He went whistling as far as Mokhov’s front door, then grew timid. He hesitated a moment, and finally went through the yard to the side door. On the steps he asked the maid:
‘Master at home?’
‘He’s drinking tea. Wait!’
He sat down and waited, lit a cigarette, smoked it, and crushed the end on the floor. Mokhov came out, brushing crumbs off his waistcoat. When he saw Mitka he knitted his brows, but said: ‘Come in.’
Mitka entered Mokhov’s cool, private room, feeling that the courage with which he had been charged so far had been sufficient to last only to the threshold. The merchant went to his table, and turned round on his heels: ‘Well?’ Behind his back his fingers scratched at the top of the table.
‘I’ve come to find out …’ Mitka plunged into the cold slime of Mokhov’s eyes and shuddered. ‘Perhaps you’ll give me Elizabieta?’ Despair, anger, fear all combined to bring the perspiration in beads to his face.
Mokhov’s left eyebrow quivered, and the upper lip writhed back from the gums. He stretched out his neck and leaned all his body forward:
‘What? Wha-a-at? You scoundrel! Get out! I’ll haul you before the Ataman! You son of a swine!’
At the sound of Mokhov’s shout Mitka plucked up courage.
‘Don’t take it as an insult. I only thought to make up for my wrong.’
Mokhov rolled his bloodshot eyes and threw a massive iron ashtray at Mitka’s feet. It bounced up and struck him on the knee. But he stoically bore the pain, and throwing open the door, shouted, baring his teeth with shame and pain:
‘As you wish, Sergei Platonovitch, as you wish, but upon my soul … Who would want her now? I thought I’d cover her shame. But now … a dog won’t touch a gnawed bone.’
Pressing his crushed handkerchief to his lips, Mokhov followed on Mitka’s heels. He barred the way to the main door, and Mitka ran into the yard. Here the master had only to wink to Yemelian the coachman, and as Mitka was struggling with the stout latch at the wicket-gate four unleashed dogs tore round the corner of the barn. Seeing Mitka, they sped across the yard straight at him. He had not had time to turn round when the foremost dog was up at his shoulders with its teeth fastened into his jacket. All four rent and tore at him. Mitka thrust them off with his hand, endeavouring to keep his feet. He saw Yemelian, his pipe scattering sparks, disappear into the kitchen, and heard the door slam behind him.
At the steps, his back against a drainpipe, stood Sergei Platonovitch, his white, hairy fists clenched. Swaying, Mitka tore open the door and dragged the bunch of clamorous, hot-smelling dogs after him on his bleeding legs. He seized one by the throat and choked it off, and passing cossacks with difficulty beat off the others.
Chapter Eight
The Melekhovs found Natalia of great use on the farm. Although he was rich and employed labourers, her father had made his children work. Hard-working Natalia won the hearts of her husband’s parents. Ilinichna, who secretly did not like her elder daughter-in-law Daria, took to Natalia from the very first.
‘Sleep on, sleep on, little one! What are you out so early for?’ she would grumble kindly. ‘Go back to bed, we’ll manage without you.’
Even Pantaleimon, who was usually strict in regard to household matters, said to his wife:
‘Listen, wife, don’t wake Natalia up. She’ll work hard enough as it is. She’s going with Grishka to plough today. But whip up that Daria. She’s a lazy woman, and bad. She paints her face and blacks her brows, the bitch.’
Gregor could not grow accustomed to his newly married state; within two or three weeks he realized with fear and vexation that he had not completely broken with Aksinia. The feeling which, in the excitement of the marriage, he had dismissed with a contemptuous wave of the hand had taken deep root. He thought he could forget, but it refused to be forgotten, and the wound bled at the memory. Even before the wedding Piotra had asked him:
‘Grishka, but what about Aksinia?’
‘Well, what about her?’
‘Pity to throw her over, isn’t it?’
‘If I do, someone else will pick her up!’ Gregor had smiled.
But it had not worked out like that. As, burning with his youthful, amorous ardour, he forcedly caressed his wife, he met with only coldness and an embarrassed submission from her. Natalia shrank from bodily delights; her mother had given her her own sluggish, tranquil blood, and as he recalled Aksinia’s passionate fervour Gregor sighed:
‘Your father must have made you of ice, Natalia.’
When he met Aksinia one day she laughed and exclaimed:
‘Hallo, Grishka! How do you find life with your young wife?’
‘We live!’ Gregor shook her off with an evasive reply, and escaped as quickly as possible from Aksinia’s caressing glance.
Stepan had evidently made up his quarrel with his wife. He visited the tavern less frequently, and one evening, as he was winnowing grain in the threshing-floor, he suggested, for the first time since the beginning of the trouble:
‘Let’s sing a song, Aksinia!’
They sat down, their backs against a heap of threshed, dusty wheat. Stepan began an army song, Aksinia joined in with her full, throaty voice. Gregor heard the Astakhovs singing, and whilst he was threshing (the two threshing-floors adjoined) he could see Aksinia as self-assured as formerly, and apparently happy.
Stepan exchanged no greeting with the Melekhovs. He worked in the threshing-floor, occasionally making a jesting remark to Aksinia. And she would respond with a smile, her black eyes flashing. Her green skirt rippled like rain before Gregor’s eyes. His neck was continually being twisted by a strange force which turned his head in the direction of Stepan’s yard. He did not notice that Natalia, who was assisting Pantaleimon to repair the fence, intercepted his every involuntary glance; he did not see Piotra, who was driving the horses round the threshing circle, grimacing with an almost imperceptible smile as he watched his brother.
From near and distant threshing-floors came the sound of threshing: the shouts of drivers, the whistle of knouts, the rattle of the winnowing drums. The village had waxed fat on the harvest, and was threshing in the September warmth that stretched over the Don like a beaded snake across the road. In every farmyard, under the roof of every hut, each was living a full-blooded, bitter-sweet life, separate and apart from the rest. Old Grishaka was suffering with his teeth; Mokhov, crushed by his shame, was stroking his beard, weeping and grinding his teeth; Stepan nursed his hatred for Gregor in his heart, and tore at the shaggy blanket with his iron fingers in his sleep; Natalia ran into the shed and fell to the ground, shaking and huddling into a ball as she wept over her lost happiness; Gregor sighed, oppressed by gloomy presentiments and his continually returning pain; as Aksinia caressed her husband she flooded her undying hatred for him with tears. David had been discharged from the mill, and sat night after night with Valet in the boiler-shed, whilst Valet, his evil eyes sparkling, would declare:
‘David, you’re a fool! They’ll have their throats cut before long. One revolution isn’t enough for them. Let them have another 1905, and then we’ll settle scores. We’ll settle scores!’ he threatened with his scarred finger, and with a shrug adjusted the coat flung across his shoulders.
And over the village slipped the days, passing into the nights; the weeks flowed by, the months crept on, the wind howled, and, glassified with an autumnal, translucent, greenish-azure, the Don flowed tranquilly down to the sea.
One Sunday at the end of October Fiodot Bodovskov drove to the district village on business. He took with him four brace of fattened ducks and sold them at the market; he bought his wife some cotton print, and was on the point of driving home, when a stranger, obviously not of those parts, came up to him.
‘Good afternoon,’ he greeted Fiodot, putting his fingers to the edge of his black hat.
‘Good afternoon!’ said Fiodot inquiringly.
‘Where are you from?’
‘From a village.’
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p; ‘And which village is it you’re from?’
‘From Tatarsk.’
The stranger drew a silver cigarette-case out of his pocket and offered Fiodot a cigarette. ‘Is yours a big village?’ he asked.
‘Pretty large. Some three hundred families.’
‘Any smiths there?’
‘Yes!’ Fiodot fastened the rein to his horse’s bit, and looked distrustfully at the man’s black hat and the furrows in the large white face. ‘What do you want to know for?’ he added.
‘I’m coming to live at your village. I’ve just been to the district Ataman. Will you take me back with you? I have a wife and a couple of boxes.’
‘I can take you.’
They collected the wife and the boxes and set out on the return journey. Fiodot’s passengers sat quietly behind him. Fiodot first asked for a cigarette, then he queried:
‘Where are you come from?’
‘From Rostov.’
‘Born there?’
‘Yes.’
Fiodot twisted himself round to study his passengers more closely. The man was of average height, but thin; his close-set eyes glittered intelligently. As he talked he smiled frequently, his upper lip protruded over the lower. His wife, wrapped in a knitted shawl, was dozing.
‘What are you coming to live at our village for?’
‘I’m a locksmith. I’m thinking of starting a workshop. I can do carpentry too.’
Fiodot stared suspiciously at the man’s plump hands, and catching his gaze, the stranger added:
‘I’m also an agent for the Singer Sewing Machine Company.’
‘What is your name?’ Fiodot asked him.
‘Stockman.’
‘So you’re not Russian, then?’
‘Yes, I’m a Russian. But my grandfather was a German by birth.’
In a brief while Fiodot had learnt that Osip Davidovitch Stockman had formerly worked at a factory, then somewhere in the Kuban, then in the South-Eastern Railway workshops. After a while the conversation flagged. Fiodot gave his horse a drink at a wayside spring, and, drowsy with the journey and a good meal, he began to doze. He fastened the reins to the wagon and lay down comfortably. But he was not allowed to go to sleep.
‘How’s life in your parts?’ Stockman asked him.
‘Not so bad, we have enough to eat.’
‘And the cossacks generally, are they satisfied?’
‘Some are, some aren’t. You can’t please everybody.’
‘True, true,’ the man assented, and went on with his questioning.
‘You live pretty well, you say?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘The annual army training must be a trouble? Ah?’
‘Army training? We’re used to it.’
‘But the officers are bad?’
‘Yes, the sons of swine!’ Fiodot grew animated and glanced fearfully at the woman. ‘Our authorities are a bad lot … When I went to do my service I sold my bullocks and bought a horse, and they rejected him.’
‘Rejected him?’ Stockman said with assumed amazement.
‘Right out. His legs were no good, they said. I argued with them, but no, they wouldn’t pass him. It’s a shame!’
The conversation went on briskly. Fiodot jumped off the wagon and began to talk freely of the village life. He cursed the village ataman for his unjust division of the meadowland, and praised the state of affairs in Poland, where his regiment had been stationed. Stockman smoked and smiled continually, but the frown furrowing his white forehead stirred slowly and heavily, as though driven from within by secret thoughts.
They reached the village in the early evening. On Fiodot’s advice Stockman went to the widow Lukieshka and rented two rooms from her.
‘Who is that you brought back with you?’ Fiodot’s neighbour asked him as he drove past.
‘An agent.’
‘What kind of angel?’
‘You’re a fool, that’s what you are. An agent, I said. He sells machines. He gives them away to the handsome ones, but to such fools as you, Auntie Maria, he sells them.’
Next day the locksmith Stockman visited the village ataman. Fiodor Manitskov, who was in his third year as ataman, turned the newcomer’s black passport over and over, then handed it to the secretary, who also turned it over and over. They exchanged glances, and the ataman authoritatively waved his hand:
‘You can stay.’
The newcomer bowed and left the room. For a week he did not put his nose outside Lukieshka’s hut. He was to be heard knocking with an axe, preparing a workshop in the outdoor kitchen. The women’s interest in him died away; only the children spent all day peeping over the fence and watching the stranger with an unabashed animal curiosity.
Some three days before the ‘Intercession of the Holy Virgin’ Gregor and his wife drove out to the steppe to plough. Pantaleimon was unwell; he leaned heavily on his stick and wheezed with pain as he stood in the yard seeing them off. As Ilinichna wrapped Natalia in her jacket she whispered:
‘Don’t be long away; come back soon.’
Her slender waist bent under the weight of a load of damp washing, Dunia went past on her way to the Don to rinse the clothes. As she went by she called to Natalia:
‘Natalia, in the red glade there is lots of sorrel. Pull some up and bring it home.’
The three pairs of bullocks dragged the upturned plough out of the yard. Gregor, who had caught a cold while fishing, adjusted the handkerchief bound round his neck and walked along at the roadside, coughing. Natalia walked at his side, a sack of victuals swinging on her back.
A transparent silence enveloped the steppe. Beyond the fallow land, on the other side of the rolling hill the earth was being scratched with ploughs, the drivers were whistling; but here along the highroad was only the blue-grey of low-growing wormwood, the roadside clover, and the ringingly glassy, chilly heaven above, criss-crossed by flying threads of natural-coloured web.
After seeing the ploughers on their way Piotra and Daria made ready to drive to the mill. Piotra sifted the wheat in the granary, Daria sacked it and carried it to the wagonette. Pantaleimon harnessed the horses.
When they arrived at the mill they found the yard crowded with wagons. The scales were surrounded by a dense throng. Piotra threw the reins to Daria and jumped down from the cart.
‘How soon will my turn be?’ he asked Valet the scalesman.
‘You’re the thirty-eighth.’
Piotra turned to fetch his sacks. As he did so he heard cursing behind him. A hoarse, unpleasant voice barked:
‘You oversleep yourself, and then you want to go out of your turn. Get away, Hokhol,* or I’ll give you one.’
Piotra recognized the voice of ‘Horse-shoe’ Yakob. He stopped to listen. There was a shout from the weighing-room, and the sound of a blow. The blow was well aimed, and an elderly, bearded Ukrainian with his cap crushed on the back of his head, came tumbling out through the doorway.
‘What’s that for?’ he shouted, holding his cheek.
‘I’ll wring your neck, you son of a whore!’
‘Mikifor, help!’ the Ukrainian shouted.
‘Horse-shoe’ Yakob, a desperate, solidly built artilleryman, who had earnt his nickname because of the horse-shoe marks left by the kick of a horse on his cheek, came running out of the weighing-room, rolling up his sleeves. Behind him a tall Ukrainian in a rose-coloured shirt struck hard at him. But Yakob kept on his feet.
‘Brother, they’re attacking cossacks!’ he cried.
From all sides cossacks and Ukrainians, who were at the mill in large numbers, came running. A fight began, centring around the main entrance to the mill. The door groaned under the pressure of the struggling bodies. Piotra threw down his sack and went slowly towards the mêlée. Standing up on the wagonette, Daria saw him press into the middle of the crowd, pushing the others aside. She groaned as she saw him carried to the mill wall and flung down and trampled underfoot.
Mitka Korshunov came running round the c
orner from the machine-room, waving a bar of iron. The same Ukrainian who had struck at Yakob from behind burst out of the struggling crowd, a torn sleeve fluttering on his back like a bird’s broken wing. Bent double, his hands touching the ground, he ran to the nearest wagon and snatched up a shaft. The three brothers Shamil came at a run from the village. Armless Alexei fell at the gate, catching his feet in reins lying abandoned on the ground. He jumped up and leapt across the cart-shafts, pressing his armless sleeve to his breast. His brother Martin’s trousers came out of their socks; he bent down to tuck them in, but a cry floated high over the mill roof, and Martin straightened up and tore after his brothers.
Daria stood watching from the wagon, panting and wringing her hands. Sergei Mokhov ambled past, pale and chewing his lips, his belly shaking like a round ball beneath his waistcoat. Daria saw the Ukrainian with the torn shirt cut Mitka down with the shaft, only himself to be sent headlong by armless Alexei’s iron fist. She saw Mitka Korshunov, on his hands and knees, sweep Mokhov’s legs from under him with the iron bar, and she was not surprised. Mokhov threw out his arms and slipped like a crab into the weighing-shed, there to be trodden underfoot. Daria laughed hysterically, the black arches of her painted brows broken with her laughter. But she stopped abruptly as she saw Piotra; he had succeeded in making his way out of the swaying, howling mob, and was lying under a cart, spitting up blood. With a shriek Daria ran to him. From the village cossacks came hurrying with stakes; one of them carried a crowbar. At the door of the weighing-shed a young Ukrainian lay with a broken head in a pool of blood; bloody strands of hair fell over his face. It looked as though he was departing this pleasant life.
Herded together like sheep, the Ukrainians were slowly being driven towards the boiler-shed. There was every prospect of the fight ending seriously, but an old Ukrainian had an inspiration. Jumping into the boiler-shed, he pulled a flaming brand out of the furnace and ran towards the granary where the milled grain was stored: a thousand poods and more of flour.
‘I’ll set it afire!’ he roared savagely, raising the crackling brand towards the thatched roof.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 12