Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

by Leo Tolstoy

  When tarantass and box were ready, and when her husband had yet to make his disappearance, Albina began to prepare the authorities by going to the Colonel and telling him that her husband had fallen into a state of melancholia and was threatening to kill himself, and that she feared for his life and begged that he might be released before it was too late. Her acting ability stood her in good stead. The fear and anxiety she expressed for her husband appeared so natural that the Colonel was touched and promised to do all he could. After that Migurski composed the letter which was to be discovered in the cuff of his overcoat left lying on the river bank, and on the evening they had chosen he went down to the Ural, waited until it was dark, laid the clothes and the coat containing the letter on the bank, and returned home. They had prepared him a hiding-place in the loft, secured by a padlock. That night Albina sent word to the Colonel by Ludwika to say that her husband had left the house some twenty hours earlier and had not returned. Next morning her husband’s letter was brought to her, and she, with every appearance of deep despair, went off weeping to show it to the Colonel.

  A week later Albina submitted her request to be allowed to leave for her own land. The grief displayed by Madame Migurski affected everyone who saw her: all were filled with pity for this unfortunate wife and mother. When permission had been granted for her departure, she made a second request – that she might be allowed to exhume the bodies of her children and take them with her.

  The military authorities were astonished at such a display of sentimentality, but agreed to this as well.

  On the evening of the day after this permission had been given, Rosolowski, Albina and Ludwika drove in a hired cart, containing the box, to the cemetery where the children were buried. Albina fell to her knees before the grave, said a prayer, then quickly got up, and turning to Rosolowski said:

  ‘Do what must be done, but I cannot have any part in it,’ and went off by herself.

  Rosolowski and Ludwika moved the gravestone aside and turned over the whole of the top surface of the plot with a shovel so that the grave looked as though it had been opened. When all this was done they called to Albina and returned home taking the box, filled with earth.

  The day fixed for their departure came at last. Rosolowski was rejoicing at the success of the enterprise which seemed almost complete, Ludwika had baked biscuits and pies for the journey, and repeating her favourite turn of phrase, ‘jak mame kocham,’8 said that her heart was bursting with fear and joy at the same time. Migurski was filled with joy, both by his release from the loft where he had spent more than a month, and still more by the renewed vitality and joie de vivre of Albina. She seemed to have forgotten all her former grief and the dangers, and as she might have done in her girlhood, ran to see him in the loft, radiating rapture and delight.

  At three in the morning their Cossack escort arrived, bringing with him the coachman and a team of three horses. Albina, Ludwika and the little dog took their seats on the cushions of the tarantass which were covered with matting. The Cossack and the driver got up on the box, and Migurski, wearing peasant clothes, was lying in the body of the tarantass.

  They were soon out of the town, and the team of good horses pulled the tarantass along the beaten roadway, smooth as stone, through the endless unploughed steppe overgrown with the last season’s silvery feather-grass.

  X

  Albina’s heart had almost stopped beating from hope and delight. Wishing to share her feelings with someone else, she now and then, almost smiling, made a sign with her head to Ludwika, indicating now the broad back of the Cossack seated on the box, now the bottom of the tarantass. Ludwika stared motionlessly ahead with a meaningful expression, only slightly pursing her lips. The day was bright. On all sides stretched the limitless deserted steppe and the silvery feathergrass shining in the slanting rays of the morning sun. Occasionally, first on one side, then on the other side of the hard road on which the rapid, unshod hooves of the Bashkir horses rang out as if on asphalt, the little earth-covered mounds made by gophers came into view; one of the little creatures would be sitting up on sentry duty, and anticipating danger would give a piercing whistle and disappear into the burrow beneath. On rare occasions they met with passers-by: a string of Cossack carts full of wheat, or some Bashkirs on horseback with whom their Cossack exchanged animated remarks in the Tatar tongue. At all the posting stations the horses were fresh and well-fed, and the half-roubles provided by Albina for vodka ensured that the drivers drove the horses, as they put it, like Feldjägers,9 galloping all the way.

  At the first posting station when the first driver had led away the horses and the new driver had not yet brought out the new ones and the Cossack had gone into the yard, Albina bent down and asked her husband how he was feeling and whether he needed anything.

  ‘Excellent, don’t worry. I don’t need anything. I wouldn’t mind lying here for two whole days.’

  Towards evening they drew into a large village called Dergachi. To give her husband the chance to stretch his limbs and refresh himself Albina told the driver to stop not at the posting station but at a coaching inn, then immediately gave the Cossack some money and sent him off to buy milk and eggs. The tarantass was standing beneath a projecting roof. It was dark in the courtyard, and having stationed Ludwika to watch out for the Cossack, Albina released her husband and gave him food and drink, after which he crawled back into his hiding-place before the Cossack returned. They had a new team of horses brought round and continued on their way. Albina felt her spirits rising more and more and was unable to contain her cheerfulness and general delight. There was no one to talk to other than Ludwika, the Cossack and her little dog Trezorka, so she amused herself with them. Despite her plainness, at every contact with a man Ludwika would immediately detect him sending amorous glances in her direction, and she now suspected something of the sort in her relations with the burly and genial Ural Cossack with unusually bright and kind blue eyes who was escorting them and behaving most agreeably towards the two women, treating them with gentle and good-humoured kindness. Apart from Trezorka, whom Albina had to threaten to prevent him from sniffing about under the seat, she now found amusement in watching Ludwika’s coquettish advances to the Cossack, who was quite unaware of the intentions being ascribed to him, and smiled agreeably at her every remark. Albina, stimulated by her sense of danger, by her growing conviction that their plan was succeeding, and by the splendid weather and the fresh air of the steppe, was enjoying the return of those youthful high spirits and merriment which she had not felt for such a long time. Migurski could hear her cheerful chatter and he too, despite the physical discomfort which he concealed from them (for he was extremely hot and tormented by thirst), forgot about himself and rejoiced in Albina’s joy.

  Towards evening on the second day something came into sight in distance through the mist. It was the town of Saratov and the Volga. The Cossack with his farsighted steppe-dweller’s eyes could distinguish the Volga and the masts of the ships, and he pointed them out to Ludwika. Ludwika said that she could see them too. But Albina could make out nothing, and remarked loudly, for her husband to hear:

  ‘Saratov, the Volga’ – and as though she was talking to Trezorka, Albina described to her husband everything as it came into view.

  XI

  Albina did not let the carriage drive into Saratov but made the driver stop on the left bank of the river at the settlement of Pokrovskaya directly opposite the town itself. Here she hoped that in the course of the night she would be able to talk to her husband and even get him out of the box. But throughout the short spring night the Cossack did not go away from the tarantass but sat next to it in an empty cart which was standing beneath a projecting roof. Ludwika, on Albina’s instructions, stayed in the tarantass and, convinced that it was on her account that the Cossack would not leave the tarantass, laughed and winked and hid her face in her shawl. But Albina could see nothing amusing in this and grew more and more worried, unable to understand why the Cossack was
so doggedly attached to the vicinity of the tarantass.

  Several times that short night in which dusk almost merged into morning twilight, Albina left her room in the coaching inn and walked along the stuffy verandah to the porch at the back of the building. The Cossack was still not asleep but was sitting on the empty cart, his legs dangling. Only just before dawn when the cocks were already awaking and calling from one farmyard to the next did Albina, going down to the yard, find an opportunity to exchange a few words with her husband. The Cossack was now snoring, sprawled in the cart. She cautiously approached the tarantass and knocked on the box.

  ‘Juzio!’ – No answer. ‘Juzio, Juzio,’ she repeated more loudly, now becoming alarmed.

  ‘What is it my dear, what is the matter?’ came Migurski’s sleepy voice from inside the box.

  ‘Why didn’t you answer me?’

  ‘I was asleep,’ he replied, and from the sound of his voice she knew that he was smiling. ‘Well, and can I come out?’ he asked.

  ‘No, you can’t, the Cossack is here.’ And as she spoke she glanced at the Cossack asleep in the cart.

  And strange to say, although the Cossack was snoring, his eyes, his kindly blue eyes, were open. He looked at her, and only when his glance had lighted on her, closed his eyes.

  ‘Did I just imagine it, or was he really not asleep?’ Albina wondered. ‘I expect I imagined it,’ she thought, and turned back to her husband.

  ‘Try to put up with it a little longer,’ she said. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’

  ‘No. But I should like to smoke.’

  Albina again turned to look at the Cossack. He was sleeping.

  ‘Yes, I imagined it,’ she thought.

  ‘I am going to see the governor now.’

  ‘Well, it is as good a time as any …’

  And Albina took a dress out of her trunk and went back to her room to change.

  When she had changed into her best widow’s dress Albina took a boat across the Volga. On the embankment she hired a cab-driver and drove to the governor’s residence. The governor agreed to see her. This pretty little Polish widow with her sweet smile, speaking beautiful French, made a tremendous impression on the governor, an elderly man who liked to appear younger than his age. He granted all her requests and asked her to come to see him again the next day to receive a written order to the town governor of Tsaritsyn. Rejoicing in the success of her petition and the effect of her own attractiveness which she could see from the governor’s manner, Albina, happy and full of hope, drove back in a carriage down the unmetalled street towards the jetty. The sun had already risen above the woods and its slanting beams were already playing on the rippling water of the mighty river. To right and left on the hillside she could see apple trees like white clouds, covered in fragrant blossom. A forest of masts came into view by the river bank and the sails of the boats showed white on the water lit up by the sun and rippling in a light breeze. At the landing-stage, having consulted the driver, Albina asked whether it was possible to engage a boat to take her to Astrakhan, and at once dozens of noisy, cheerful boatmen offered her their boats and their services. She came to an arrangement with one of the boatmen she particularly liked the look of and went to inspect his open-hulled barge which was lying amid a crowd of others at the wharf. The boat had a mast which could be stepped at will and a sail to allow it to use the power of the wind. In case there should be no wind there were oars provided, and two healthy, cheerful-looking barge-haulers-cum-oarsmen, who were sitting on the boat enjoying the sun. The jovial pilot advised her not to leave the tarantass behind but to remove the wheels and instal it in the boat. ‘It’ll go in just right, and you’ll be more comfortable sitting in there. If God grants us a bit of good weather we shall make the run down to Astrakhan in five days clear.’

  Albina bargained with the boatman and instructed him to come to the Logins’ inn at the Pokrovskaya settlement so that he could have a look at the tarantass and collect a deposit. The whole thing worked out more easily than she had expected. In a state of rapturous happiness Albina crossed the Volga once more, and bidding farewell to the driver, made for the coaching inn.

  XII

  The Cossack Danilo Lifanov came from Strelyetski Outpost10 in the highlands between the Volga and Ural rivers. He was thirty-four years old and he was just completing the final month of his term of Cossack service. His family consisted of an old grandfather of ninety who still remembered the time of Pugachov, two brothers, the daughter-in-law of the elder brother (sentenced to exile with hard labour in Siberia for being an Old Believer), Danilo’s wife and his two daughters. His father had been killed in the war against the French. Danilo was the head of the household. On the farm they had sixteen horses, two ploughing teams of oxen, and fifteen hundred sazhens of private land, all ploughed and sown with their own wheat. He, Danilo, had done his military service in Orenburg and Kazan and was now getting to the end of his period of duty. He kept firmly to the Old Faith: he did not smoke or drink, did not use dishes in common with worldly people, and also kept strictly to his word. In all his undertakings he was slow, steady and reliable and he carried out everything his commander instructed him to do with his complete attention, not forgetting his purpose for a single moment until the job was properly finished. Now he was under orders to escort these two Polish women with the coffins to Saratov, to see that nothing bad befell them on the journey, to ensure that they travelled quietly and did not get up to any mischief, and on reaching Saratov to hand them over decently and in order to the authorities. So he had delivered them to Saratov with their little dog and their coffins and all. These women were charming and well-behaved despite being Polish and they had done nothing bad. But here at the Pokrovskaya settlement last evening he had seen how the little dog had jumped up into the tarantass and begun yelping and wagging his tail, and from under the seat in the tarantass he had heard somebody’s voice. One of the Polish women – the older one – seeing the little dog in the tarantass had looked very scared for some reason, and grabbed hold of the dog and carried it away.

  ‘There’s something in there,’ thought the Cossack, and he started to keep his eyes open. When the younger Polish woman had come out to the tarantass in the night he had pretended to be asleep, and he had distinctly heard a man’s voice coming from the box. Early in the morning he had gone to the police station and reported that the Polish women such as were entrusted to him and not travelling of their own free will, instead of dead bodies were carrying some live man or other in their box.

  When Albina, in her mood of jubilant happiness, convinced that now it was all over and that in a few days they would be free, approached the coaching inn she was surprised to see in the gateway a fashionable-looking carriage and pair with a third trace horse and two Cossacks. A crowd of people thronged round the gateway, staring into the yard.

  She was so full of hope and vitality that it never entered her head that this carriage and pair and the people clustering round might have anything to do with her. She walked into the inn yard and at once, looking under the canopy where the tarantass was standing, saw that a crowd of people were gathered round it, and at the same moment heard the anguished barking of Trezorka. The most dreadful thing that could have happened had happened. In front of the tarantass, his spotless uniform with its bright buttons, shoulder-straps and lacquered boots shining in the sun, stood a portly man with black side-whiskers, saying something in a loud imperious voice. Before him, between two soldiers, in peasant clothes and with wisps of hay in his tousled hair, stood her Juzio, raising and lowering his powerful shoulders, as if perplexed by what was going on around him. Trezorka, unaware that he was the cause of the whole disaster, stood with bristling coat, barking with carefree dislike at the chief of police. On seeing Albina Migurski winced and made to go towards her, but the soldiers held him back.

  ‘Never mind, Albina, never mind,’ said Migurski, smiling at her with his gentle smile.

  ‘And here is the little lady in pers
on!’ said the chief of police. ‘Welcome to you, madam. And are these the coffins of your babies? Eh?’ he said, pointing to Migurski.

  Albina made no reply, but simply crossed her arms on her breast and gazed in open-mouthed horror at her husband.

  As often happens in the very last moments of life and at other crucial points in human experience, she felt and foresaw in an instant a multitude of thoughts and feelings, while not yet grasping her misfortune or believing in it. Her first feeling was one long familiar to her – the feeling of wounded pride at the sight of her hero-husband, humiliated before these coarse, bestial men who now had him in their power. ‘How dare they hold him, the very best of men, in their power!’ Her second feeling, which swept over her almost at the same time as the first, was an awareness of the disaster which was now complete. And this consciousness of disaster revived in her the memory of the chief disaster of her life, the death of her children. And now once again the question came to her: what for? why had her children been taken away? The question ‘Why have my children been taken away?’ called forth a further question: Why was her beloved, the best of men, her husband, now in torment, now being destroyed? What for? And then she remembered that a shameful punishment awaited him, and that she, she alone, was to blame.

  ‘What is your relation to this man? Is this man your husband?’ repeated the chief of police.