Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  Here at the ball Hadji Murád tried to speak to Vorontsóv about buying out his family, but Vorontsóv, pretending that he had not heard him, walked away, and Lóris-Mélikov afterwards told Hadji Murád that this was not the place to talk about business.

  When it struck eleven Hadji Murád, having made sure of the time by the watch the Vorontsóvs had given him, asked Lóris-Mélikov whether he might now leave. Lóris-Mélikov said he might, though it would be better to stay. In spite of this Hadji Murád did not stay, but drove in the phaeton placed at his disposal to the quarters that had been assigned to him.

  XI

  ON the fifth day of Hadji Murád’s stay in Tiflis Lóris-Mélikov, the Viceroy’s aide-de-camp, came to see him at the latter’s command.

  ‘My head and my hands are glad to serve the Sirdar,’ said Hadji Murád with his usual diplomatic expression, bowing his head and putting his hands to his chest. ‘Command me!’ said he, looking amiably into Lóris-Mélikov’s face.

  Lóris-Mélikov sat down in an arm-chair placed by the table and Hadji Murád sank onto a low divan opposite and, resting his hands on his knees, bowed his head and listened attentively to what the other said to him.

  Lóris-Mélikov, who spoke Tartar fluently, told him that though the prince knew about his past life, he yet wanted to hear the whole story from himself.

  ‘Tell it me, and I will write it down and translate it into Russian and the prince will send it to the Emperor.’

  Hadji Murád remained silent for a while (he never interrupted anyone but always waited to see whether his collocutor had not something more to say), then he raised his head, shook back his cap, and smiled the peculiar childlike smile that had captivated Márya Vasílevna.

  ‘I can do that,’ said he, evidently flattered by the thought that his story would be read by the Emperor.

  ‘Thou must tell me’ (in Tartar nobody is addressed as ‘you’) ‘everything, deliberately from the beginning,’ said Lóris-Mélikov drawing a notebook from his pocket.

  ‘I can do that, only there is much – very much – to tell! Many events have happened!’ said Hadji Murád.

  ‘If thou canst not do it all in one day thou wilt finish it another time,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

  ‘Shall I begin at the beginning?’

  ‘Yes, at the very beginning … where thou wast born and where thou didst live.’

  Hadji Murád’s head sank and he sat in that position for a long time. Then he took a stick that lay beside the divan, drew a little knife with an ivory gold-inlaid handle, sharp as a razor, from under his dagger, and started whittling the stick with it and speaking at the same time.

  ‘Write: Born in Tselméss, a small aoul, “the size of an ass’s head”, as we in the mountains say,’ he began. ‘Not far from it, about two cannon-shots, lies Khunzákh where the Khans lived. Our family was closely connected with them.

  ‘My mother, when my eldest brother Osman was born, nursed the eldest Khan, Abu Nutsal Khan. Then she nursed the second son of the Khan, Umma Khan, and reared him; but Akhmet my second brother died, and when I was born and the Khansha bore Bulách Khan, my mother would not go as wet-nurse again. My father ordered her to, but she would not. She said: “I should again kill my own son, and I will not go.” Then my father, who was passionate, struck her with a dagger and would have killed her had they not rescued her from him. So she did not give me up, and later on she composed a song … but I need not tell that.’

  ‘Yes, you must tell everything. It is necessary,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

  Hadji Murád grew thoughtful. He remembered how his mother had laid him to sleep beside her under a fur coat on the roof of the sáklya, and he had asked her to show him the place in her side where the scar of her wound was still visible.

  He repeated the song, which he remembered:

  ‘My white bosom was pierced by the blade of bright steel,

  But I laid my bright sun, my dear boy, close upon it

  Till his body was bathed in the stream of my blood.

  And the wound healed without aid of herbs or of grass.

  As I feared not death, so my boy will ne’er fear it.’

  ‘My mother is now in Shamil’s hands,’ he added, ‘and she must be rescued.’

  He remembered the fountain below the hill, when holding on to his mother’s sharováry (loose Turkish trousers) he had gone with her for water. He remembered how she had shaved his head for the first time, and how the reflection of his round bluish head in the shining brass vessel that hung on the wall had astonished him. He remembered a lean dog that had licked his face. He remembered the strange smell of the lepéshki (a kind of flat cake) his mother had given him – a smell of smoke and of sour milk. He remembered how his mother had carried him in a basket on her back to visit his grandfather at the farmstead. He remembered his wrinkled grandfather with his grey hairs, and how he had hammered silver with his sinewy hands.

  ‘Well, so my mother did not go as nurse,’ he said with a jerk of his head, ‘and the Khansha took another nurse but still remained fond of my mother, and my mother used to take us children to the Khansha’s palace, and we played with her children and she was fond of us.

  ‘There were three young Khans: Abu Nutsal Khan my brother Osman’s foster-brother; Umma Khan my own sworn brother; and Bulách Khan the youngest – whom Shamil threw over the precipice. But that happened later.

  ‘I was about sixteen when murids began to visit the aouls. They beat the stones with wooden scimitars and cried, “Mussulmans, Ghazavát!” The Chechens all went over to Muridism and the Avars began to go over too. I was then living in the palace like a brother of the Khans. I could do as I liked, and I became rich. I had horses and weapons and money. I lived for pleasure and had no care, and went on like that till the time when Kazi-Mulla, the Imám, was killed and Hamzád succeeded him. Hamzád sent envoys to the Khans to say that if they did not join the Ghazavát he would destroy Khunzákh.

  ‘This needed consideration. The Khans feared the Russians, but were also afraid to join in the Holy War. The old Khansha sent me with her second son, Umma Khan, to Tiflis to ask the Russian Commander-in-Chief for help against Hamzád. The Commander-in-Chief at Tiflis was Baron Rosen. He did not receive either me or Umma Khan. He sent word that he would help us, but did nothing. Only his officers came riding to us and played cards with Umma Khan. They made him drunk with wine and took him to bad places, and he lost all he had to them at cards. His body was as strong as a bull’s and he was as brave as a lion, but his soul was weak as water. He would have gambled away his last horses and weapons if I had not made him come away.

  ‘After visiting Tiflis my ideas changed and I advised the old Khansha and the Khans to join the Ghazavát.…’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov. ‘Were you not pleased with the Russians?’

  Hadji Murád paused.

  ‘No, I was not pleased,’ he answered decidedly, closing his eyes. ‘And there was also another reason why I wished to join the Ghazavát.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Why, near Tselméss the Khan and I encountered three murids, two of whom escaped but the third one I shot with my pistol.

  ‘He was still alive when I approached to take his weapons. He looked up at me, and said, “Thou hast killed me … I am happy; but thou art a Mussulman, young and strong. Join the Ghazavát! God wills it!’ ”

  ‘And did you join it?’

  ‘I did not, but it made me think,’ said Hadji Murád, and he went on with his tale.

  ‘When Hamzád approached Khunzákh we sent our Elders to him to say that we would agree to join the Ghazavát if the Imám would send a learned man to explain it to us. Hamzád had our Elders’ moustaches shaved off, their nostrils pierced, and cakes hung to their noses, and in that condition he sent them back to us.

  ‘The Elders brought word that Hamzád was ready to send a sheik to teach us the Ghazavát, but only if the Khansha sent him her youngest son as a hostag
e. She took him at his word and sent her youngest son, Bulách Khan. Hamzád received him well and sent to invite the two elder brothers also. He sent word that he wished to serve the Khans as his father had served their father.… The Khansha was a weak, stupid, and conceited woman, as all women are when they are not under control. She was afraid to send away both sons and sent only Umma Khan. I went with him. We were met by murids about a mile before we arrived and they sang and shot and caracoled around us, and when we drew near, Hamzád came out of his tent and went up to Umma Khan’s stirrup and received him as a Khan. He said, “I have not done any harm to thy family and do not wish to do any. Only do not kill me and do not prevent my bringing the people over to the Ghazavát, and I will serve you with my whole army as my father served your father! Let me live in your house and I will help you with my advice, and you shall do as you like!”

  ‘Umma Khan was slow of speech. He did not know how to reply and remained silent. Then I said that if this was so, let Hamzád come to Khunzákh and the Khansha and the Khans would receive him with honour.… But I was not allowed to finish – and here I first encountered Shamil, who was beside the Imám. He said to me, “Thou hast not been asked.… It was the Khan!”

  ‘I was silent, and Hamzád led Umma Khan into his tent. Afterwards Hamzád called me and ordered me to go to Khunzákh with his envoys. I went. The envoys began persuading the Khansha to send her eldest son also to Hamzád. I saw there was treachery and told her not to send him; but a woman has as much sense in her head as an egg has hair. She ordered her son to go. Abu Nutsal Khan did not wish to. Then she said, “I see thou art afraid!” Like a bee she knew where to sting him most painfully. Abu Nutsal Khan flushed and did not speak to her any more, but ordered his horse to be saddled. I went with him.

  ‘Hamzád met us with even greater honour than he had shown Umma Khan. He himself rode out two rifle-shot lengths down the hill to meet us. A large party of horsemen with their banners followed him, and they too sang, shot, and caracoled.

  ‘When we reached the camp, Hamzád led the Khan into his tent and I remained with the horses.…

  ‘I was some way down the hill when I heard shots fired in Hamzád’s tent. I ran there and saw Umma Khan lying prone in a pool of blood, and Abu Nutsal was fighting the murids. One of his cheeks had been hacked off and hung down. He supported it with one hand and with the other stabbed with his dagger at all who came near him. I saw him strike down Hamzád’s brother and aim a blow at another man, but then the murids fired at him and he fell.’

  Hadji Murád stopped and his sunburnt face flushed a dark red and his eyes became bloodshot.

  ‘I was seized with fear and ran away.’

  ‘Really?… I thought thou never wast afraid,’ said Lóris-Mélikov.

  ‘Never after that.… Since then I have always remembered that shame, and when I recalled it I feared nothing!’

  XII

  ‘BUT enough! It is time for me to pray,’ said Hadji Murád drawing from an inner breast-pocket of his Circassian coat Vorontsóv’s repeater watch and carefully pressing the spring. The repeater struck twelve and a quarter. Hadji Murád listened with his head on one side, repressing a childlike smile.

  ‘Kunák Vorontsóv’s present,’ he said, smiling.

  ‘It is a good watch,’ said Lóris-Mélikov. ‘Well then, go thou and pray, and I will wait.’

  ‘Yakshi. Very well,’ said Hadji Murád and went to his bedroom.

  Left by himself, Lóris-Mélikov wrote down in his notebook the chief things Hadji Murád had related, and then lighting a cigarette began to pace up and down the room. On reaching the door opposite the bedroom he heard animated voices speaking rapidly in Tartar. He guessed that the speakers were Hadji Murád’s murids, and opening the door he went in to them.

  The room was impregnated with that special leathery acid smell peculiar to the mountaineers. On a búrka spread out on the floor sat the one-eyed, red-haired Gamzálo, in a tattered greasy beshmét, plaiting a bridle. He was saying something excitedly, speaking in a hoarse voice, but when Lóris-Mélikov entered he immediately became silent and continued his work without paying any attention to him.

  In front of Gamzálo stood the merry Khan Mahomá showing his white teeth, his black lashless eyes glittering, and saying something over and over again. The handsome Eldár, his sleeves turned up on his strong arms, was polishing the girths of a saddle suspended from a nail. Khanéfi, the principal worker and manager of the household, was not there, he was cooking their dinner in the kitchen.

  ‘What were you disputing about?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov after greeting them.

  ‘Why, he keeps on praising Shamil,’ said Khan Mahomá giving his hand to Lóris-Mélikov. ‘He says Shamil is a great man, learned, holy, and a dzhigít.’

  ‘How is it that he has left him and still praises him?’

  ‘He has left him and still praises him,’ repeated Khan Mahomá, his teeth showing and his eyes glittering.

  ‘And does he really consider him a saint?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov.

  ‘If he were not a saint the people would not listen to him,’ said Gamzálo rapidly.

  ‘Shamil is no saint, but Mansúr was!’ replied Khan Mahomá. ‘He was a real saint. When he was Imám the people were quite different. He used to ride through the aouls and the people used to come out and kiss the hem of his coat and confess their sins and vow to do no evil. Then all the people – so the old men say – lived like saints: not drinking, nor smoking, nor neglecting their prayers, and forgiving one another their sins even when blood had been spilt. If anyone then found money or anything, he tied it to a stake and set it up by the roadside. In those days God gave the people success in everything – not as now.’

  ‘In the mountains they don’t smoke or drink now,’ said Gamzálo.

  ‘Your Shamil is a lamorey,’ said Khan Mahomá, winking at Lóris-Mélikov. (Lamorey was a contemptuous term for a mountaineer.)

  ‘Yes, lamorey means mountaineer,’ replied Gamzálo. ‘It is in the mountains that the eagles dwell.’

  ‘Smart fellow! Well hit!’ said Khan Mahomá with a grin, pleased at his adversary’s apt retort.

  Seeing the silver cigarette-case in Lóris-Mélikov’s hand, Khan Mahomá asked for a cigarette, and when Lóris-Mélikov remarked that they were forbidden to smoke, he winked with one eye and jerking his head in the direction of Hadji Murád’s bedroom replied that they could do it as long as they were not seen. He at once began smoking – not inhaling – and pouting his red lips awkwardly as he blew out the smoke.

  ‘That is wrong!’ said Gamzálo severely, and left the room. Khan Mahomá winked in his direction, and while smoking asked Lóris-Mélikov where he could best buy a silk beshmét and a white cap.

  ‘Why, hast thou so much money?’

  ‘I have enough,’ replied Khan Mahomá with a wink.

  ‘Ask him where he got the money,’ said Eldár, turning his handsome smiling face towards Lóris-Mélikov.

  ‘Oh, I won it!’ said Khan Mahomá quickly, and related how while walking in Tiflis the day before he had come upon a group of men – Russians and Armenians – playing at orlyánka (a kind of heads-and-tails). The stake was a large one: three gold pieces and much silver. Khan Mahomá at once saw what the game consisted in, and jingling the coppers he had in his pocket he went up to the players and said he would stake the whole amount.

  ‘How couldst thou do it? Hadst thou so much?’ asked Lóris-Mélikov.

  ‘I had only twelve kopeks,’ said Khan Mahomá, grinning.

  ‘But if thou hadst lost?’

  ‘Why, this!’ said Khan Mahomá pointing to his pistol.

  ‘Wouldst thou have given that?’

  ‘Give it indeed! I should have run away, and if anyone had tried to stop me I should have killed him – that’s all!’

  ‘Well, and didst thou win?’

  ‘Aye, I won it all and went away!’

  Lóris-Mélikov quite understood what sort of men Khan Mahomá a
nd Eldár were. Khan Mahomá was a merry fellow, careless and ready for any spree. He did not know what to do with his superfluous vitality. He was always gay and reckless, and played with his own and other people’s lives. For the sake of that sport with life he had now come over to the Russians, and for the same sport he might go back to Shamil to-morrow.

  Eldár was also quite easy to understand. He was a man entirely devoted to his murshid; calm, strong, and firm.

  The red-haired Gamzálo was the only one Lóris-Mélikov did not understand. He saw that that man was not only loyal to Shamil but felt an insuperable aversion, contempt, repugnance, and hatred for all Russians, and Lóris-Mélikov could therefore not understand why he had come over to them. It occurred to him that, as some of the higher officials suspected, Hadji Murád’s surrender and his tales of hatred of Shamil might be false, and that perhaps he had surrendered only to spy out the Russians’ weak spots that, after escaping back to the mountains, he might be able to direct his forces accordingly. Gamzálo’s whole person strengthened this suspicion.

  ‘The others, and Hadji Murád himself, know how to hide their intentions, but this one betrays them by his open hatred,’ thought he.

  Lóris-Mélikov tried to speak to him. He asked whether he did not feel dull. ‘No, I don’t!’ he growled hoarsely without stopping his work, and glancing at his questioner out of the corner of his one eye. He replied to all Lóris-Mélikov’s other questions in a similar manner.

  While Lóris-Mélikov was in the room Hadji Murád’s fourth murid came in, the Avar Khanéfi; a man with a hairy face and neck and an arched chest as rough as if it were overgrown with moss. He was strong and a hard worker, always engrossed in his duties, and like Eldár unquestioningly obedient to his master.

  When he entered the room to fetch some rice, Lóris-Mélikov stopped him and asked where he came from and how long he had been with Hadji Murád.