Grey, savage, in his wolfish yearning he threw the pieces of old jacket up to the ceiling again and again; the sharp steel whistled as it cut them in their flight.
Then, tearing off the sword-knot, he threw the sabre into a corner, went into the kitchen, and sat down at the table. His head bowed, with trembling fingers he stroked the unwashed table-top time after time.
Troubles never come singly.
The morning after Gregor had left home, through Getka’s carelessness Miron Korshunov’s pedigree bull gored the throat of his finest mare. Getka came running into the kitchen, white, distracted and trembling:
‘Trouble, master! The bull, curse him, the damned bull …!’
‘Well, what about the bull?’ Miron asked in alarm.
‘He’s done the mare in. Gored her …’
Miron ran half-undressed into the yard. By the well Mitka was beating the red five-year-old bull with a stick. The bull, his head down and dewlap dragging over the snow, was churning up the snow with his hoofs and scattering a silvery powder around his tail. He would not yield before the drubbing, but danced about on his hind legs as though intending to charge. Mitka beat him on his nose and sides, cursing the while and paying no heed to the labourer who was trying to drag him back by his belt.
Miron Gregorievitch ran to the well. The mare was standing by the fence, her head drooping and a fine shiver running over her body. Her heaving flanks were wet with sweat, and blood was running down her chest. A rose-coloured wound a hand-breadth deep and revealing the windpipe gaped on her neck. Miron seized her by the forelock and raised her head. The mare fixed her glazing eyes on her master as though mutely asking: ‘What next?’ As if in answer to the question Miron shouted:
‘Run and tell someone to scald some oak bark. Hurry!’
Getka ran to strip some bark from a tree, and Mitka came across to his father, one eye fixed on the bull circling and bellowing about the yard.
‘Hold the mare by her forelock,’ his father ordered. ‘Someone run for some twine. Quickly!’
They tied string round the mare’s upper lip so that she should not feel the pain, and then washed the wound. With freezing fingers Miron threaded raw thread through a darning needle and sewed up the edges, making a neat seam. He had hardly turned away to go back to the house when his wife came running from the kitchen, alarm written large on her face. She called her husband aside:
‘Natalia’s here, Gregoritch …! Ah, my God!’
‘Now what’s the matter?’ Miron demanded, his face paling.
‘It’s Gregor. He’s left home!’ Lukinichna flung out her arms like a rook preparing for flight, clapped her hands against her skirt, and broke into a whine:
‘Disgraced before all the village! Lord, what a blow! Oh …!’
Miron found Natalia standing in the middle of the kitchen. Two tears welled in her eyes, her cheeks were deeply flushed.
‘What are you doing here?’ her father blustered as he ran into the room. ‘Has your husband beaten you? Can’t you get on together?’
‘He’s gone away!’ Natalia groaned, and she swayed and fell on her knees before her father. ‘Father, my life is blighted … Take me back … Gregor’s gone away with that woman … He’s left me. Father, I’ve been crushed into the dust!’ she sobbed, gazing imploringly up at her father’s grey beard.
‘Wait, wait now …’
‘I can’t go on living there! Take me back!’ She crawled on her knees to the chest and dropped her head on to her arms. Tears at such a time are like rain in a May drought. Her mother pressed Natalia’s head against her skirt, whispering soothing, motherly words; but Miron, infuriated, ran out to the steps:
‘Harness two horses into the sleigh!’ he shouted.
A cock pattering importantly behind its hen on the steps took alarm at the shout, jumped away, and fluttered agitatedly off towards the barn, squawking indignantly.
‘Harness the horses!’ Miron kicked again and again at the fretted balustrade of the steps until it was hopelessly ruined. He returned to the kitchen only when Getka hurried out from the stables with the pair of horses, harnessing them as he went.
Mitka drove with Getka to the Melekhovs for Natalia’s possessions. In his abstraction Getka sent a young pig in the road flying. ‘Maybe the master will forget all about the mare now,’ he was thinking, and rejoiced, letting the reins hang loose. ‘But he’s such an old devil, he’ll never forget’, and Getka brought the whip lash hard down across the horses’ backs.
Chapter Ten
Eugene Listnitsky held a commission as troop commander in the Ataman’s Lifeguard Regiment. Having had a tumble during the officers’ hurdle races and broken his left arm, when he came out of hospital he took furlough and went to stay with his father for six weeks.
The old general lived alone in Yagodnoe. He had lost his wife while driving in the suburbs of Warsaw in the eighties of the nineteenth century. Revolutionaries had attempted to shoot the cossack general, had missed him, but had killed his wife and coachman. Listnitsky was left with his two-year-old son Eugene. Soon after this event the general retired, went to live at Yagodnoe, and lived a lonely, harsh life.
He sent his son Eugene to the cadets’ corps as soon as the lad was old enough, and occupied himself with farming. He purchased blood stock from the Imperial stables, crossed them with the finest mares from England and from the famous Provalsky stables, and reared a new stock. He raised cattle and livestock on his own and rented land, sowed grain (with hired labour), hunted with his Borzois in the autumn and winter, and occasionally locked himself into the hall and drank for a week on end. He was troubled with a stomach complaint, and his doctor had strictly forbidden him to swallow anything; he had to extract the goodness from all his food by mastication, spitting out the residue on to a silver tray held by his personal servant Benyamin.
Benyamin was a half-witted, swarthy young peasant with a shock of thick black hair. He had been in Listnitsky’s service for six years. When he first had to wait on the general he could not bear to watch the old man spitting out the chewed food. But after a time he grew accustomed to it. After some months he thought as he watched his master chewing the white meat of a turkey: ‘What a waste of good food! He doesn’t eat it himself, and my belly is turning over with hunger. I’ll try it after he’s finished with it.’ After that he made a practice of carrying the silver tray into the ante-room when his master had dined, and there hurriedly gulping down all that was left. Perhaps it was for this reason that he began to grow fat and double-chinned.
The other inhabitants of the farm were the maid, the pock-marked cook Lukeria, the ancient stableman Sashka, and the shepherd Tikhon. From the very first Lukeria would not allow Aksinia to help in the cooking for the master, and Aksinia was set to work washing the floors of the house three times a week, feeding the innumerable fowls, and keeping the fowl-house clean. Gregor spent much of his time in the spacious stables with Sashka the stableman. The old man was one mass of grey hair, but everybody still familiarly called him ‘Sashka’. Probably even old Listnitsky, for whom he had worked more than twenty years, had forgotten his surname. In his youth Sashka had been the coachman, but as he grew old and feeble and his sight began to fail he was made stableman. Stocky, covered with greenish-grey hair, with a nose that had been flattened by a stick in his youth, he wore an everlasting childish smile, and gazed out on the world with twinkling, artless eyes. The reverend, apostolic expression of his face was marred by his broken nose and his hanging, scarred underlip. Sashka was fond of vodka, and when he was in his cups he would wander about the yard as though he were master. Stamping his feet, he would stand beneath old Listnitsky’s bedroom and call loudly and sternly:
‘Mikolai Lexievitch! Mikolai Lexievitch!’
If old Listnitsky happened to be in his bedroom he would come to the window.
‘You’re drunk, you scoundrel!’ he would thunder.
Sashka would hitch up his trousers, and wink and smile. His smile danced
right across his face.
‘Mikolai Lexievitch, your Excellency, I know you!’ he would shake his lean, dirty finger threateningly.
‘Go and sleep it off!’ his master would smile pacifyingly.
‘You can’t take it Sashka!’ the stableman would laugh, going up to the railings of the fence. ‘Mikolai Lexievitch, you’re like me. Me and you – we’re like fish in the water. You and me – we’re rich, ah!’ Here he would fling his arms wide open to show how rich. ‘We’re known by everybody, all over the Don district. We …’ Sashka’s voice would suddenly sound miserable and surreptitious: ‘Me and you – your Excellency, we’re good to everybody, only we’ve both got rotting noses.’
‘What with?’ his master would ask, turning purple with laughter.
‘With vodka!’ Sashka would stamp out the words, winking and licking his lips. ‘Don’t drink, Mikolai Lexievitch, or we’ll be ruined, you and me. We’ll drink everything away.’
‘Go and drink this away!’ old Listnitsky would throw out a twenty-kopek piece, and Sashka would catch it and hide it in his cap, crying:
‘Well, good-bye, general.’
‘Have you watered the horses yet?’ his master would ask with a smile.
‘You lousy devil! You son of a swine!’ Sashka would turn livid, and in his anger would stutter and shake as though with the ague: ‘Sashka forget to water the horses? Ah? If I was dying I’d still crawl for a pail to water the horses. And he thinks …’
The old man would march off fuming at the undeserved reproach, cursing and shaking his fist. Everything came naturally to him, even drinking and his familiarity with his master. He was irreplaceable as a stableman. Winter and summer he slept in the stables, in an empty stall. He was ostler and shoesmith; he cut grass for the horses in the spring, and dug up medicinal roots on the steppe and in the valleys. Bunches of dried herbs, remedies for all the various ailments and diseases, hung high up on the stable walls.
Winter and summer a fine, tingling aroma hung like a spider’s web about the stall in which Sashka slept. Hay packed as hard as a board, covered with a horse-cloth, and his coat, smelling of horse sweat, served as mattress and bedding to his plank-bed. The coat and a sheepskin were all the old man’s worldly goods.
Tikhon, a healthy and dull-witted cossack, lived with Lukeria, and was needlessly jealous of her and Sashka. Regularly once a month he would take the old man by the button of his greasy shirt and lead him aside.
‘Old man, don’t you set your cap at my woman,’ he would say.
‘That depends …’ Sashka would wink significantly.
‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself at your age … And you a doctor, too; you look after the horses … you know the Holy Book!’
‘I like them pock-marked. Say good-bye to Lukeria, I’ll be taking her away from you. She’s like a currant pudding …’
‘Don’t let me catch you or I’ll kill you!’ Tikhon would say, sighing and drawing some copper coins out of his pocket.
Life mouldered away in a sleepy torpor at Yagodnoe. The estate lay in a valley remote from all frequented roads, and from the autumn onward all connexion with the neighbouring villages was broken. In the winter nights the wolf packs emerged from their forest lairs and terrified the horses with their howling. Tikhon used to go to the meadow to frighten them off with shot from his master’s double-barrelled gun, and Lukeria would wait in suspense for the sound of the shot. At such times her imagination transformed bald-headed Tikhon into a handsome and desperately brave youth, and when the door of the servants’ quarters slammed and Tikhon entered, she warmly embraced his frozen old bones.
In summer time Yagodnoe was alive until late in the evening with the sound of labourers’ voices. The master sowed some hundred acres with grain of various kinds. Occasionally Eugene came home, and would wander boredly through the orchard and over the meadow, or sit all the morning with rod and line by the lakeside. Eugene was of medium height, and broad-chested. He arranged his hair cossack fashion, brushing it on the right side. His officer’s tunic was always a perfect fit.
During the first ten days of Gregor’s life on the estate he was frequently in the young master’s company. One day Benyamin came smiling into the servants’ quarters and announced:
‘The young master wants you, Gregor.’
Gregor went to Eugene’s room and stood at the door. The master pointed to a chair. Gregor seated himself on the very edge.
‘How do you like our horses?’ Listnitsky asked.
‘They’re good horses. The grey is very good.’
‘Give him plenty of exercise, but don’t gallop him.’
‘So grandad Sashka told me.’
Screwing up his eyes, the young master said:
‘You have to go to the training camp in May, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll speak to the ataman about it. You won’t need to go.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
There was a momentary silence. Unbuttoning the collar of his uniform, Eugene scratched his womanishly white breast.
‘Aren’t you afraid of Aksinia’s husband taking her from you?’ he asked.
‘He’s thrown her over; he won’t take her back.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw one of the men from the village the other day, and he told me Stepan had said so to him.’
‘Aksinia’s a fine-looking woman,’ Listnitsky remarked thoughtfully, staring over Gregor’s head and smiling.
‘Not bad,’ Gregor agreed, and his face clouded.
During the last few days of his furlough Eugene spent a great deal of his time in Gregor’s room. Aksinia kept the little room spotlessly clean, and made it gay with feminine gewgaws. The officer chose times for his visit when Gregor was occupied with the horses. He would first go into the kitchen, and stand joking with Lukeria for a minute or two, then would pass into the farther room. One day he sat down on a stool, hunching his shoulders, and fixed a shamelessly smiling gaze on Aksinia. She was embarrassed by his presence, and the knitting-needles trembled in her fingers.
‘Well, Aksinia, how are you getting on?’ he asked, puffing at his cigarette until the room was filled with blue smoke.
‘Very well, thank you.’ Aksinia raised her eyes, and meeting Eugene’s transparent gaze silently telling of his desire, she turned crimson. She replied disconnectedly to his questions, avoiding his eyes and seeking an opportunity to leave the room.
‘I must go and feed the ducks now,’ she told him.
‘Sit a little longer. The ducks can wait,’ he smiled, and continued to ply her with questions concerning her past life, while his crystal-clear eyes pleaded obscenely.
When Gregor came in Eugene offered him a cigarette, and went out soon after.
‘What did he want?’ Gregor asked Aksinia, not looking at her.
‘How should I know?’ Remembering the officer’s look, Aksinia laughed forcedly. ‘He came in and sat there, just like this, Grishka’ (she showed him how Eugene had sat with hunched back), ‘and sat and sat until I was sick of him.’
‘You made yourself pleasant to him, of course?’ Gregor screwed up his eyes angrily. ‘You watch out, or I shall send him flying down the steps one day.’
Aksinia gazed at Gregor with a smile on her lips, and could not be sure whether he was speaking in jest or earnest.
Chapter Eleven
The winter broke during the fourth week of Lent. Open water began to fringe the edges of the Don; the ice, melting from the top, turned grey and swelled spongily. Of an evening a howling noise came from the hills, indicating frost according to the time-honoured saying, but in reality presaging the approaching thaw. In the morning the air tingled with the light frost, but by noon the earth was bare in patches, and in the nostrils was a scent of March, of the frozen bark of cherry trees, and rotting straw.
Miron Gregorievitch leisurely made ready for the ploughing season, spending his days under the shed sharpening the teeth of the harrows
and preparing for the thaw. During the fourth week of Lent old Grishaka fasted. He returned blue with cold from the church, and complained to his daughter-in-law Lukinichna:
‘The priest starved me. He’s no good. He’s as slow as a carter with a load of eggs.’
‘You’d have been wiser to have fasted during Passion Week; it’s warmer by then,’ she told him.
‘Call Natalia,’ he replied. ‘Let her make me a pair of warmer stockings.’
Natalia still lived in the belief that Gregor would return to her; her heart waited for him, and would not listen to the warning whisper of sober reason. She spent the nights in a weary yearning, tossing on her bed, crushed by her undeserved and unexpected shame. Another woe was now added to the first, and she awaited its sequel in a cold terror, casting about in her maiden room like a shot lapwing in a forest glade. From the earliest days of her return home her brother Mitka began to give her queer glances, and one day, catching her in the porch, he asked frankly:
‘Are you still yearning after Grishka?’
‘What is it to do with you?’
‘I want to help you get rid of your pain.’
Natalia glanced into his eyes and was terrified by what she saw there. Mitka’s green cat’s eyes glittered and their slits gleamed oilily in the dim light of the porch. Natalia slammed the door and ran to her grandfather’s room, standing and listening to the beating of her heart. Two days later Mitka came up to her in the yard. He had been turning over fresh hay for the cattle, and green stalks of grass hung from his straight hair and his fur cap.
And Quiet Flows the Don Page 16