And quiet flows the Don; a novel

by Sholokhov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich, 1905-

  In the morning the same routine began again, and the days were as like one another as peas.

  In the whole of the estate there were only two women: the old wife of the steward, and the steward's pretty young housemaid, a Polish girl Franya. Franya often ran from the house to the kitchen where the old, browless army cook was in charge. Winking and heaving exaggeratedly loud sighs, the troops drilling on the parade ground watched every movement of the girl's grey skirt as she ran across the yard. Feeling the gaze of Cossacks and officers fixed upon her, she bathed in the streams of lasciviousness that came from three hundred pairs of eyes, and swung her hips provocatively as she ran backward and forward between the kitchen and the house, smiling at each troop in turn, and at the officers in particular. Although all fought for her attentions, rumour had it that only the squadron commander had won them,

  One day in early spring Grigory was on duty in the stables. He spent most of his time at one end, where the officers' horses were excited by the presence of a mare. He had just given the squadron commander's horse a taste of the whip and was attending to his own. With a sidelong glance at its master the horse went on champing the hay, its grazed hind-foot lifted off the ground. As he adjusted the halter, Grigory heard a sound of struggling and a muffled cry coming from the dark corner at the far end of the stable. Startled by the unusual noise, he hurried past the stalls. His eyes were suddenly blinded as someone slammed the stable door, and he heard a suppressed voice calling:

  "Hurry up, boys!"

  Grigory hastened his steps, and called out:

  "Who's there?"

  The next moment he bumped into one of the sergeants, who was groping his way to the door. "That you, Melekhov?" the sergeant whispered, putting his hand on Grigory's shoulder.

  "Stop! What's up?"

  The sergeant burst into a guilty snigger and seized Grigory's sleeve. "We. . . . Hey, where're you going?" Tearing his arm away, Grigory ran and threw open the door. In the deserted yard a draggle-tailed hen, unaware that the

  cook already had designs on her for the steward's soup the next day, was scratching some dung in search of a place to lay her egg.

  The light momentarily blinded Grigory; he shaded his eyes with his hand and turned round, hearing the noise in the dark corner of the stable growing louder. He ran towards the sound, and was met by Zharkov, buttoning up his trousers.

  "What the . . . what are you doing here?" "Hurry up!" Zharkov whispered, breathing bad breath in Grigory's face. "It's wonderful. . . . They've dragged the girl Franya in there . . . laid her out!" His snigger suddenly broke off as Grigory sent him flying against the log wall of the stable. Grigory's eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and there was fear in them as he ran towards the noise. In the corner, Grigory found a crowd of Cossacks of the First Troop. He silently pushed his way through them, and saw Franya lying motionless on the floor, her head wrapped in horsecloths, her dress torn and pulled back above her breasts, her legs, white in the darkness, flung out shamelessly and horribly. A Cossack had just risen from her; grinning sheepishly, he was stepping back to make way for the next, Grigory tore his way back through the crowd and ran to the door, shouting for the

  sergeant-major. But the other Cossacks ran after him and caught him at the door. They dragged him back, putting their hands over his mouth. He tore one man's tunic from hem to collar and gave another a kick in the stomach, but the others pinned him down. As they had done to Franya, they wound a horsecloth round his head and tied his hands behind him, then, keeping quiet so that he should not recognize their voices, threw him into an empty manger. Choking in the stinking horse-cloth, he tried to shout, and kicked furiously at the partition. He heard whispering in the corner, and the door creaking as the Cossacks went in and out. He was set free some twenty minutes later. The sergeant-major and two Cossacks from another troop were standing at the door.

  "You just keep your mouth shut!" the sergeant-major said to him, winking hard and glancing over his shoulder.

  "Don't blab or we'll tear your ears off," Dubok, a Cossack from another troop, said with a grin.

  The two Cossacks went in and lifted up the motionless bundle that was Franya (her legs were parted stiffly under her skirt), and climbing on to a manger, thrust it through a hole left in the wall by a lose plank. The wall bordered on the orchard. Above each §tall was

  a tiny, grimy window. Some of the Cossacks clambered on to the stall partitions to watch what Franya would do, others hastened out of the stables. Grigory, too, was seized by a bestial curiosity, and gripping a cross-beam, he drew himself up to one of the windows and looked down. Dozens of eyes stared through the dirty windows at the girl lying under the wall. She lay on her back, her legs crossing and uncrossing like scissor blades, her fingers scrabbling in the snow by the wall. Grigory could not see her face but he heard the suppressed breathing of other Cossacks at the windows, and the soft and pleasant crunch of hay under their feet.

  She lay there a long time, and at last struggled on to her hands and knees. Her arms trembled, hardly able to bear her. Grigory saw that clearly. Swaying, she scrambled to her feet, and, dishevelled, unfamiliar, hostile, she passed her eyes in a long, slow stare over the windows.

  Then she staggered away, one hand clinging to the woodbine bushes, the other groping along the wall.

  Grigory jumped down from the partition and rubbed his throat, feeling that he was about to choke. At the door someone, afterwards he

  could not even remember who, said to him in distinct and unequivocal tones:

  "Breathe a word . . . and by Christ, we'll kill you!"

  On the parade ground the troop commander noticed that a button had been torn from Gri-gory's greatcoat, and asked:

  "Who have you been wrestling with? What style d'you call this?"

  Grigory glanced down at the little round hole left by the missing button; overwhelmed by the memory, for the first time in years he felt like crying.

  Ill

  A sultry, sunny July haze lay over the steppe. The ripe unharvested floods of wheat smoked with yellow dust. The metal of the reapers was too hot to touch. It was painful to look up at the flaming, bluish-yellow sky. Where the wheat ended, a saffron sweep of clover began.

  The entire village had moved out into the steppe to cut the rye. The horses choked in the heat and the pungent dust, and were restive as they dragged the reapers. Now and then a wave of air from the river raised a fringe of dust over the steppe, and the sun was enveloped in a tingling haze.

  Since early morning Pyotr, who was forking the wheat off the reaper platform, had drunk half a bucketful of water. Within a minute of his drinking the warm, unpleasant liquid his throat was dry again. His shirt was wet through, the sweat streamed from his face, there was a continual trilling ring in his ears. Darya, her head and face wrapped in her kerchief, her shirt unbuttoned, was gathering the corn into stooks. Big grey beads of sweat ran down between her dusky breasts. Natalya was leading the horses. Her cheeks were burned the colour of beetroot, and the glaring sun brought tears to her eyes. Pantelei was walking up and down the swaths of corn, his wet shirt scalding his body. His beard looked like a stream of melting black cart-grease flowing over his chest.

  "Make you sweat?" Christonya shouted from a passing cart.

  "Wet through!" Pantelei stumped on, wiping his perspiring belly with the tail of his shirt.

  "Pyotr!" Darya called. "Let's stop." "Wait a bit; we'll finish this row." "Let's wait till it's cooler. I've had enough." Natalya halted the horses; her chest was heaving as though it were she who had been pulling the reaper. Darya went across to them,

  picking her way carefully over the cut corn on her dark blistered feet.

  "Pyotr, it's not far from the pond here." "Not far! Only three versts or so!" "What wouldn't I give for a dip!" "While you're getting there and back . . ." Natalya began with a sigh.

  "Why the devil should we walk! We'll unharness the horses and ride."

  Pyotr glanced uneasily at his father
tying up a sheaf, and shrugged.

  "All right, unharness the horses." Darya unfastened the traces and jumped agilely on to the mare's back. Natalya, smiling with cracked lips, led her horse to the reaper and tried to mount from the driver's seat. Pyotr went to her aid and gave her a leg up on to the horse. They rode off. Darya, sitting her horse Cossack fashion, trotted in front, her skirt tucked up above her bare knees, her kerchief pushed on to the back of the head.

  "Mind you don't get sore!" Pyotr could not help shouting after her.

  "You needn't worry!" Darya shouted back carelessly.

  As they crossed the field track Pyotr glanced to his left and noticed a tiny cloud of dust moving swiftly along the distant highroad from the village.

  "Someone riding there!" he remarked to Na-talya, screwing up his eyes.

  "And fast, too! Look at the dust!" Natalya replied in surprise.

  "Who on earth can it be! Darya!" Pyotr called to his wife. "Rein in for a minute, and let's watch that rider!"

  The cloud of dust dropped down into a hollow and disappeared, then came up again on the other side. Now the figure of the rider could be seen through the dust. Pyotr sat gazing with his dirty palm set against the edge of his straw hat.

  "No horse can stand that pace for long. He'll kill it!" He frowned and took his hand away; an agitated expression passed across his face.

  Now the horseman could be seen quite plainly. He was riding his horse at a furious gallop, his left hand holding on his cap, a dusty red flag fluttering in his right. He rode along the track so close to them that Pyotr heard his horse's panting breath. As he passed, the man shouted:

  "Alarm!"

  A flake of yellow soapy foam flew from his horse and fell into a hoof-print. Pyotr followed the rider with his eyes. The heavy snort of the horse, and, as he stared after the retreating fig-

  ure, the sight of the horse's croup, wet and glittering like steel, remained impressed in his memory.

  Still not realizing the nature of the misfortune that had come upon them, Pyotr gazed stupidly at the foam flying in the dust, then glanced around the rolling steppe. From all sides the Cossacks were running over the yellow strips of stubble towards the village; across the steppe, as far as the distant upland, little clouds of dust indicating horsemen were to be seen, A long trail of dust moved along the road to the village. The Cossacks who were on the active service list abandoned their work, took their horses out of the shafts and galloped off to the village. Pyotr saw Christonya unharness his Guards charger from a wagon and ride off at a wild pace, glancing back over his shoulder.

  "What's it all about?" Natalya half groaned, with a frightened look at Pyotr. Her gaze, the gaze of a trapped hare, startled him to action. He galloped back to the reaper, jumped off his horse before it had halted, hustled into the trousers he had flung off while working, and waving his hand to his father, tore off to add one more cloud of dust to those which had already blossomed over the sultry steppe.

  He found a dense grey crowd assembled on the square. Many were already wearing their army uniform and equipment. The blue military caps of the men belonging to the Ataman's Regiment rose a head higher than the rest, like Dutch ganders among the small fry of the farmyard.

  The village tavern was closed. The military police officer had a gloomy and care-worn look. The women, attired in their holiday clothes, lined the fences along the streets. One word was on everybody's lips: "Mobilization." Intoxicated, excited faces. The general anxiety had been communicated to the horses, and they were kicking and plunging and snorting angrily. The square was strewn with empty bottles and wrappers from cheap sweets. A cloud of dust hung low in the air.

  Pyotr led his saddled horse by the rem. Close to the church fence a big swarthy Cossack of the Ataman's Regiment stood buttoning up his blue sharovari, with his mouth gaping in a white-toothed smile, while a stocky little woman, his wife or sweetheart, stormed at him.

  "I'll give it you for going with that hussy!" the little woman promised.

  27—1933 417

  She was drunk, her dishevelled hair was scattered with the husks of sunflower seed, her flowered kerchief hung loose. The guardsman tightened his belt and, grinning widely, dropped to his haunches, leaving enough room for a year-old calf to pass under the voluminous folds of his sharouari.

  "Keep off, Mashka."

  "You great shameless brute! Woman-chaser!"

  "What about it?"

  "I'll give it you!"

  Near him a red-bearded sergeant-major was arguing with an artilleryman.

  "Nothing will come of it, never fear!" he was assuring him. "We'll be mobilized for a few days, and then back home again."

  "But suppose there's a war?"

  "Pah, my friend! What country could stand up to us?"

  In a neighbouring group a handsome, elderly Cossack was arguing heatedly.

  "It's nothing to do with us. Let them do their own fighting, we haven't got our corn in yet."

  "It's a shame! Here we are standing here, and on a day like this we could harvest enough for a whole year."

  "The cattle will get among the stooks!"

  "And we'd just begun to reap the barley!"

  "They say the Austrian tsar's been murdered."

  "No, his heir."

  "But the ataman says they've called us up just in case."

  "We're in for it now, lads."

  "Another twelve months and I'd have been out of the third line of reserves," an elderly Cossack said regretfully.

  "What do they want you for. Grandad?"

  "Don't you worry, as soon as they start killing the men off, they'll be taking the old ones, too."

  "The tavern's closed!"

  "What about going to Marfutka's? She'd sell us a barrel!"

  The inspection started. Three Cossacks led a fourth, blood-stained and completely drunk, into the village administration. He threw himself back, tore his shirt open, and rolling his eyes, shouted:

  "I'll show the muzhiks! I'll have their blood! They'll know the Don Cossack!"

  The circle around him laughed approvingly.

  "That's right, give it to them!"

  "What have they grabbed him for?"

  "He went for some muzhik!"

  "Well, they deserve it."

  "We'll give them some more!"

  "I took a hand when they put them down in 1905. That was a sight worth seeing!"

  "There's going to be war. They'll be sending us again to put them down."

  "Enough of that. Let them hire people for that, or let the police do it. It's a shame for us to."

  Mokhov's shop was surging with people. In the middle Ivan Tomilin was arguing drunken-ly with the owners. Mokhov was trying to pacify him. Atyopin, his partner, had retired to the doorway. "What's all this?" he expostulated. "My word, this is an outrage! Boy, run for the ataman!"

  Rubbing his sweaty hands on his trousers, Tomilin pressed against the frowning merchant and sneered:

  "You've squeezed us and squeezed us with your interest, you swine, and now you've got the wind up. I'll smash your face in! Stealing our Cossack rights, you fat slug!"

  The village ataman was busily pouring out soothing words for the benefit of the Cossacks sun-ounding him: "War? No, there won't be any war. His Honour the chief of the military police said the mobilization was only a drill. There's no need for alarm."

  "Good! Back to the fields as soon as we're home!"

  "What are the authorities thinking about? I have over a hundred dessiatines of harvesting to do."

  "Timoshka! Tell our folk we'll be home again tomorrow."

  "Looks as if they've put a notice up. Let's go and have a look."

  Until late at night the square was alive and noisy with excited crowds.

  Some four days later the red trucks of the troop trains were carrying the Cossack regiments and batteries towards the Russo-Aus-trian frontier.

  "War. . . ."

  From the stalls came the snorting of horses and the damp stench of dung
.

  The same kind of talk in the wagons, the songs mostly of this kind:

  The Don's awake and stirring. The quiet and Christian Don, In obedience to the call. The monarch's call, it marches on.

  At the stations the Cossacks were eyed with inquisitive, benevolent looks. People stared curiously at the stripes on the Cossacks' trousers, at their faces, still dark from their recent labour in the fields.

  "War...."

  Newspapers screamed out the news. At the stations the women waved their handkerchiefs, smiled, threw cigarettes and sweets. Only once, just before the train reached Voronezh, did an old railway worker, half drunk, thrust his head into the truck where Pyotr Melekhov was crowded with twenty-nine other Cossacks, and ask:

  "You going?"

  "Yes. Get in and come with us. Grandad," one of the Cossacks replied.

  "My boy., . . Bullocks for slaughter!" the old man responded and shook his head reproachfully.

  V

  During the fourth week of June, 1914, the divisional staff transferred Grigory Melekhov's regiment to the town of Rovno, to take part in manoeuvres. Two infantry divisions were located in the neighbourhood as well as cavalry units. The Fourth Squadron was stationed in the village of Vladislavka. A fortnight later, tired out with continual manoeuvring, Grigory and the other Cossacks of the Fourth Squadron were lying in their tents, when the squadron commander. Junior Captain Polkov-nikov, galloped furiously back from the regiment staff.

  "We'll be on the move again I suppose," Pro-khor Zykov suggested tentatively, and fell silent waiting for the sound of the bugle.

  The troop sergeant thrust the needle with which he had been mending his trousers into the lining of his cap, and remarked:

  "Looks like it; they won't let us rest for a moment."