‘Flying to the south, to the warmth.’
Behind a rosy little cloud, as gay as a maiden smile, a tiny slip of moon gleamed dimly. The smoke from the chimneys rose in columns, reaching towards the inaccessibly distant, golden slip of the young moon. The river was not completely frozen over opposite the Melekhovs’ hut. Along the edges of the stream the ice was firm, and green with accumulated drift snow. But beyond the middle, towards the Black Cliff, the ice-holes yawned sombre and menacing out of the white snow.
Pantaleimon drove off first with the old bullocks, leaving his sons to follow later. At the slope down to the river-crossing Piotra and Gregor caught up with Anikushka. He was walking at the side of his bullocks, and his wife, a stocky, sickly woman, held the reins. Piotra called out to him:
‘Hallo, neighbour, surely you’re not taking your woman with you?’
Anikushka smiled and turned to talk to the brothers.
‘Yes, I am, to keep me warm,’ he replied.
‘You’ll get no warmth from her, she’s too lean.’
‘That’s true; and I feed her with oats, but still she doesn’t fatten!’
The three drove on together. The forest was laced with rime, and of a virgin whiteness. Anikushka went in front, lashing his whip against the branches overhead. The needly and crumbling snow fell in showers, sprinkling over his wife.
‘Don’t play about, you devil!’ she shouted at him, as she shook the snow off.
‘Drop her into the snow,’ Piotra advised.
At a turn of the road they met Stepan Astakhov, driving two yoked bullocks back towards the village. His curly hair hung below his fur cap like a bunch of white grapes.
‘Hey, Stepan, lost your road?’ Anikushka exclaimed as he passed.
‘Lost my way be damned! We swung over, and the sledge struck a stump and snapped a runner in two. So I’ve got to go back.’ Stepan cursed and his eyes suddenly darkened as he passed Piotra.
‘Left your sledge behind?’ Anikushka asked, turning round.
Stepan waved his hand, cracked his whip, and gave Gregor a hard stare. A little farther on the group came to a sledge abandoned in the middle of the road. Aksinia was standing by it. Holding the edge of her sheepskin with her hand, she was gazing along the road in their direction.
‘Out of the way or I’ll drive over you. You’re not my wife!’ Anikushka snorted. Aksinia stepped aside with a smile, and sat down on the overturned sledge.
‘I’d take you along, but I’ve got my own wife with me,’ Anikushka explained as he drove by.
As Piotra came up to her he gave a quick glance back at Gregor, who was some distance behind. Gregor was smiling uncertainly, anxiety and expectation expressed in all his movements.
‘What, sledge broken?’ Piotra asked.
‘Yes,’ she replied, and rising to her feet, turned away from Piotra towards Gregor. ‘Gregor Pantalievitch, I’d like a word with you,’ she said, as he came up to her.
Asking Piotra to look after his bullocks for a moment, Gregor turned to her. Piotra laughed suggestively, and drove on.
The two stood silently regarding each other. Aksinia glanced cautiously around, then turned her humid black eyes again to Gregor’s face. Shame and joy flamed in her cheeks and dried her lips. Her breath came in sharp gasps.
At a turn in the road Anikushka and Piotra disappeared behind the brown oak trunks.
‘Well, Grishka, it’s as you wish, but I’ve no strength left to live without you,’ she said firmly, and pressed her lips together in expectation of his answer.
Gregor made no reply. The silence fettered the forest in its grip. The glassy emptiness rang in his ears. The smooth surface of the road, polished with sledge runners, the grey rag of sky, the dumb, mortally drowsy forest … A sudden cry of a raven near by seemed to arouse Gregor from his momentary lethargy. He raised his head and watched the bird winging its silent flight. Unexpectedly to himself he said:
‘It’s going to be warm. He’s flying towards the warmth.’ Starting, he laughed hoarsely … ‘Well …’ He turned his intoxicated eyes to Aksinia, and suddenly snatched her towards himself.
During the winter evenings a little group of villagers gathered in Stockman’s room at Lukieshka’s hut. There were Christonia, and Valet from the mill, ever-smiling David (now three months a loafer), the engine-man, Ivan Alexievitch Kotliarov, occasionally Filka the cobbler, and always Misha Koshevoi, a young cossack who had not yet done his regular army service.
At first the group played cards. Then Stockman casually brought out a book of Niekrassov’s poetry. They began to read the volume aloud, and liked it. Then they went on to Nikitin, and about Christmas-time Stockman suggested the reading of a dog-eared, unbound and well-bethumbed brochure. Koshevoi, who had been to the church school, read aloud from it as he contemptuously glanced through the greasy pages.
‘You could make vermicelli of it, it’s so greasy!’ he said in disgust.
Christonia roared with laughter; David smiled dazzlingly. But Stockman waited for the merriment to die away, and then said:
‘Read it, Misha. It’s interesting. It’s all about the cossacks.’
Bending his head over the table, Koshevoi spelt out laboriously:
‘Short History of the Don Cossacks’, and then glanced around expectantly.
‘Read it!’ Kotliarov, the engine-man, ordered.
They laboured through the book for three evenings, reading about the free life of the past, about Pugachov, Stenka Razin and Vasily Bulovin. Finally they came down to recent times. The unknown author poured scorn on the cossacks’ miserable existence, he jeered intelligently and powerfully at the authorities and the system, the Tsar’s government and the cossackry itself, which had hired itself out to the monarchs as their bodyguard. The listeners grew excited and began to quarrel among themselves. Stockman sat at the door, smoking a pipe and smiling.
‘He’s right! It’s all true!’ Christonia would burst out.
The engineer Kotliarov was steeped to the backbone in cossack traditions, and he defended the cossacks vigorously, his bulging round eyes glittering:
‘You’re a peasant, Christan, your cossack blood’s a drop in a bucket. Your mother was mated with a peasant from Voronezh.’
‘You’re a fool, you’re a fool, brother!’ Christonia replied vigorously.
‘Shut up, peasant!’
‘And aren’t the peasants just as much men as you?’
‘They’re peasants, made of bast and stuffed with brushwood.’
‘When I was serving in Petersburg, brother, I saw many things,’ Christonia said. ‘Once it happened that we were on guard at the Tsar’s palace, inside the rooms and around the walls outside. We rode around, two this way and two that. When we met we used to ask: “All quiet, no risings anywhere?” and then we’d ride on. We weren’t allowed to stop and talk. And they chose us for our looks; when we had to take our turn on guard at the doors they chose each pair so as they should be alike in their faces and their figures. The barber once had to dye my beard because of it. I had to take a turn at guard with some cossack whose beard was a bay colour. They searched all through the regiment and there wasn’t another like him. So the troop commander sent me to the barber to have my beard dyed. When I looked in the glass afterwards my heart almost broke. I burned, absolutely burned!’
‘Yes, Christonia, but what’s all this to do with the question? What were you going to tell us?’ Kotliarov interrupted him.
‘About the people. I was just telling you I once had to take a turn on guard outside. We were riding along, me and my comrade, when some students came running round the corner. As soon as they saw us they roared: “Hah!” and then again “Hah!” We hadn’t time to call out before they had surrounded us. “What are you riding about for, cossacks?” they asked. And I said: “We’re keeping guard, you let go of the reins”, and clapped my hands on my sword. “Don’t distrust me, cossack, I’m from Kamienska district myself, and I’m studying in the university,
” one said. We make to ride on, and he pulls out a ten-rouble piece and says: “Drink to the health of my dead father.” And he draws a picture out of his pocket. “Look, that’s my father,” he says, “take it as a keepsake.” Well, we took it, we couldn’t refuse. And they went off again. Just then an officer comes running out of the back door of the palace with a troop of men. “Who was that?” he shouts. And I tell him students had come and begun talking to us, and we had wanted to sabre them according to instructions, but as they had set us free we had ridden off. When we went off duty later we told the corporal we’d earned ten roubles and wanted to drink them to the health of the old man, showing him the portrait. In the evening the corporal brought some vodka, and we had a good time for a couple of days. Then it turned out that this student had given us the portrait of the chief rebel of Germany. I had hung it above my bed; he had a grey beard, and was a decent sort of man, looked like a merchant. The troop commander saw it and asked: “Where did you get that picture from?” So I told him, and he began to roar: “Do you know who that is? He’s their ataman Karl …” Drat it, I’ve forgotten his name. What was it …?’
‘Karl Marx?’ Stockman suggested with a smile.
‘That’s it, Karl Marx,’ Christonia exclaimed joyfully. ‘But we drank the ten roubles. It was the bearded Karl we drank to, but we drank them!’
‘He deserves to be drunk to,’ Stockman smiled, playing with his cigarette-holder.
‘Why, what good did he do?’ Kotliarov queried.
‘I’ll tell you another time, it’s getting late now.’ Stockman held the holder between his fingers, and ejected the dead cigarette-end with a slap from the other hand.
After long selection and testing, a little group of ten cossacks began to meet regularly in Stockman’s workshop. Stockman was the heart and soul of the group, and went straight towards the end he had in mind. He ate into the simple understandings and conceptions like a worm into wood, instilling repugnance and hatred towards the existing system. At first he found himself confronted with the cold steel of distrust, but he was not to be repulsed.
On the sandy slope of the left bank of the Don lies the centre of Vieshenska, the most ancient of the district centres of the upper Don, transferred from the town of Chigonak which was destroyed during the reign of Peter the First, and renamed Vieshenska. It was formerly an important link along the great waterway from Voronezh to Azov.
Opposite Vieshenska the Don bends like a Tartar bow, turns sharply to the right, and by the little village of Bazka majestically straightens again, carries its greenish-blue waters over the chalky feet of the hills on the west bank, past the thickly clustered villages on the right and the rare hamlets on the left, down to the sea, to the blue Sea of Azov.
Vieshenska stands among dunes of yellow sands. It is a bare, unhappy village without gardens or orchards. On the square stands an old church, grey with age, and six streets run out of the square in lines parallel with the river. Where the Don bends towards Bazka a lake, as broad as the Don at low tide, runs like a sleeve into willows. The far end of Vieshenska runs down to this lake, and on a smaller square, overgrown with golden prickly thorn, is a second church, with a green cupola and green roof, standing under the green of the willows.
Beyond the village to the north stretches a saffron waste of sands, a miserable pine plantation, and groves flooded with rust-coloured water. Here and there in the sandy wilderness are rare oases of villages, meadowland, and a grey scrub of willows.
One Sunday in December a dense crowd of fifteen hundred young cossacks from all the villages in the district was assembled on the square outside the old church. Mass ended, the senior sergeant, a brave-looking, elderly cossack with long-service decorations, gave an order, and the youngsters drew up in two long, unequal ranks. Followed by his staff the ataman entered the church enclosure, dressed according to form and wearing a new officer’s cloak, his spurs jingling.
Falling back a pace or two, the senior sergeant swung on his heels and shouted:
‘By the right, quick march!’
The two lines filed through the wide-open gate, and the church rang to the cupola with the sound of tramping feet.
Gregor paid no attention to the words of the oath of allegiance being read by the priest. By his side stood Mitka Korshunov, his face contorted with the pain of his tight new boots. Gregor’s upraised arm grew numb, a jumbled train of thought slipped through his mind. As he passed under the crucifix and kissed the silver, damp with the moisture of many lips, he thought of Aksinia, of his wife. He had a fleeting vision of the forest, its brown trunks and branches lined with white down, and the humid gleam of Aksinia’s black eyes beneath her kerchief …
When the ceremony was ended they were marched out into the square and again drawn up in ranks. Blowing his nose and stealthily wiping his fingers on the lining of his coat, the sergeant addressed them:
‘You’re not boys any longer now, you’re cossacks. You’ve taken the oath and you ought to understand what it means and what you’ve sworn to do. You’re grown up into cossacks now and you must watch over your honour, obey your fathers and mothers and so on. You were boys, you played about, you may even have played tip-cat in the road, but now you must think about your future service. In a year’s time you will be called up into the army …’ Here the sergeant blew his nose again, brushed his hands, and ended, as he drew on his fur gloves: ‘And your father or mother must think about getting you your equipment. They must provide you with an army horse, and … in general … And now, home you go and God be with you, boys.’
Gregor and Mitka picked up the rest of the lads from their village, and they set off together for Tatarsk.
It was dusk when they reached the village. Gregor went up the steps of the hut and glanced in at the window. The hanging lamp shed a dim yellow light through the room. Piotra was standing in its light with his back to the window. Gregor brushed the snow off his boots with the besom at the door, and entered the kitchen amid a cloud of steam.
‘Well, I’m back,’ he announced.
‘You’ve been quick. You must be frozen,’ Piotra replied in an anxious and hurried tone.
Pantaleimon was sitting with his head bowed in his hands, his elbows on his knees. Daria was spinning at the droning spinning-wheel. Natalia was standing at the table with her back to Gregor, and did not turn round on his entry. Glancing hastily around the kitchen, Gregor rested his eyes on Piotra. By his brother’s agitatedly expectant face he guessed that something had happened.
‘Taken the oath?’ Piotra asked.
‘Aha!’
Gregor took off his outdoor clothes slowly, playing for time, and turning over in his mind all the possibilities which might have led to this chilly and silent welcome. Ilinichna came out of the best room, her face expressing her agitation.
‘It’s Natalia!’ Gregor thought, as he sat down on the bench beside his father.
‘Get him some supper,’ his mother said to Daria, indicating Gregor with her eyes. Daria stopped in the middle of her spinning-song, and went to the stove. The kitchen was engulfed in a silence broken only by the heavy breathing of a goat and her newly born kid.
As Gregor sipped his soup he glanced at Natalia. But he could not see her face. She was sitting sideways to him, her head bent over her knitting-needles. Pantaleimon was the first to be provoked into speech by the general silence. Coughing artificially, he said:
‘Natalia is talking about going back to her parents.’
Gregor wiped his plate clean with his bread, and said nothing.
‘What’s the reason?’ his father asked, his lower lip quivering: the first sign of a coming outburst of frenzy.
‘I don’t know,’ Gregor replied as he rose and crossed himself.
‘But I know,’ his father raised his voice.
‘Don’t shout, don’t shout!’ Ilinichna interposed.
‘Yes, there’s no cause for shouting.’ Piotra moved from the window to the middle of the room. ‘It all depen
ds on love. If you want to, you live together; if you don’t, well … God be with you!’
‘I’m not judging her. Even if she was a wanton hussy and sinful in the sight of God, still I’d not judge her, but that swine there.’ Pantaleimon pointed to Gregor, who was warming himself at the stove.
‘Who have I done wrong to?’ Gregor asked.
‘You don’t know? You don’t know, you devil?’
‘No, I don’t.’
Pantaleimon jumped from his seat, overturning the bench, and went right up to Gregor. Natalia threw down her stocking, the needles clattered to the floor. At the sound a kitten jumped down from the stove and began to play with the ball of wool.
‘What I say to you is this,’ the old man began slowly and deliberately. ‘If you won’t live with Natalia, you can clear out of this house and go wherever your feet will carry you. That’s what I say to you. Go where your feet will carry you,’ he repeated in a calm voice, and turned and picked up the bench.
‘What I say to you, father, I don’t say in anger,’ Gregor’s voice was jarringly hollow. ‘I didn’t marry of my own choice, it was you who married me off. And I have no feeling for Natalia. Let her go back to her father, if she wants to.’
‘You clear out yourself.’
‘And I will go!’
‘And go to the devil!’
‘I’m going, I’m going, don’t be in a hurry.’ Gregor stretched out his hand for his short fur coat lying on the bed, distending his nostrils and trembling with the same boiling anger as his father. The same mingled Turkish and cossack blood flowed in their veins, and at that moment their resemblance to each other was extraordinary.
‘Where are you going?’ Ilinichna groaned, seizing Gregor’s arm. But he forcibly threw her off and snatched up his fur cap.
‘Let him go, the sinful swine! Let him go, curse him! Go on, go! Clear out!’ the old man thundered, throwing the door wide open.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 14