!” answered Maryánka.

Both the girls started running. Olénin went on by himself thinking over
all that had happened. He had spent the whole evening alone with her in
a corner by the oven. Ústenka had not left the hut for a single moment,
but had romped about with the other girls and with Belétski all the
time. Olénin had talked in whispers to Maryánka.

“Will you marry me?” he had asked.

“You’d deceive me and not have me,” she replied cheerfully and calmly.

“But do you love me? Tell me for God’s sake!”

“Why shouldn’t I love you? You don’t squint,” answered Maryánka,
laughing and with her hard hands squeezing his....

“What whi-ite, whi-i-ite, soft hands you’ve got—so like clotted cream,”
she said.

“I am in earnest. Tell me, will you marry me?”

“Why not, if father gives me to you?”

“Well then remember, I shall go mad if you deceive me. Tomorrow I will
tell your mother and father. I shall come and propose.”

Maryánka suddenly burst out laughing.

“What’s the matter?”

“It seems so funny!”

“It’s true! I will buy a vineyard and a house and will enroll myself as
a Cossack.”

“Mind you don’t go after other women then. I am severe about that.”

Olénin joyfully repeated all these words to himself. The memory of them
now gave him pain and now such joy that it took away his breath. The
pain was because she had remained as calm as usual while talking to
him. She did not seem at all agitated by these new conditions. It was
as if she did not trust him and did not think of the future. It seemed
to him that she only loved him for the present moment, and that in her
mind there was no future with him. He was happy because her words
sounded to him true, and she had consented to be his. “Yes,” thought he
to himself, “we shall only understand one another when she is quite
mine. For such love there are no words. It needs life—the whole of
life. Tomorrow everything will be cleared up. I cannot live like this
any longer; tomorrow I will tell everything to her father, to Belétski,
and to the whole village.”

Lukáshka, after two sleepless nights, had drunk so much at the fête
that for the first time in his life his feet would not carry him, and
he slept in Yámka’s house.




 Chapter XL


The next day Olénin awoke earlier than usual, and immediately
remembered what lay before him, and he joyfully recalled her kisses,
the pressure of her hard hands, and her words, “What white hands you
have!” He jumped up and wished to go at once to his hosts’ hut to ask
for their consent to his marriage with Maryánka. The sun had not yet
risen, but it seemed that there was an unusual bustle in the street and
side-street: people were moving about on foot and on horseback, and
talking. He threw on his Circassian coat and hastened out into the
porch. His hosts were not yet up. Five Cossacks were riding past and
talking loudly together. In front rode Lukáshka on his broad-backed
Kabardá horse.

The Cossacks were all speaking and shouting so that it was impossible
to make out exactly what they were saying.

“Ride to the Upper Post,” shouted one.

“Saddle and catch us up, be quick,” said another.

“It’s nearer through the other gate!”

“What are you talking about?” cried Lukáshka. “We must go through the
middle gates, of course.”

“So we must, it’s nearer that way,” said one of the Cossacks who was
covered with dust and rode a perspiring horse. Lukáshka’s face was red
and swollen after the drinking of the previous night and his cap was
pushed to the back of his head. He was calling out with authority as
though he were an officer.

“What is the matter? Where are you going?” asked Olénin, with
difficulty attracting the Cossacks’ attention.

“We are off to catch _abreks_. They’re hiding among the sand-drifts. We
are just off, but there are not enough of us yet.”

And the Cossacks continued to shout, more and more of them joining as
they rode down the street. It occurred to Olénin that it would not look
well for him to stay behind; besides he thought he could soon come
back. He dressed, loaded his gun with bullets, jumped onto his horse
which Vanyúsha had saddled more or less well, and overtook the Cossacks
at the village gates. The Cossacks had dismounted, and filling a wooden
bowl with _chikhir_ from a little cask which they had brought with
them, they passed the bowl round to one another and drank to the
success of their expedition. Among them was a smartly dressed young
cornet, who happened to be in the village and who took command of the
group of nine Cossacks who had joined for the expedition. All these
Cossacks were privates, and although the cornet assumed the airs of a
commanding officer, they only obeyed Lukáshka. Of Olénin they took no
notice at all, and when they had all mounted and started, and Olénin
rode up to the cornet and began asking him what was taking place, the
cornet, who was usually quite friendly, treated him with marked
condescension. It was with great difficulty that Olénin managed to find
out from him what was happening. Scouts who had been sent out to search
for _abreks_ had come upon several hillsmen some six miles from the
village. These _abreks_ had taken shelter in pits and had fired at the
scouts, declaring they would not surrender. A corporal who had been
scouting with two Cossacks had remained to watch the _abreks_, and had
sent one Cossack back to get help.

The sun was just rising. Three miles beyond the village the steppe
spread out and nothing was visible except the dry, monotonous, sandy,
dismal plain covered with the footmarks of cattle, and here and there
with tufts of withered grass, with low reeds in the flats, and rare,
little-trodden footpaths, and the camps of the nomad Nogáy tribe just
visible far away. The absence of shade and the austere aspect of the
place were striking. The sun always rises and sets red in the steppe.
When it is windy whole hills of sand are carried by the wind from place
to place.

When it is calm, as it was that morning, the silence, uninterrupted by
any movement or sound, is peculiarly striking. That morning in the
steppe it was quiet and dull, though the sun had already risen. It all
seemed specially soft and desolate. The air was hushed, the footfalls
and the snorting of the horses were the only sounds to be heard, and
even they quickly died away.

The men rode almost silently. A Cossack always carries his weapons so
that they neither jingle nor rattle. Jingling weapons are a terrible
disgrace to a Cossack. Two other Cossacks from the village caught the
party up and exchanged a few words. Lukáshka’s horse either stumbled or
caught its foot in some grass, and became restive—which is a sign of
bad luck among the Cossacks, and at such a time was of special
importance. The others exchanged glances and turned away, trying not to
notice what had happened. Lukaskha pulled at the reins, frowned
sternly, set his teeth, and flourished his whip above his head. His
good Kabardá horse, prancing from one foot to another not knowing with
which to start, seemed to wish to fly upwards on wings. But Lukáshka
hit its well-fed sides with his whip once, then again, and a third
time, and the horse, showing its teeth and spreading out its tail,
snorted and reared and stepped on its hind legs a few paces away from
the others.

“Ah, a good steed that!” said the cornet.

That he said _steed_ instead of _horse_ indicated special praise.

“A lion of a horse,” assented one of the others, an old Cossack.

The Cossacks rode forward silently, now at a footpace, then at a trot,
and these changes were the only incidents that interrupted for a moment
the stillness and solemnity of their movements.

Riding through the steppe for about six miles, they passed nothing but
one Nogáy tent, placed on a cart and moving slowly along at a distance
of about a mile from them. A Nogáy family was moving from one part of
the steppe to another. Afterwards they met two tattered Nogáy women
with high cheekbones, who with baskets on their backs were gathering
dung left by the cattle that wandered over the steppe. The cornet, who
did not know their language well, tried to question them, but they did
not understand him and, obviously frightened, looked at one another.

Lukáshka rode up to them both, stopped his horse, and promptly uttered
the usual greeting. The Nogáy women were evidently relieved, and began
speaking to him quite freely as to a brother.

“_Ay-ay, kop abrek!_” they said plaintively, pointing in the direction
in which the Cossacks were going. Olénin understood that they were
saying, “Many _abreks_.”

Never having seen an engagement of that kind, and having formed an idea
of them only from Daddy Eróshka’s tales, Olénin wished not to be left
behind by the Cossacks, but wanted to see it all. He admired the
Cossacks, and was on the watch, looking and listening and making his
own observations. Though he had brought his sword and a loaded gun with
him, when he noticed that the Cossacks avoided him he decided to take
no part in the action, as in his opinion his courage had already been
sufficiently proved when he was with his detachment, and also because
he was very happy.

Suddenly a shot was heard in the distance.

The cornet became excited, and began giving orders to the Cossacks as
to how they should divide and from which side they should approach. But
the Cossacks did not appear to pay any attention to these orders,
listening only to what Lukáshka said and looking to him alone.
Lukáshka’s face and figure were expressive of calm solemnity. He put
his horse to a trot with which the others were unable to keep pace, and
screwing up his eyes kept looking ahead.

“There’s a man on horseback,” he said, reining in his horse and keeping
in line with the others.

Olénin looked intently, but could not see anything. The Cossacks soon
distinguished two riders and quietly rode straight towards them.

“Are those the _abreks?_” asked Olénin.

The Cossacks did not answer his question, which appeared quite
meaningless to them. The _abreks_ would have been fools to venture
across the river on horseback.

“That’s friend Ródka waving to us, I do believe,” said Lukáshka,
pointing to the two mounted men who were now clearly visible. “Look,
he’s coming to us.”

A few minutes later it became plain that the two horsemen were the
Cossack scouts. The corporal rode up to Lukáshka.




 Chapter XLI


“Are they far?” was all Lukáshka said.

Just then they heard a sharp shot some thirty paces off. The corporal
smiled slightly.

“Our Gúrka is having shots at them,” he said, nodding in the direction
of the shot.

Having gone a few paces farther they saw Gúrka sitting behind a
sand-hillock and loading his gun. To while away the time he was
exchanging shots with the _abreks_, who were behind another sand-heap.
A bullet came whistling from their side.

The cornet was pale and grew confused. Lukáshka dismounted from his
horse, threw the reins to one of the other Cossacks, and went up to
Gúrka. Olénin also dismounted and, bending down, followed Lukáshka.
They had hardly reached Gúrka when two bullets whistled above them.

Lukáshka looked around laughing at Olénin and stooped a little.

“Look out or they will kill you, Dmítri Andréich,” he said. “You’d
better go away—you have no business here.” But Olénin wanted absolutely
to see the _abreks_.

From behind the mound he saw caps and muskets some two hundred paces
off. Suddenly a little cloud of smoke appeared from thence, and again a
bullet whistled past. The _abreks_ were hiding in a marsh at the foot
of the hill. Olénin was much impressed by the place in which they sat.
In reality it was very much like the rest of the steppe, but because
the _abreks_ sat there it seemed to detach itself from all the rest and
to have become distinguished. Indeed it appeared to Olénin that it was
the very spot for _abreks_ to occupy. Lukáshka went back to his horse
and Olénin followed him.

“We must get a hay-cart,” said Lukáshka, “or they will be killing some
of us. There behind that mound is a Nogáy cart with a load of hay.”

The cornet listened to him and the corporal agreed. The cart of hay was
fetched, and the Cossacks, hiding behind it, pushed it forward. Olénin
rode up a hillock from whence he could see everything. The hay-cart
moved on and the Cossacks crowded together behind it. The Cossacks
advanced, but the Chéchens, of whom there were nine, sat with their
knees in a row and did not fire.

All was quiet. Suddenly from the Chéchens arose the sound of a mournful
song, something like Daddy Eróshka’s “Ay day, dalalay.” The Chéchens
knew that they could not escape, and to prevent themselves from being
tempted to take to flight they had strapped themselves together, knee
to knee, had got their guns ready, and were singing their death-song.

The Cossacks with their hay-cart drew closer and closer, and Olénin
expected the firing to begin at any moment, but the silence was only
broken by the _abreks_’ mournful song. Suddenly the song ceased; there
was a sharp report, a bullet struck the front of the cart, and Chéchen
curses and yells broke the silence and shot followed on shot and one
bullet after another struck the cart. The Cossacks did not fire and
were now only five paces distant.

Another moment passed and the Cossacks with a whoop rushed out on both
sides from behind the cart—Lukáshka in front of them. Olénin heard only
a few shots, then shouting and moans. He thought he saw smoke and
blood, and abandoning his horse and quite beside himself he ran towards
the Cossacks. Horror seemed to blind him. He could not make out
anything, but understood that all was over. Lukáshka, pale as death,
was holding a wounded Chéchen by the arms and shouting, “Don’t kill
him. I’ll take him alive!” The Chéchen was the red-haired man who had
fetched his brother’s body away after Lukáshka had killed him. Lukáshka
was twisting his arms. Suddenly the Chéchen wrenched himself free and
fired his pistol. Lukáshka fell, and blood began to flow from his
stomach. He jumped up, but fell again, swearing in Russian and in
Tartar. More and more blood appeared on his clothes and under him. Some
Cossacks approached him and began loosening his girdle. One of them,
Nazárka, before beginning to help, fumbled for some time, unable to put
his sword in its sheath: it would not go the right way. The blade of
the sword was blood-stained.

The Chéchens with their red hair and clipped moustaches lay dead and
hacked about. Only the one we know of, who had fired at Lukáshka,
though wounded in many places was still alive. Like a wounded hawk all
covered with blood (blood was flowing from a wound under his right
eye), pale and gloomy, he looked about him with wide-open excited eyes
and clenched teeth as he crouched, dagger in hand, still prepared to
defend himself. The cornet went up to him as if intending to pass by,
and with a quick movement shot him in the ear. The Chéchen started up,
but it was too late, and he fell.

The Cossacks, quite out of breath, dragged the bodies aside and took
the weapons from them. Each of the red-haired Chéchens had been a man,
and each one had his own individual expression. Lukáshka was carried to
the cart. He continued to swear in Russian and in Tartar.

“No fear, I’ll strangle him with my hands. _Anna seni!_” he cried,
struggling. But he soon became quiet from weakness.

Olénin rode home. In the evening he was told that Lukáshka was at
death’s door, but that a Tartar from beyond the river had undertaken to
cure him with herbs.

The bodies were brought to the village office. The women and the little
boys hastened to look at them.

It was growing dark when Olénin returned, and he could not collect
himself after what he had seen. But towards night memories of the
evening before came rushing to his mind. He looked out of the window,
Maryánka was passing to and fro from the house to the cowshed, putting
things straight. Her mother had gone to the vineyard and her father to
the office. Olénin could not wait till she had quite finished her work,
but went out to meet her. She was in the hut standing with her back
towards him. Olénin thought she felt shy.

“Maryánka,” said he, “I say, Maryánka! May I come in?”

She suddenly turned. There was a scarcely perceptible trace of tears in
her eyes and her face was beautiful in its sadness. She looked at him
in silent dignity.

Olénin again said:

“Maryánka, I have come—”

“Leave me alone!” she said. Her face did not change but the tears ran
down her cheeks.

“What are you crying for? What is it?”

“What?” she repeated in a rough voice. “Cossacks have been killed,
that’s what for.”

“Lukáshka?” said Olénin.

“Go away! What do you want?”

“Maryánka!” said Olénin, approaching her.

“You will never get anything from me!”

“Maryánka, don’t speak like that,” Olénin entreated.

“Get away. I’m sick of you!” shouted the girl, stamping her foot, and
moved threateningly towards him. And her face expressed such
abhorrence, such contempt, and such anger that Olénin suddenly
understood that there was no hope for him, and that his first
impression of this woman’s inaccessibility had been perfectly correct.

Olénin said nothing more, but ran out of the hut.




 Chapter XLII


For two hours after returning home he lay on his bed motionless. Then
he went to his company commander and obtained leave to visit the staff.
Without taking leave of anyone, and sending Vanyúsha to settle his
accounts with his landlord, he prepared to leave for the fort where his
regiment was stationed. Daddy Eróshka was the only one to see him off.
They had a drink, and then a second, and then yet another. Again as on
the night of his departure from Moscow, a three-horsed conveyance stood
waiting at the door. But Olénin did not confer with himself as he had
done then, and did not say to himself that all he had thought and done
here was “not it”. He did not promise himself a new life. He loved
Maryánka more than ever, and knew that he could never be loved by her.

“Well, good-bye, my lad!” said Daddy Eróshka. “When you go on an
expedition, be wise and listen to my words—the words of an old man.
When you are out on a raid or the like (you know I’m an old wolf and
have seen things), and when they begin firing, don’t get into a crowd
where there are many men. When you fellows get frightened you always
try to get close together with a lot of others. You think it is merrier
to be with others, but that’s where it is worst of all! They always aim
at a crowd. Now I used to keep farther away from the others and went
alone, and I’ve never been wounded. Yet what things haven’t I seen in
my day?”

“But you’ve got a bullet in your back,” remarked Vanyúsha, who was
clearing up the room.

“That was the Cossacks fooling about,” answered Eróshka.

“Cossacks? How was that?” asked Olénin.

“Oh, just so. We were drinking. Vánka Sítkin, one of the Cossacks, got
merry, and puff! he gave me one from his pistol just here.”

“Yes, and did it hurt?” asked Olénin. “Vanyúsha, will you soon be
ready?” he added.

“Ah, where’s the hurry! Let me tell you. When he banged into me, the
bullet did not break the bone but remained here. And I say: ‘You’ve
killed me, brother. Eh! What have you done to me? I won’t let you off!
You’ll have to stand me a pailful!’”

“Well, but did it hurt?” Olénin asked again, scarcely listening to the
tale.

“Let me finish. He stood a pailful, and we drank it, but the blood went
on flowing. The whole room was drenched and covered with blood. Grandad
Burlák, he says, ‘The lad will give up the ghost. Stand a bottle of the
sweet sort, or we shall have you taken up!’ They bought more drink, and
boozed and boozed—”

“Yes, but did it hurt you much?” Olénin asked once more.

“Hurt, indeed! Don’t interrupt: I don’t like it. Let me finish. We
boozed and boozed till morning, and I fell asleep on the top of the
oven, drunk. When I woke in the morning I could not unbend myself
anyhow—”

“Was it very painful?” repeated Olénin, thinking that now he would at
last get an answer to his question.

“Did I tell you it was painful? I did not say it was painful, but I
could not bend and could not walk.”

“And then it healed up?” said Olénin, not even laughing, so heavy was
his heart.

“It healed up, but the bullet is still there. Just feel it!” And
lifting his shirt he showed his powerful back, where just near the bone
a bullet could be felt and rolled about.

“Feel how it rolls,” he said, evidently amusing himself with the bullet
as with a toy. “There now, it has rolled to the back.”

“And Lukáshka, will he recover?” asked Olénin.

“Heaven only knows! There’s no doctor. They’ve gone for one.”

“Where will they get one? From Gróznoe?” asked Olénin.

“No, my lad. Were I the Tsar I’d have hung all your Russian doctors
long ago. Cutting is all they know! There’s our Cossack Bakláshka, no
longer a real man now that they’ve cut off his leg! That shows they’re
fools. What’s Bakláshka good for now? No, my lad, in the mountains
there are real doctors. There was my chum, Vórchik, he was on an
expedition and was wounded just here in the chest. Well, your doctors
gave him up, but one of theirs came from the mountains and cured him!
They understand herbs, my lad!”

“Come, stop talking rubbish,” said Olénin. “I’d better send a doctor
from head-quarters.”

“Rubbish!” the old man said mockingly. “Fool, fool! Rubbish. You’ll
send a doctor!—If yours cured people, Cossacks and Chéchens would go to
you for treatment, but as it is your officers and colonels send to the
mountains for doctors. Yours are all humbugs, all humbugs.”

Olénin did not answer. He agreed only too fully that all was humbug in
the world in which he had lived and to which he was now returning.

“How is Lukáshka? You’ve been to see him?” he asked.

“He just lies as if he were dead. He does not eat nor drink. Vodka is
the only thing his soul accepts. But as long as he drinks vodka it’s
well. I’d be sorry to lose the lad. A fine lad—a brave, like me. I too
lay dying like that once. The old women were already wailing. My head
was burning. They had already laid me out under the holy icons. So I
lay there, and above me on the oven little drummers, no bigger than
this, beat the tattoo. I shout at them and they drum all the harder.”
(The old man laughed.) “The women brought our church elder. They were
getting ready to bury me. They said, ‘He defiled himself with worldly
unbelievers; he made merry with women; he ruined people; he did not
fast, and he played the _balaláyka_. Confess,’ they said. So I began to
confess. ‘I’ve sinned!’ I said. Whatever the priest said, I always
answered ‘I’ve sinned.’ He began to ask me about the _balaláyka_.
‘Where is the accursed thing,’ he says. ‘Show it me and smash it.’ But
I say, ‘I’ve not got it.’ I’d hidden it myself in a net in the
outhouse. I knew they could not find it. So they left me. Yet after all
I recovered. When I went for my _balaláyka_—What was I saying?” he
continued. “Listen to me, and keep farther away from the other men or
you’ll get killed foolishly. I feel for you, truly: you are a drinker—I
love you! And fellows like you like riding up the mounds. There was one
who lived here who had come from Russia, he always would ride up the
mounds (he called the mounds so funnily, ‘hillocks’). Whenever he saw a
mound, off he’d gallop. Once he galloped off that way and rode to the
top quite pleased, but a Chéchen fired at him and killed him! Ah, how
well they shoot from their gun-rests, those Chéchens! Some of them
shoot even better than I do. I don’t like it when a fellow gets killed
so foolishly! Sometimes I used to look at your soldiers and wonder at
them. There’s foolishness for you! They go, the poor fellows, all in a
clump, and even sew red collars to their coats! How can they help being
hit! One gets killed, they drag him away and another takes his place!
What foolishness!” the old man repeated, shaking his head. “Why not
scatter, and go one by one? So you just go like that and they won’t
notice you. That’s what you must do.”

“Well, thank you! Good-bye, Daddy. God willing we may meet again,” said
Olénin, getting up and moving towards the passage.

The old man, who was sitting on the floor, did not rise.

“Is that the way one says ‘Good-bye’? Fool, fool!” he began. “Oh dear,
what has come to people? We’ve kept company, kept company for well-nigh
a year, and now ‘Good-bye!’ and off he goes! Why, I love you, and how I
pity you! You are so forlorn, always alone, always alone. You’re
somehow so unsociable. At times I can’t sleep for thinking about you. I
am so sorry for you. As the song has it:

It is very hard, dear brother,
In a foreign land to live.


So it is with you.”

“Well, good-bye,” said Olénin again.

The old man rose and held out his hand. Olénin pressed it and turned to
go.

“Give us your mug, your mug!”

And the old man took Olénin by the head with both hands and kissed him
three times with wet moustaches and lips, and began to cry.

“I love you, good-bye!”

Olénin got into the cart.

“Well, is that how you’re going? You might give me something for a
remembrance. Give me a gun! What do you want two for?” said the old
man, sobbing quite sincerely.

Olénin got out a musket and gave it to him.

“What a lot you’ve given the old fellow,” murmured Vanyúsha, “he’ll
never have enough! A regular old beggar. They are all such irregular
people,” he remarked, as he wrapped himself in his overcoat and took
his seat on the box.

“Hold your tongue, swine!” exclaimed the old man, laughing. “What a
stingy fellow!”

Maryánka came out of the cowshed, glanced indifferently at the cart,
bowed and went towards the hut.

“_La fille!_” said Vanyúsha, with a wink, and burst out into a silly
laugh.

“Drive on!” shouted Olénin, angrily.

“Good-bye, my lad! Good-bye. I won’t forget you!” shouted Eróshka.

Olénin turned round. Daddy Eróshka was talking to Maryánka, evidently
about his own affairs, and neither the old man nor the girl looked at
Olénin.