Mokhov for? After his daughter, eh?" David asked.
"The Korshunov brat has had a go there already," Knave interposed maliciously.
"Ivan Alexeyevich, can't you hear? What's that officer nosing around there for?" David repeated.
Ivan Alexeyevich started as if he had been struck behind the knees with a whiplash.
"Eh? What were you saying?"
"He's been having a nap! We're talking about Listnitsky."
"He was on his way to the station. Yes, and here's some more news. When I went out of the house I saw . . . who do you think? Grigory Melekhov! He was standing outside with a whip in his hand. 'What are you doing here, Grigory?' I says. 'Taking Lieutenant Listnitsky to Millerovo Station.' "
"He's Listnitsky's coachman," David explained.
"Picking the crumbs from the rich man's table."
"You're like a dog on a chain. Knave, you'd snarl at anyone,"
The conversation flagged. Ivan Alexeyevich rose to go.
"Hurrying off to service?" Knave got in g last dig.
"I do plenty of serving every day." Stockman accompanied his guests to the gate, then locked up the workshop and went into the house.
The night before Easter Sunday the sky was overcast with masses of black cloud, and rain began to fall. A raw darkness weighed on the village. At dusk the ice on the Don began to crack with a protracted, rolling groan, and squeezed by a mass of broken ice the first floe emerged from the water. The ice broke up all at once over a stretch of four versts, and drifted downstream. The floes crashed against one another and against the banks, while in the background the church bell rang measuredly for service. At the first bend, where the Don sweeps to the left, the ice was dammed up. The roar and clash of the bumping floes reached the village. A crowd of lads had gathered in the churchyard, which was already dotted with puddles. Through the open doors came the muffled tones of the service, and lights gleamed with festive brightness in the latticed windows, while in the darkness of the yard the lads tickled and kissed the girls, and whispered dirty stories to one another.
The churchwarden's lodge was crowded with Cossacks from villages all over the district. Weary with fatigue and the stuffiness of the
room, people slept on benches, even on the floor.
Men were sitting on the rickety steps, smoking and talking about the weather and the winter crops.
"When will your lot be going out in the fields?"
"Should be moving about Thomas' day, I reckon."
"That's all right for you, the land round your way is sandy."
"Some of it is, this side of the gully there's a salt marsh."
"The earth'll get plenty of moisture now."
"When we ploughed last year it was like gristle, hard and sticky all the way over."
"Dunya, where are you?" a high-pitched voice called from the steps of the lodge.
From the churchyard gate a rough throaty voice could be heard blustering: "A fine place to be kissing, you. . .. Get out of here, you dirty young brats. What an idea!"
"Can't you find a partner for yourself? Go and kiss the bitch in our yard," a wobbly young voice retorted from the darkness.
"Bitch?! I'll learn you. . . ."
A squelchy patter of running feet, a rustle of skirts.
Water dripped from the roof with a glassy tinkle; and again that slow voice, clinging as the muddy black earth:
"Been trying to buy a plough off Prokhor, offered him twelve rubles but he won't take it. He wouldn't let something go cheap, not him. . . ."
From the Don came a smooth swishing, rustling and crunching, as though a buxom wench, dressed-up and tall as a poplar, were passing by, her great skirts rustling.
At midnight, Mitka Korshunov, riding a horse bareback, clattered through the sticky darkness up to the church. He tied the bridle rein to the horse's mane, and gave her a smack on her steaming flanks. He listened to the squelch of the hoofs for a moment, then, adjusting his belt, he went into the churchyard. In the porch he removed his cap, bent his head devoutly, and thrusting aside the women, pressed up to the altar. The Cossacks were crowded in a black mass on the left; on the right was a motley throng of women. Mitka found his father in the front row, and gripping him by the elbow, whispered into his ear: "Father, come outside for a moment."
As he pushed his way out of the church through the dense curtain of mingled odours, Mitka's nostrils quivered. He was overwhelmed
I
by the vapour of burning wax, the odour of women's sweating bodies, the sepulchral stench of clothes brought out only at Christmas and Easter time, and the smell of damp leather, moth balls, and the windiness of fast-hungered bellies.
In the porch Mitka put his mouth close to his father's ear and said: "Natalya's dying."
XVII
Grigory returned on Palm Sunday from his journey with Yevgeny to the station. He found the thaw had eaten away the snow; the road had broken up within a couple of days.
At a Ukrainian village some twenty-five versts from the station he all but lost his horses as he was crossing a stream. He had arrived at the village early in the evening. During the previous night the ice had broken up and started moving, and the stream, swollen and foaming with muddy brown water, threatened the streets. The inn at which he had stopped to feed the horses on the way out lay on the farther side of the stream. The water might easily rise still higher during the night, and Grigory decided to cross.
He drove to the point where he had crossed the ice on the outward journey, and found the
m
stream had overflowed its banks. A piece of fencing and half a cartwheel were eddying in the middle. There were fresh traces oi sledge runners on the bare sand at the edge. He halted the sweating foam-flecked horses and jumped down to look at the marks more closely. At the water's edge the tracks turned a little to the left and disappeared into the stream. He measured the distance to the other side with his eyes: fifty paces at the most. He went to the horses to check the harness. At that moment an aged Ukrainian came towards him from the nearest hut.
"Is there a good crossing here?" Grigory asked him, waving his reins at the seething brown flood.
"Some folk crossed there this morning."
"Is it deep?"
"No. But it might splash into your sleigh."
Grigory gathered up the reins, and holding his knout ready, urged on the horses with a curt, imperative command. They moved unwillingly, snorting and snuffing at the water. Grigory cracked his whip and stood up on the seat.
The bay on the left tossed its head and suddenly pulled on the traces. Grigory glanced down at his feet; the water was swirling over the front of the sledge. At first the horses were
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wading up to their knees, but suddenly the stream rose to their breasts. Grigory tried to turn them back, but they refused to answer the rein and began to swim for it. The tail of the sledge was swung round by the current, and the horses' heads were forced upstream. The water flowed in waves over their backs, and the sledge rocked and pulled them back strongly.
"Hey! Hey! To the right!" the Ukrainian shouted, running along the bank and waving his fur cap.
In a wild fury Grigory kept shouting and urging on the horses. The water foamed in eddies behind the dragging sledge. The runners struck against a jutting pile, the remains of the bridge which had been swept away overnight, and the sledge turned over with extraordinary ease. With a gasp Grigory plunged in head first, but he did not lose his grip of the reins. While he was tossed about by the rocking sledge, the water dragged at his legs and the skirts of his sheepskin with gentle insistence. He succeeded in clutching a runner, dropped the reins, and hauled himself along hand over hand, making his way to the swingle-tree. He was about to seize the iron-shod end of the swingle-tree when the bay, in its struggle against the current, lashed out with
its hindleg and struck him on the knee. Choking, Grigory threw out his hands and caught at the traces. He felt himself being dragged away from t
he horses, his grip weakened. Every fibre in his body tingling with the cold, he managed to reach the horse's head, and the animal fixed the maddened, mortally terrified gaze of its bloodshot eyes straight into his dilated pupils.
Again and again he grasped at the slippery leather reins, but they eluded his fingers. Somehow he managed at last to seize them. Abruptly his legs scraped along the ground. Dragging himself to the edge of the water, he stumbled forward and was knocked off his feet in the shallows by a horse's breast.
Trampling over him, the horses tugged the sledge violently out of the water and, exhausted, halted a few paces away, shuddering and steaming. Unconscious of any pain, Grigory jumped to his feet; the cold enveloped him as though in unbearably hot dough. He was trembling even more than the horses, and felt as weak on his legs as an unweaned infant. Slowly he gathered his wits, and turning the sledge on to its runners, drove the horses off at a gallop to get them warm. He flew into the street of the village as though attacking an enemy, and turned into the first open gate without slackening his pace.
The host turned out to be a hospitable Ukrainian; he sent his son to attend to the horses and himself helped Grigory to undress. In a tone that brooked no refusal he ordered his wife to light the stove. While his own clothes were drying Grigory stretched himself out on top of the stove in his host's trousers. After a supper of meatless cabbage soup he went to sleep.
He set off again long before dawn. A good hundred and thirty-five versts' driving lay before him, and every minute was precious. The untracked confusion of the flooded spring steppe was at hand; the melting snow had turned every little ravine or gully into a roaring torrent.
The black, bare road exhausted the horses. Over the hard surface created by the early morning frost he reached a village lying four versts off his route, and stopped at a crossroad. The horses were steaming with sweat; behind him lay the gleaming track of the sledge runners in the ground. He abandoned the sledge and set off again, riding one horse bareback and leading the other by the reins. He arrived at Yagodnoye in the morning on Palm Sunday.
Old Listnitsky listened attentively to his story of the journey, and went to look at the
horses. Sashka was leading them up and down the yard, angrily eyeing their sunken flanks.
"How are they?" the master asked. "They haven't been overdriven, have they?"
"No. The bay's got a sore on his chest where his collar rubbed, but it's nothing," Sashka answered without stopping the horses.
"Go and get some rest," Listnitsky motioned to Grigory with his hand. Grigory went to his room but he had only one night's rest. The next morning Venyamin came into the room in a new sateen shirt, his fat face beaming, and called to him:
"Grigory, the master wants you. At once."
The general was shuffling about the hall in felt slippers. Only after Grigory had coughed twice did he look up.
"What do you want?"
"You sent for me."
"Ah, yes! Go and saddle the stallion and my horse. Tell Lukerya not to feed the dogs. They're going hunting."
Grigory turned to leave the room. His master stopped him with a shout: "D'you hear? And you're going with me."
Aksinya thrust a cake into the pocket of Grigory's coat and hissed: "He won't even let a man eat, the devil take him. Put on your scarf at least, Grisha."
Grigory led the saddled horses to the fence, and whistled to the dogs. Listnitsky came out, attired in a jerkin of blue cloth and girdled with an ornamental leather belt. A nickel-plated flask in a cork case was slung at his back; the whip hanging from his arm trailed behind him like a snake.
As he held the bridle for his master to mount Grigory was astonished at the ease with which old Listnitsky hoisted his bony body into the saddle. "Keep close behind me," the general curtly ordered, as he lovingly gathered the reins in his gloved hand.
Grigory rode the stallion. Its hind hoofs were not shod, and as it trod on the shards of ice it slipped and sat on its hind quarters. The old general sat hunched but firm in the saddle.
The horses moved on at a good pace. The stallion strained at the bit and arched its short neck, squinting round at its rider and trying to bite his knees. When they reached the top of the rise, Listnitsky put his horse into a fast trot. The chain of hounds followed Grigory; the old black bitch ran with her muzzle touching the end of the stallion's tail. The horse tried to reach her by falling back on its hind quarters, but the bitch dropped behind, looking up plaintively, like an old woman, at Grigory as he glanced round.
They reached their objective, the Olshansky ravine, in half an hour. Listnitsky rode through the undergrowth along the brow of the slope. Grigory dropped down into the rain-washed ravine, cautiously avoiding the numerous potholes. From time to time he looked up, and through the steely-blue of a straggling and naked elder grove he saw Listnitsky's clean-cut figure. As the old man leaned forward and rose in his stirrups, his blue, belted coat wrinkled at the back. Behind him the hounds were running in a bunch along the undulating ridge. As he rode across the steep watercourse Grigory leaned back in the saddle.
"I could do with a smoke," he thought, "I'll let go of the reins and get my pouch." Pulling off his glove, Grigory fumbled in his pocket for some cigarette paper.
"After him!" the shout came like a pistol shot from the other side of the ridge.
Grigory looked up sharply, smd saw Listnitsky galloping up the slope with upraised whip. . ..
"After him!"
Slipping along with body close to the ground, a moulting dirty-brown wolf was running swiftly across the marshy rush and reedy-grown bottom of the ravine. Leaping, a gully, it stopped and turned quickly, catching sight of
the dogs. They were coming after it spread out in horseshoe formation, to cut it off from the wood at the end of the ravine.
With a springy stride the wolf leaped on to a small hillock and headed for the wood. The old bitch was cutting it off, husbanding her strength in short strides, another hound, one of the best and fiercest in the pack, was coming up from behind. The wolf hesitated for a moment, and as Grigory rode up out of the ravine he lost sight of it. When next he had a good view from the hillock the wolf was far away in the steppe, making for a neighbouring ravine. Grigory could see the hounds running through the undergrowth behind it, and old Listnitsky riding slightly to the side, belabouring his horse with the butt of his whip. As the wolf reached the ravine the hounds began to overtake it, and one, the grizzled hound known as Hawk, seemed to hang like a whitish rag from the wolf's loins.
"After him!" the shout was wafted back to Grigory.
Grigory put his horse into a gallop, vainly trying to see what was happening ahead of him. His eyes were streaming with tears and his ears were stuffed up with the whistling wind. He was suddenly fired by the excitement of the hunt. Bending over his horse's neck, he
flew along at a mad gallop. When he reached the ravine neither wolf nor dogs were to be seen. A moment or two later Listnitsky overtook him. Reining in his horse sharply he shouted:
"Which way did they go?"
"Into the ravine, I think."
"You overtake them on the left. After them!" The old man dug his heels into his horse's flanks and rode off to the right. Grigory dropped into a hollow, and with whip and shout rode his horse hard for a verst and a half. The damp, sticky earth flew up under the hoofs, striking him on the face. The long ravine curved to the right and branched into three. Grigory crossed the first fork, and then caught sight of the dark chain of hounds chasing the wolf across the steppe. The animal had been headed off from the heart of the ravine, which was densely overgrown with oaks and alders, and was now making for a dry brush and thistle-covered dell.
Rising in his stirrups, and wiping the tears from his wind-lashed eyes with his sleeve, Grigory watched them. Glancing momentarily to the left, he realized that he was in the steppe close to his native village. Near by lay the irregular square of land which he and Natalya had ploughed in the autumn. He deliberately
guided the stallion across the ploughed land, and during the few moments in which the animal was sliding and stumbling over the clods the zest for the hunt died to ashes within him. He now calmly urged on the heavily-sweating horse, and glancing round to see whether Listnitsky was looking, dropped into an easy trot.
Some distance away he could see the deserted camping quarters of the ploughmen; a little farther off three pairs of bullocks were dragging a plough across the fresh, velvety soil.
From our village, surely. Whose land is that? That's not Anikushka, is it? Grigory screwed up his eyes trying to recognize the man following the plough.
He saw two Cossacks drop the plough and run to head off the wolf from the near-by ravine. One, in a peaked, red-banded cap, the strap under his chin, was waving an iron bar. Suddenly the wolf squatted down in a deep furrow. The foremost hound flew right over it and fell with its forelegs doubled under it; the old bitch following tried to stop, her hind quarters scraping along the cloddy, ploughed ground; but unable to halt in time, she tumbled against the wolf. The hunted animal shook its head violently, and the bitch ricochetted off it. Now the mass of hounds fastened on the wolf,
and they all dragged for some paces over the ploughed land. Grigory was off his horse half a minute before his master. He fell to his knees, drawing back his hunting knife.
"There! In the throat!" the Cossack with the iron bar cried in a voice which Grigory knew well. Panting heavily, he dropped down at Grigory's side, and dragging away the hound which had fastened on the hunted animal's belly, gripped the wolf's forelegs in one hand. Grigory felt under the animal's shaggy fur for its windpipe, and drew the knife across it.
"The dogs! The dogs! Drive them off," old Listnitsky croaked as he dropped from the saddle.
Grigory with difficulty managed to drive away the dogs, then glanced towards his master. Standing a little way off was Stepan Asta-khov. His face working strangely, he was turning the iron bar over and over in his hands.
And quiet flows the Don; a novel Page 20